The Personal and Public Life of Sir Robert Cotton.—His Political Writings and Political Persecutions.—Sources and Growth of the Cottonian Library.—The Successors of Sir Robert Cotton.—History of the Cottonian Library, until its union with the Library of Harley, and with the Museum and Miscellaneous Collections of Sloane.—Review of some recent Aspersions on the Character of the Founder.

Book I, Chap. II. Life of Sir Robert Cotton.

Sir Robert Cotton was the eldest son of Thomas Cotton of Conington and of Elizabeth Shirley, daughter of Francis Shirley of Staunton-Harold in Leicestershire. He was born on the 22nd of January, 1570, at Denton, in the county of Huntingdon. Denton was a sort of jointure-house attached to that ancient family seat of Conington, which had come into the possession of the Cottons, about the middle of the preceding century, by the marriage of William Cotton with Mary Wesenham, daughter and heir of Robert Wesenham, who had acquired Conington by his marriage with Agnes Bruce.[[1]]

Parentage and Ancestry of Sir Robert Cotton.

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 in Cambridgeshire, but they had not, as yet, won distinction 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—

[From the Cotton Roll XIV, 6 [by Segar, Camden, and St. George]; compared with MS. Hark 807, fol. 95, and with MS. Lansd., 863, containing the heraldic Collections of R. St. George, Norroy, Vol. III, fol. 82 verso.]

[For the continuation of the Cotton Pedigree, showing (1) the descent from Sir Robert of the subsequent possessors of the Cottonian Library, up to the date of the gift to the Nation made by Sir John Cotton, and (2) the relationship of the Cottonian Trustees of the British Museum, see the concluding pages of the present Chapter.]

Robert Cotton was educated at Trinity College in Cambridge, where he took the degree of B.A. towards the close of 1585.[[4]] Of his collegiate career very little is discoverable, save that it was an eminently studious one. |Cotton’s Early Friendships.| 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. Some of Cotton’s fellow-workers in the Society are known to all of us by their surviving writings. Others of them are now almost forgotten, though not less deserving, perhaps, of honourable memory; for amongst these latter was—