[3]. From the Cotton Roll XIV, 6 [by Segar, Camden, and St. George]; compared with MS. Harl. 807, fol. 95, and with MS. Lansd., 863, containing the Heraldic Collections of R. St. George, Norroy, Vol. III, fol. 82 verso.
[4]. 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.
[5]. The story which, has been told—on the authority of one of John Chamberlain’s letters to Carleton (April, 1612) that ‘Sir Robert Cotton was sent out of the way’ at a time when certain claims of the Baronets were to be definitively heard at the Council Board, ‘in order that he might not produce records in their favour,’ rests on mere rumour. Charles, Lancaster Herald, wrote to Cotton immediately before the hearing in these terms: ‘On Saturday next the final determination is expected, if some troublesome spirit do not hinder; which end I wish were well made, and am glad that you are not seen in it at this time.’—Cotton MS., Julius, C. iii, f. 86.
[6]. ‘Tambien me dijo que el Conde de Somerset havia puesto todo su resto en este negocio, y ganado el Duque de Lenox, ... aventurandose el Conde ... a ganarse y asegurarse si se hazia, o a perderse si no se hacia; concluyendo esta platica el Coton con decirme que el estava loco de contento de ver esto en este estado, porque no pretendia ni desseava otra cosa mas que vivir y morir publicamente Catolico, como sus padres y abuelos lo havian sido.’—Gardiner Transcripts of MSS. at Simancas, vol. i, p. 102 (MS.).
[7]. Mr. S. R. Gardiner. His account is contained in the able paper entitled On Certain Letters of the Count of Gondomar giving an Account of the Affair of the Earl of Somerset, read to the Society of Antiquaries in 1867. Comp. the same historian’s Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage (Vol. I, c. 1, and especially the passage beginning ‘Sarmiento was surprised by a visit from Sir Robert Cotton,’ and so on). In these pages I use Sarmiento’s subsequent title of ‘Gondomar,’ simply because English readers are more familiar with it than with the Spaniard’s family name. Mr. Gardiner needlessly deepens the stain on Cotton’s memory, arising—all allowance duly made—out of this intercourse with Gondomar, by the remark that ‘twenty months before’ the interview occurred, Sir Robert had ‘argued his case’ [i. e. a tract on the question of the right treatment, by the State, of Romanist priests and recusants] ‘from a decidedly Protestant point of view, and had taken care to put himself forward as a thorough, if not an extreme, Protestant.’ But, unfortunately for Mr. Gardiner’s trenchant conclusion on that point, the pamphlet he refers to—by whomsoever written—was certainly not written by Sir Robert Cotton.
[8]. ‘[Then the Duke] came to the Relation of Sir Robert Cotton [of the intercourse] that he had with the Spanish Ambassador in 1614 [O.S.]. The Spanish Ambassador came to his house pretending For no subject ought to converse with Ambassadors without the King’s leave. For the offence [for which] I committed him [Sir Robert had] afterwards his general pardon from the King.’ Journals of the House of Commons, 4 March, 1624. Vol. I, pp. 727, 728.
[9]. ‘... Por diferentes vias le confirmado que contra el Conde [Somerset] no se averigua cosa de sustancia en lo de la muerte del Ovarberi; y de la del Principe [Henry, Prince of Wales,] no ha permetido 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.
[10]. 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, 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?
[11]. Such is the title in Cottoni Posthuma. In MS. Harl. 180—apparently given by Cotton himself to Sir S. D’Ewes—the title is ‘A Declaration against the Matche,’ &c. In that copy, this note occurs at the end, in Sir Symonds’ hand:—‘Thus far only, as Sir Robert Cotton himself told me, he proceeded; leaving the rest to be added ... according to the relation ... declared before the greater part of both Houses by ... the Duke of Buckingham.’—MS. Harl. 180, fol. 169.