Chap. II. SIR ROBERT COTTON. As usual, there are two accounts of the original secretor BOOK I, of the papers so opportunely discovered. According to one LIFE OF of them, the box was delivered by SOMERSET's own order to the woman by whom it was carried to the London merchant. According to another, SOMERSET entrusted the COTTON's papers to COTTON; and the latter, anticipating the search and sealing up of his library, gave them to a female acquaintance with whom he thought they would remain in 1615. safety, but whose own fears led her to shift their custody, in her turn. That the letters which NORTHAMPTON had received from SOMERSET containing, amongst many other things, numerous references to the imprisonment of OVERBURY in the Tower-had been in Sir Robert COTTON's hands is unquestioned. After NORTHAMPTON's death, COTTON, to use his own words, had been 'permitted to peruse and oversee all the writings, books, &c. in the Earl's study.' In the course of this examination he proceeds to say, 'I had collected thirty several letters of my Lord of SOMERSET to the Earl of Northampton, which, upon request, I delivered to my Lord Treasurer [the Earl of SUFFOLK,] who sent them to the Earl of SOMERSET.' SUFFOLK, it is to be remembered, was NORTHAMPTON's heir. Thus far, no charge rests upon COTTON in relation to this correspondence. What he did in disposing of SOMERSET'S el Rey que se hable en ella; y todo lo demas probado hasta agora viene a parar en que dio un decreto antes que le prendiesen, para recojer unos papeles, diziendo que era orden del Rey, sin haverla tenido para ello. Fue lo que causo su prision, y el aver entregado despues todos los papeles que tenia de importancia, con algunas joyas, a un amigo suyo [Sir Robert Cotton], para que lo guardase que se coxieron. Y el Rey ha sentido infinito que se ayan visto algunos papeles que havia suyos para el Conde,. y assi carga agora toda la yra sobre el Conde,' &c. Gondomar to Philip III,-Simancas MS. 2595, f. 23; and in Archæologia (by Gardiner), vol. xli, p. 29. DEALINGS WITH SOMER SET'S CORRE SPONDENCE. BOOK I, LIFE OF letters was done by order of the representatives of their deceased owner. It is far otherwise with respect to their SIR ROBERT treatment after they had repassed, by SUFFOLK's gift, into the hands of SOMERSET, their writer. COTTON. Extracts of Examinations, &c. (R. H.). The letters were undated. That they should be so was in accordance with the practice of a majority of the letterwriters of the time-as students of history know to their sorrow. When suspicion was aroused and inquiry commenced about the real cause of OVERBURY's death, COTTON's He told me, says advice was sought by SOMERSET. SOMERSET himself: These letters of your's may be dated, so as may clear you of all imputation.' Did he mean that the dates might be forged, and so be made to bear false witness? Or did he mean that, by putting their true dates to the letters, their contents would exculpate an innocent man? To these questions there is absolutely no answer, save the presumptive answer of character.* * On this point, it is my wish to leave the reader to form his own estimate of probabilities. Probabilities, only, are attainable; and I have no side to take, in any attempt to weigh them. But it may be well to ask the reader's attention to a passage in the Diary of a contemporary of Sir R. Cotton, a man of high character, and one who sat by Cotton's side in Parliament, fighting with him for the liberties of England, during many years; one who is also remarkable for speaking about the faults of his friends with abundant candour. 'Sir Robert Cotton, being highly esteemed by the Earl of Somerset, was acquainted with this murder [of Overbury] by him, a little before it now came to light, and had advised him what he took to be the best course for his safety.' This passage occurs in the private diary of Sir Symonds D'Ewes-' a man,' says a great writer, of somewhat Grandisonian ways, a man of 'scrupulous Puritan integrity, of high flown conscientiousness,. ambitious to be the pink of Christian country gentlemen, (Carlyle's Essays, iv, 297.) This scrupulous Puritan' knew all that was current about the terrible 'Great Oyer of Poisoning,' as Sir Edward Coke called it. He lived in familiar intercourse with Cotton, and regarded their long acquaintance as an honour to himself; whilst speaking freely about certain social habits and limitations-neither Grandisonian or Puritanic-on Cotton's part, Chap. II. LIFE OF SIR ROBERT Whatever may be our estimate of the difficulty attending BOOK I, on the admission of such exculpation as that, in respect of a charge which amounts (in substance) to participation, after the fact, in the crime of murder, there is really now no alternative. That Sir Robert COTTON put dates to SOMERSET'S undated letters is certain. It was found to be absolutely impossible, after desperate effort, to prove that the dates were false. It is alike impossible to prove that they are true. These dates are in COTTON's own hand, without any attempt to disguise it. Upon the hypothesis of SOMERSET's