Those words were among Sir Robert Cotton’s own early recollections. When he was sixteen years of age some of the dying words of Philip Sydney were repeated in almost every manor-house of England, and at many a cottage fireside. Those particular words came under his eye, at the most impressionable period of his life. The document which has handed them down to us was preserved by his care.[[17]] Did the exact thought they embody, and the very words themselves, come into his mind, as they well might, when he, too, lay upon his deathbed?

Be that as it may, such words in Sir Robert’s mouth would have had a special fitness. And he knew it well. Happily, he also knew where to look for comfort. He found it, just as Philip Sydney—in common with many thousands among the nameless Englishmen who had passed away in the interval between 1586 and 1631—had found it before him. He could say, as Sydney said:—

‘My Faith is frail; Hope constant never,

Yet this my comfort is, for ever,

God saves not man for merit.’[[18]]

Not long before he died, Cotton said to a friend (after a long conference which he had held with Dr. Oldisworth, a Divine who spent many hours, from day to day, at his bedside) such comfort as I would not want, to be the greatest monarch in the world.’ |The last Scene.| Bishop Williams—who passed the greater part of the last night in conversation with him—remarked, as he went his way in the morning, ‘I came to bring Sir Robert comfort, but I carry away more than I brought.’ To the last, however, the ruling passion of Cotton’s nature asserted itself. He could forgive his persecutors, but he could not shake off the memory of the bitterness of the persecution. Turning to Sir Henry Spelman, he said: ‘Tell the Lord Privy Seal, and the rest of the Council, that their so long detaining my books from me has been the cause of this mortal malady.’ Spelman gave his message, and the ‘Lord Privy Seal’ himself hastened to Sir Robert’s bedside to express his regrets. The interview was narrated to Charles, and presently the Earl of Dorset was sent, from the King himself. The new comforter came half an hour too late. The persecuted man had passed to his rest. He died, trusting in the one, only, all-sufficient, Saviour of sinful men. His death occurred on the 6th of May, 1631. |John Pory to Sir Thomas Puckering; MS. Harl., 7000, fol. 310.| His body was removed to Conington, and was interred with more than the usual demonstrations of respect. The inscription on his monument is printed at the end of this chapter.

The Royal Message to Sir Thomas Cotton, 2nd Bart.

When Lord Dorset, on his arrival at Cotton House with the royal message, found that Sir Robert was already dead he turned to the heir. If the Earl has been truly reported, the terms in which he expressed his master’s condolence and good wishes were ill-chosen: ‘To you, His Majesty commanded me to say that, as he loved your father, so he will continue his love to yourself.’ |Pory to Sir T. Puckering, as above.| The comfort of the promise could not have been great. Sir Thomas’ experiences of the rubs of life were, however, to come chiefly from the King’s opponents; not from the King.

His life was a quiet one, up to the time of the outbreak of Civil War. Until then, its most notable incidents grew out of the circumstance that it fell to his lot to serve as Sheriff of Huntingdonshire, during the busy year of ‘Shipmoney.’

Sir Thomas Cotton was in no danger of being tempted to follow the example of Hampden. The readiness with which he discharged the troublesome task of collecting the impost throughout his county probably laid the first foundation of a strong feeling of personal ill-will towards him, on the part of the lower class of the adherents of the Parliament, during subsequent years. He never ranged himself with the King’s party. Neither would he take any prominent part on the side of the Parliament. He had little taste for public life; and regarded the quarrel with the aloofness of spirit natural to a man with no dominant political convictions, and with a decided love for country sports and for the pleasures of domesticity.