The inquiry lasted from May, 1608, to June, 1609. Cotton was then requested by his fellow-commissioners to make an abstract of the depositions to be reported to the King. It abundantly justified the Memorial of 1608. James, when he had read it, ordered a final meeting of the Commissioners to be held in his presence, at which all the inculpated officers were to attend that they might adduce whatever answers or pleas of defence might be in their power. ‘In the end,’ says Sir Robert, ‘they were advised rather to cast themselves at the feet of his grace and goodness for pardon, than to rely upon their weak replies; which they readily did.’ The most important outcome of the inquiry was the preparation of a ‘Book of Ordinances for the Navy Royal,’ in the framing of which Sir Robert Cotton had the largest share. It led to many improvements. But, in subsequent years, measures of a still more stringent character were found needful.
The Inquiry into Crown Revenues.
In the next year after the presentation of this Report on the Navy, Sir Robert addressed to the King another Report on the Revenues of the Crown. The question is treated historically rather than politically, but the long induction of fiscal records is frequently enlivened by keen glances both at underlying principles and at practical results. Once or twice, at least, these side glances are such as, when we now regard them, in the light of the subsequent history of James’s own reign and of that of his next successor, seem to have in them more of irony than of earnest. The style of the treatise is clear, terse, and pointed.
On no branch of the subject does the author go into more minute detail than on that delicate one of the historical precedents for ‘abating and reforming excesses of the Royal Household, Retinue, and Favourites.’ He points the moral by express reference to existing circumstances. Thus, for example, in treating of the arrangements of the royal household, he says, ‘There is never a back-door at Court that costs not the king £2000 yearly;’ and again, when treating of gifts to royal favourites: ‘It is one of the greatest accusations against the Duke of Somerset for suffering the King [Edward VI] to give away the possessions and profits of the Crown in manner of a spoil.’
Not less plainspoken are Cotton’s words about a question that was destined, in a short time, to excite the whole kingdom. Tonnage and poundage, he says, were granted simply for defence of the State, ‘so they may be employed in the wars; and particular Treasurers account in Parliament’ for that employment. |Proceedings in the Commission for the Navy Royal, &c.; as above.| ‘They are so granted,’ he adds, ‘in express words; and that they proceed of goodwill, not of duty. Precedents of this nature are plentiful in all the Rolls.’ A final example of this sort may be found in the pithy warning grounded upon Richard the Second’s grant to a minion of the power of compounding with delinquents. It was fatal, he says, both to the king and to his instrument. ‘It grew the death of the one and the deposition of the other.’
Cotton’s Report on the Crown Revenues has also an incidental interest. Out of it grew the creation of the new dignity of baronets. Were His Majesty, says the writer, ‘now to make a degree of honour hereditary as Baronets, next under Barons, and grant them in tail, taking of every one £1000, in fine it would raise with ease £100,000; |Cotton’s Proposition for the Creation of Baronets, 1609.| and, by a judicious election, be a means to content those worthy persons in the Commonwealth that by the confused admission of [so] many Knights of the Bath held themselves all this time disgraced.’ When this passage was written that which had been, under Elizabeth, so real and eminent an honour as to be eagerly coveted by patriotic men, had been lavished by James with a profusion which entailed their contempt and disgust. I have before me the fine old MS. from a passage in which Cotton borrowed the title of the new dignity. |9 R. II. Durh. 17 July, 1385. Cotton MS., Nero D., vi, § 16. (B. M.)| The word occurs thus:—‘Ceux sont les estatutz, ordenances ... de n̄re très excellent souv seigneur le Roy Richard, et Johan, Duc de Lancastre, ... et des autres Contes, Barons, et Baronnetz, et sages Chivalers.’
Sir Robert was himself amongst the earliest receivers (June, 1611) of the new order. Its creation led to many jealousies and discords. It gave both to the King and to his councillors not a little trouble in settling the precise privileges and precedencies of its holders. In those controversies the author of the suggestion took no very active part. King James was much more anxious for the speedy receipt of the hundred thousand pounds, than about the ‘judicious election’ of those by whom the money was to be provided. Cotton’s satisfaction with the ultimate working out of his plan must have had its large alloy.[[5]]
This is the more apparent, inasmuch as, at the first acceptance of his project, Sir Robert had obtained the King’s distinct promise that no future creation of a baron should be made, until the new peer had first received the degree of baronet; unless he belonged to a family already ennobled. Hearing of a probability that the royal promise in this respect was likely to be broken, he wrote to Somerset:—‘If His Highness will do it, I rather humbly beg a relinquishing in the design of the baronets, as desponding of good success.’ |Cotton to Somerset (undated) MS. Harl., 7002, f. 380. (B. M.)| But to James all projects for the opening of gold mines—whether at home or abroad—were much too attractive to be staved off by any puritanic scruples about pledge or promise. For him, from youth to dotage, the one thing needful was gold.
The question of the baronetcies is one of the earliest which brings us in presence of the eventful political connection which subsisted between Cotton and the Earl of Somerset. |The Political Intercourse of Sir R. Cotton with Lord Somerset. 1613–1615.| Of its first beginnings no precise testimony seems to have survived. But there is a strong presumption that when Somerset was led, by his fatal love for Lady Essex, to change his early position of antagonism to the Howards for one of alliance and friendship, he came frequently into contact with Sir Robert, who had long been familiarly acquainted with the Earl of Suffolk—and also with his too well-known Countess—as well as with the Earl of Northampton.
The one ineffaceable stigma on Somerset’s memory which was brought upon him by his disgraceful marriage has barred the way to an impartial estimate of his standing as a politician. A man who was branded by his peers (though upon garbled depositions) as a murderer can scarcely, by possibility, have his pretensions to statesmanship fairly weighed in a just balance. Such testimony, it is true, as that on which Somerset was found guilty of the poisoning of Overbury would not now suffice to convict a vagrant of petty larceny. It would not indeed at this day be treated as evidence at all; it would be looked upon as a mere decoction of surmises. But the foul scandal of the marriage itself has so tainted Somerset’s very name that historians (almost with one consent) have condoned the baseness of his prosecutors.