The question of the Coinage, on which he was called into Council in September 1626, had caused no small measure of discussion whilst James was still on the throne. |The Advice given by Sir R. Cotton on Mint Affairs.| Many merchants of London had raised the old and hacknied cry of complaint against an alleged ‘vast transportation of gold and silver from England’ to the Continent. Others said that the complaint, if not groundless, was misdirected. The following Minute of the Privy Council will shew how the question stood in that early stage. It was drawn up in November, 1618.
Council to the King, 30 Nov., 1618; James I, vol. iv, p. 45. (C. O.)
‘Being by Your Majesty’s commandment to take into our consideration the state of the Mint and to advise of the way or means how to bring bullion more plentifully into the Kingdom, and to be coined there, as also how to stop the great exportation of treasure out of the Realm,—a matter of which the State hath been jealous: For our better information and Your Majesty’s satisfaction we thought it fit first to know from the Office of your Mint what quantity of gold and silver hath been there coined in the last seven years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth and the seven years last past of Your Majesty. And we find that in the said seven years of the Queen there was coined in gold and silver of all sorts £948,713 sterling, whereas in the seven late years of Your Majesty’s reign there hath been coined of all sorts, in gold and silver, £1,603,998. So as, comparing the one with the other, there hath been coined of both species in the said seven years of Your Majesty’s reign £655,285 sterling, more than in the seven years aforesaid of the Queen, the difference being almost three parts to one. Next we required a certificate from the Goldsmiths of London of the Plate that hath been made in those years within the City of London; and it appeareth that there was made and stamped in their hall the last seven years of Queen Elizabeth of silver plate the worth of £22,187 more than in the seven later years of Your Majesty’s reign. But upon the whole matter we cannot find and do humbly certify the same unto Your Majesty as our opinion that there hath been of late any such vast transportation of gold and silver into France and the Low Countries as was supposed; neither that there is any such notorious diminution of treasure generally in the Kingdom—at the least of gold—since it is apparent that there hath been a far greater quantity in the total coined within these seven years last past than in the last seven years of the late Queen. Besides Your Majesty may be pleased to observe that the making of so much silver plate cannot be the principal cause of the decay of the Mint since there was more plate made in London [in] those last seven years of the Queen,—when there came more silver to be coined in the Mint,—than there hath been used of late years, when silver in the Mint hath been so scarce though Gold more plentiful.... In the mean time we do humbly offer ... that there is no necessity ... to raise your coin, either in the one kind or in the other. |Registers of Privy Council, as above, p. 46. (C. O.)| But rather that the same may draw with it many inconveniences; and because the noise thereof through the City of London and from thence to other parts of the Realm, as we understand, hath already done hurt and in some measure interrupted and distracted the course of general commerce, we think it very requisite ... that some signification be forthwith made from this Table time to raise your coins.’
The course thus recommended—and in the recommendation the Council seems to have been well nigh unanimous—was precisely the course James did not wish to take. The Council Books abound with proof how hard it was to dissuade the King from adopting this ‘intended project of enhancing the coin [i. e. by debasing the standard], though, as Cotton afterwards said at the Council Table, to do so would trench, both into the honour, the justice, and the profit’ [i. e. the real and ultimate profit] ‘of my royal Master very far.’
In his address at the Board, Sir Robert made an almost exhaustive examination of the history of the English Mint. He did it with much brevity and pith. His views about foreign trade are, of course, not free from the fallacies which were accepted as aphorisms by very nearly every statesman then living. But his advice on the immediate question at issue is marked by sound common sense, by insight and practical wisdom. |MS. Lansd., 811, ff. 148–152 (B. M.) [Compare the Report of Proceedings in the House of Commons, Feby. 1621. (Parl. Hist., vol. i, c. 1188–1194).]| His speech told, and he followed it up by framing, as Chairman of a Committee, (1) an Answer to the Propositions delivered by some Officers of the Mint; and (2) Certain General Rules collected concerning Money and Bullion out of the late Consultation at Court. Copies of both exist amongst the Harleian and Lansdowne MSS., and both, together with the Speech, are printed in the Posthuma (although not without some of the Editor’s characteristic inaccuracies).
The next question which it was Sir Robert’s task to discuss before the Privy Council was a much more momentous question than that of the Coinage. It was, potentially, both to Sovereign and to people, an issue of life or death.
In January, 1628 [N. S.], he delivered, at the Board, the substance of the remarkable Discourse which has been more than once printed under the title, ‘The Danger wherein this Kingdom now Standeth, and the Remedy.’ |Discourse on the Calling of a Parliament. 1628. Jany.| The courtliness of its tone no more detracts from its incisiveness of stroke, than a jewelled hilt would detract from the cleaving sweep of a Damascus blade, when wielded by well-knit sinews. It led instantly to the calling of the Parliament. |MS. Lansd., 254, ff. 258, seqq.| But neither its essential and true loyalty to the King, nor the opportune service which it rendered to the country was to make the fortunes of its author any exception to those which—sooner or later—befell every councillor of Charles the First, who, in substance if not in form, was wont to put Country before King.
In that third Parliament of Charles Sir Robert himself had no seat. In the Parliament which preceded it he sat for Old Sarum, having lost his seat for Huntingdonshire. But he continued to be the active ally and the influential councillor of the leaders of opposition to strained prerogatives. When the Parliament assailed Bishops Neile and Laud, the inculpated prelates, it is said, threw upon Cotton as much of their anger as they well could have done had he led the assault in person.
The opportunity was not very far to seek. |The ‘Proposition to bridle Parliaments.’ 1629. October.| Not long after the dissolution in March, 1629, of that Parliament of the assembling of which Sir Robert Cotton’s patriotic effort had been the immediate occasion, and to some of the effective blows of which he had helped to give vigour, some courtier or other brought to Charles’ hands a political tract, in manuscript, and told him that copies of it were in the possession of several statesmen. Those—with one exception—who were then named to the King were men wont to be held in greater regard in the country than at Court. The pamphlet bore for its title: ‘The Proposicion for Your Majesties Service ... to secure your Estate and to bridle the impertinencie of Parliaments.’
The consequences of this small incident were destined to prove of large moment. The earliest mention we have of it occurs in a letter written by the Archbishop of York—himself a Privy Councillor—to Sir Henry Vane, in November, 1629: ‘The Vice-Chancellor,’ says Archbishop Harsnet, ‘was sent to Sir Robert Cotton to seal up his library, and to bring himself before the Lords of the Council.’ |Domest. Corresp., Charles I, vol. cli, § 24. (R. H.)| In the words that follow the Archbishop is evidently speaking from what he had been told, not from his personal knowledge. ‘There was found,’ he proceeds to say, ‘in his custody a pestilential tractate which he had fostered as a child, containing a project how a Prince may make himself an absolute tyrant. |Ib.| This pernicious device he had communicated to divers Lords.’