Chap. II. otherwise, they would have given to the Public Library of BOOK 1, Queen ELIZABETH,' in express trust for their fellow-country- LIFE OF men at large. Indirectly, this same petition has also its bearing on a curious passage relating to Sir Robert COTTON which occurs among the Minute-books of the Corporation of London, and which has recently been printed by Mr. RILEY, in his preface to Liber Custumarum. SIR ROBERT COTTON. COTTON AND THE CITY LONDON. On the 10th of November, 1607, the Court of Aldermen of London recorded the following minute: 'It is this day ordered, that Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Town Clerk, Mr. EDMONDS, and Mr. Robert SMITH, or any three of them, shall repair to Sir Robert COTTON, from this Court, RECORDS OF and require him to deliver to the City's use three of the City's books which have been long time missing the first book called Liber Custumarum; the second, called Liber Legum Antiquorum; and the thirde, called Fletewode, which are affirmed to be in his custody.' Of the results of the interview of Master Chamberlain and his fellow-ambassadors with COTTON no precise account has been preserved. It is plain, however, from the sequel, that they found the matter to be one for which such extremely curt ‘requisition' was scarcely the appropriate mode of setting to work. The Corporation appealed in vain to the Lord Privy Seal NORTHAMPTON; and they had afterwards to solicit the mediation with COTTON of two of their own members-Sir John JOLLES and another-who were personally known to him. Their interposition was alike ineffectual. Of the interview we have no report; but Sir Robert, it is clear, asserted his right to retain the City books (or rather portions of books) which were then in his hands, and he did retain them. They now form part of the well-known and very valuable Cottonian MS., Claudius D. XI.' Book I, THE DIS- CITY Несовра. COTTON'S MEMORIAL 172 Abuses IN THE NAVY. That these London records had once belonged to the citizens is now unquestioned. That Cotton-both in 1607 and again in the following year-asserted a title, of some sort, to those of them which were then in his hands, seems also to be established. Is the fair inference this: "Their then holder, in 1607, had obtained them wrongfully, and he persisted, despite all remonstrance, in his wrongful possession'? Is it not rather to be inferred that, whosoever may have been the original wrongdoer, Sir Robert COTTON had acquired them by a lawful purchase? If that should have been the fact, he may possibly have had a valid reason for declining to give what he had, ineffectually and rudely, been commanded to restore. On the other hand, it is impossible to defend Sir Robert's occasional mode of dealing with MSS.,—some of which, it is plain, were but lent to him,-when, by misplacement of leaves, or by insertions, and sometimes by both together, he confused their true sequence and aspect. Of this unjustifiable manipulation I shall have to speak hereafter. The years which followed close upon this little civic interlude were amongst the busiest years of COTTON's public life. He testified the sincerity of his desire to serve his country faithfully, by the choice of the subjects to the study of which he voluntarily bent his powers. Abuses in the management of the navy and of naval establishments have been at most periods of our history fruitful topics for reformers, competent or other. In the early years of JAMES there was a special tendency to the increase of such abuses in the growing unfitness for exertion of the Lord High Admiral. NOTTINGHAM had yet many years to live,-near as he had been to the threescore and ten when the new reign began. But even his large SIR ROBERT appetencies were now almost sated with wealth, employ- Book 1, Chap. II. ments, and honours; and ever since his return from his LIFE OF splendid embassy to Spain, he seemed bent on compensat- COTTON. ing himself for his hard labour under ELIZABETH by his indolent luxury under JAMES. The repose of their chief had so favoured the illegitimate activities of his subordinates, that when COTTON addressed himself to the task of investigating the state of the naval administration he soon found that it would be much easier to prove the existence and the gravity of the abuses than to point to an effectual remedy. INSTITUTED INTO ABUSES The abuses were manifold. Some of them were, at that moment, scarcely assailable. To COTTON, in particular, the approach to the subject was beset with many difficulties. He was, however, much in earnest. When he found that some of the obstacles must, for the present, THEINQUIRY be rather turned by evasion than be encountered-with BY COTTON any fair chance of success-by an open attack in front, he IN THE betook himself to the weaker side of the enemy. He obtained careful information as to naval account-keeping; discovered serious frauds; and opened the assault by a conflict with officials not too powerful for immediate encounter, though far indeed from being unprotected. ROYAL NAVY. Cotton, Memorial on Abuses of the Navy ; James I, Of Sir Robert's Memorial to the King, I can give but one brief extract, by way of sample: Upon a dangerous advantage,' he writes, which the Treasurer of the Navy taketh by the strict letter of his Patent, to be discharged of Domestic all his accounts by the only vouchee and allowance of two Corresp. chief officers, it falls out, strangely, at this time-by the vol. xli, p. 21. weakness of the Controller and cunning of the Surveyor— that these two offices are, in effect, but one, which is the Surveyor himself, who-joining with the Treasurer as a Purveyor of all provisions becomes a paymaster to himself. . . . such rates as he thinks good.' It is a suggestive statement. at (R. H). Book I, LIFE OF COTTON. COTTON'S EARLY 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 heard the English fugitive taxed,' &c., 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 are 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 a Joanne Florio anno 1610 addidicisse ex ejusdem literis ad 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, 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 SIR ROBERT THE COT LIBRARY AND GAL 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 correspondence 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 |
