[19]. I had noted some of these as worthy, by way of sample, to be printed. But the reduced limits of my book (as compared with its plan) have compelled the omission of much illustrative matter which had been carefully prepared for insertion, and which, as I hope, would have been found to merit the attention of the reader. I will find room, however, to mention one little fact connected with the famous Evangeliary marked ‘Nero D. vi.’ The reader probably remembers Sir Robert Cotton’s fruitless perambulation of the aisle of Westminster Abbey, with that splendid MS. in his hands, on the day of the Coronation of Charles the First. It seems likely that the anecdote was told to Charles the Second when, at length, a like ceremony was to take place for him. Be that as it may, he sent—before he had been many days in England—a confidential servant to borrow the book from Sir Thomas. And the fact of the loan stands recorded on a fly-leaf, by the King’s intermediary, in honour ‘of the most noble Sir Thomas Cotton, the starre of learning and honestie.’ The MS., I may add, is one of those which came to Sir Robert from Dethick (Garter). It bears Dethick’s autograph with the date ‘1603’ and Cotton’s, ‘1608.’ Besides the Four Gospels it contains Processus factus ad Coronationem Regis Ricardi Secundi, and Modus tenendi Parliamentum. For some momentary fancy or other Sir Robert took out of another superb MS. of his—the Psalter of King Henry the Sixth—a small but beautiful miniature, and made of it a vignette for this Ethelstan volume. So it continued to remain for two hundred and forty years, when Sir Frederick Madden restored the miniature to its more legitimate place (Domitian A. xvii, fol. 96*.) Had this Nero volume chanced to have been scrutinized at the moment when it was Sir Robert’s fate to be stigmatized as ‘an embezzler of records,’ it is very possible that it might have been called to bear witness for the charge. For it is undeniable that the ‘Ro. Cotton Bruceus’ is written over an erasure. (The signature occurs on the beautiful dedicatory page—‘Beatissimo Papæ Damaso Hieronymus.’) But, fortunately, the descent of the book can be traced clearly.
[20]. Take, for example, these few lines: ‘Sweete Sainte whome I soley addore,—at whooes srine I offer myself; I reseived your loving lines.... Without them, I could not live at all;—being deprived of your blessed sight, ... I live yet, but most miserably. Use means, if it be possible, that we may come to the speech of one another; and the Heavens of Hope may be yet auspitious unto us.... Those deviles have again been writing letters unto my mother.’ In 1679, it would seem, the two ardent lovers were kept in a sort of honourable imprisonment. On Cotton’s coming to Cotton House, in the spring of that year, an upper servant of the family writes thus to a correspondent: ‘I advised him to call for money; take a coach and go about to take the air, and to visit his friends that are in or about the town; and not to be mewed up in a room, without money or company.’—John Squires, to a person unnamed; in Appendix to Cotton MSS. ‘16, 1.’ (B. M.)
[21]. By this William Hanbury, son-in-law of John Cotton (great grandson of the Founder), many Cotton MSS. were alienated—partly by sale and partly by gift—to Robert, Earl of Oxford. See hereafter, Chapter V.
[22]. Stukeley’s Itinerary of Great Britain (2nd edit. 1776).
[23]. Some of the burnt MSS., regarded, until Mr. Forshall’s time, as hopelessly illegible, have been found very helpful to the preparation of the volume now in the reader’s hands.
[24]. I have dwelt, somewhat protractedly, on this one interesting point in Cotton’s history,—pressing as are the limits prescribed to this volume,—under the belief that many readers will bear in mind that Sir Robert’s misfortune beneath the recent disinterment of ambassadorial despatches, written to foreign courts, is not an exceptional misfortune. Sir Walter Ralegh has fared still worse, in Mr. Gardiner’s able hands, by being held up to public scorn as a knavish liar, upon the uncorroborated testimony of certain avowed and bitter enemies of England. See Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage (1869), vol. i, Chaps. 1 and 2, passim. Readers of the admirable History of England by Mr. Froude—and who has not read that history?—will easily call to mind several not dissimilar instances. Nor is it at all surprising that it should be so. The most warily judicial of intellects can never be quite independent of that factitious charm which there will always be—over and above the legitimate charm—in telling an old story from an entirely new point of view. If, besides the attraction of mere novelty, there should chance to have been a keen burst of search over a difficult country, before the eager searcher could succeed in running down his quarry, he would be more than human if, in the moment of victory, he could weigh and balance with exact precision the real value of the hard-won spoil. At present, historians are too keenly chasing after new evidence to be able to estimate quite fairly its relative importance or net result. The most part both of writers and of readers are far too busy over newly-discovered materials to adjust with any approach to impartial fairness the vital question of comparative credibility. But the time for doing that must needs come, by and bye. Meanwhile, the fame of not a few of our old and true worthies will—in all probability—suffer some degree of momentary eclipse; just as that of Ralegh and Cotton has suffered.
[25]. The word ‘hope’ or some like expression, seems here to have been intended, but omitted. The repetition of the word ‘shortlie’ will sufficiently indicate to the reader the haste with which this effusion was written,—just as the King was about to mount for the long looked-for journey southwards. The letter has been printed by Birch, but with amendments.
[26]. It was not strictly a ‘launch.’ The vessel had been built expressly for the Prince, at Chatham, and was brought thence to London to be named with the usual ceremonies.
[27]. He was removed to the Fleet Prison ten days afterwards.
[28]. In dealing with royal letters it is, of course, necessary to keep in mind how largely the vicarious element is apt to enter into their composition. Those, however, that are quoted in the text seem to have a plain stamp of individuality upon them.