guilt, the question is beset with as much difficulty, as upon the hypothesis of his innocence. By procuring OVERBURY's imprisonment— with whatever motive, or beneath whatever influenceSOMERSET had brought himself under inevitable suspicion of complicity in the ultimate result of that imprisonment. He was already within the web. His struggles made it only the more tangled. Corresp. Sir Robert COTTON remained in custody until the middle of the year 1616. He was effectually prevented from appearing in May of that year as a witness at his friend's Domestic trial. He was himself put to no form of trial whatever. But James 1, he had to purchase his pardon at the price of five hundred pounds. It received the Great Seal on the 16th July. Remembering BACON's share in each stage of the proceedings against SOMERSET, and the lavishness of his pro- Feb. 1; and as precluding their intercourse from ripening into that close friendship which such a man as D'Ewes could form only with men likeminded with himself on the highest interests of humanity. Is it not easy to infer and is not the inference also inevitable-that by the fact of Somerset 'acquainting Cotton with the murder of Overbury a little before' it became public, and advising him as to the course for his safety,' D'Ewes understood such a communication and such advice as are entirely compatible with Somerset's innocence of his wife's crime? vol. lxxxvii, £. 67 (R. II.). Bacon to Villiers, April 18; 1616. BOOK I, Chap. II. LIFE OF SIR ROBERT COTTON. E. Bolton to Julius C., iii, fol. 32. (B. M.) fessions to VILLIERS of the extreme delight he felt in following the lead of the new favourite throughout every step of the prosecution of the old one, it is suggestive to note that the framers, five years afterwards, of a pardon for the Lord Chancellor BACON were directed to follow the precedent of the pardon granted in July 1616 to Sir Robert COTTON. Nor is it of less interest to observe that, to some of Sir Robert COTTON's closest friends, it seemed-at the moment when every part of the matter was fresh in men's mindsthat it was much more needful for him to exonerate himself from a suspicion of having stood beside SOMERSET too lukewarmly, than to clear himself from the charge of committing a forgery in order to cloke a murder. Very significant, for example, are the words of one of those friends. which I find in a letter addressed to Cotton on the very day on which his pardon passed the Great Seal:- If I say I rejoice and gratulate to you your return to your own house, as I did lament your captivity, . . it will easily be credited. ... The unsureness of this collusive world, and the danger of great friendships, you have already felt; and may truly say, with holy DAVID, Nolite fidere in principibus ..... As I hear, you have begun to make good use of it, by receiving to you your Lady which God himself had knit unto you. It is a piety for which you are commended. And, were it not for one thing I should think. ... my comfort in you were complete. It is said you were not sufficiently sincere to your most trusting friend, the pitied Earl. Though I hold this a slander, yet being not able to make particular defences, I opposed my general protestation against it as an injury to my friend. Yet wanting apt countermines to meet with those close works by which some seek to blow up a breach into your honour, I was not a little afflicted. I leave the arming of me in this cause to your own Book I, pleasure.' Chap. II. The caution as to the danger of the friendships of COTTON. grandees and great favourites was one which COTTON took to heart. In the years to come he had occasionally to give critical advice, in critical junctures. But, in the true sense of the words, he learnt, at last, not to put his trust in Princes. Long before his acquaintance with SOMERSET and his private conferences with JAMES, a very true and dear friend had noted a dangerous proclivity in Sir Robert's character. It prompted, by way of counsel, the words: 'Be yourself; and no man's creature; but [only] God's. And so He will prosper all your designs, both to his glory and your good.' That ply had been taken too deeply, however, to be very easily smoothed out. In the years to come Sir Robert COTTON approached-more than once, perhaps the brink of the old peril. As BUCKINGHAM clomb higher and higher, and busied himself with many transactions of the nature of which he had but a very insecure mental grasp, he felt his need of the counsels of experienced men. He made occasional advances to COTTON, amongst others. They were met; and not always so warily, as might now have been expected. But against the danger which over-confiding intercourse with too-powerful courtiers was sure to bring in its train, COTTON found a better safeguard in wounded self-esteem, than even in dearbought experience. He soon saw that in BUCKINGHAM's character there was at least as much of vacillation as of versatility. The famous lines which describe the son as A man so various, that he seem'd to be Arthur Agarde to Sir R. Cotton: Cott. MS. fol. 1. |
