Chap. II. William COTTON with Mary WESENHAM, daughter and Book 1, heir of Robert WESENHAM, who had acquired Conington LIFE OF by his marriage with Agnes BRUCE.* SIR ROBERT PARENTAGE AND ANCES TRY OF SIR ROBERT The Cottons of Conington were an offshoot of the old Cheshire stock. They held a good local position in right of their manorial possessions both in Huntingdonshire and Ro in Cambridgeshire, but they had not, as yet, won distinc- COTTON. tion by any very conspicuous public service. Genealogically, their descent, through Mary WESENHAM, from Robert BRUCE, was their chief boast. Sir Robert was to become, as he grew to manhood, especially proud of it. He rarely missed an opportunity of commemorating the fact, and sometimes seized occasions for recording it, heraldically, after a fashion which has put stumbling-blocks in the way of later antiquaries. But the weakness has about it nothing of meanness. It is not an unpardonable failing. And with the specially antiquarian virtues it is not less closely allied than with love of country. In days of court favour, JAMES THE FIRST was wont to please Sir Robert COTTON by calling him cousin. Sir Robert's descendants became, in their turn, proud of his personal celebrity, but they too were, at all times, as careful to celebrate, upon the family monuments, their Bruce descent, as to claim a share in the literary glories of the 'Cottonian Library.' This cousinship with King James—and also a matter which to Sir Robert was much more important, the descent to the Cottons of the rich Lordship of Conington with its appendant manors and members-will be seen, at a glance, by the following * Sir Robert's father was the fourth Thomas Cotton of Conington,' and fifth Lord of that manor of the Cotton family. The marriage of William Cotton with the eventual heiress of the Huntingdonshire Bruces was contracted about the year 1450. Robert COTTON was educated at Trinity College in Cambridge, where he took the degree of B.A. towards the close SIR ROBERT of 1585.* Of his collegiate career very little is discoverable, save that it was an eminently studious one. Long before he left Trinity, he had given unmistakeable proofs of his love for archæology. Some among the many conspicuous and lifelong friendships which he formed with men likeminded took their beginnings at Cambridge, but most of them were formed during his periodical and frequent sojourns in London. John JosCELINE, William DETHICK, Lawrence NOWELL, William LAMBARDE, and William CAMDEN were amongst his earliest and closest friends. Most of them were much his seniors. Whilst still in the heyday of youth he married Elizabeth BROCAS, daughter and eventually coheir of William BROCAS of Thedingworth in Leicestershire. Soon after his marriage he took a leading part in the establishment of the first Society of Antiquaries. * Here, if we accepted Cotton's authorship of the Twenty-four Arguments, whether it be more expedient to suppress Popish Practices, &c., published in the Cottoni Posthuma, by James Howell, we should have to add that he travelled on the Continent and passed many months in Italy.' But that tract is not Cotton's-though ascribed to him by so able and careful an historian as Mr. S. R. Gardiner (Archæologia, vol. xli. Comp. Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage, &c., vol. i, p. 32). That its real author was in Italy is plain, from his own statement I remember that in Italy it was often told me,' &c.; and, again: In Rome itself I have beard the English fugitive taxed,' &o., Posthuma, pp. 126, seqq. Dr. Thomas Smith put a question as to this implied visit of Sir Robert to Italy to his grandson, Sir John Cotton, who assured him that no such visit was known to any of the family; by all of whom it was believed that their eminent antiquary never set foot out of Britain. Smith's words Bure these: D. Joannes Cottonus hac de re a me literis consultus, se de isthoc avi sui itinere Italico ne verbum quidem a Patre suo edoctum fuisse respondit. Cottonum usum et cognitionem linguæ Italicæ anno 1610 addidicisse ex ejusdem literis ad a Joanne Florio Cottonum scriptis, mihi certo constat.' Vita, p. xvii. Chap. II. Some of COTTON's fellow-workers in the Society are known Book I, to all of us by their surviving writings. Others of them LIFE OF are now almost forgotten, though not less deserving, COTTON. perhaps, of honourable memory; for amongst these latter was 'that good Earl, once President Of England's Council and her Treasury; at a time when such praise could seldom be given corre SIR ROBERT THE COT LIBRARY LERY. Before the close of the sixteenth century, his collections GROWTH OF of Manuscripts and of Antiquities had already become so TONIAN large and important as to win for him a wide reputation in foreign countries, as well as at home. His spondence indicates, even at that early period, a generous recognition of the brotherhood of literature, the world over, and proves the ready courtesy with which he had learned to bear somewhat more than his fair share of the obligations thence arising. In later days he was wont to say to his intimates: 'I, myself, have the smallest share in myself.' From youth, onwards, there is abundant evidence that the saying expressed, unboastingly, the simple facts of his daily life. WITH CAM DEN. CAMDEN was amongst the earliest of those intimates, FRIENDSHIP and to the dying day of the author of the Britannia the close friendship which united him with COTTON was both unbroken and undiminished. The former was still in the |