CHAPTER II.
THE FOUNDER OF THE COTTONIAN LIBRARY.
‘Est in hac urbe nobilis Eques, homo pereruditus rerum vetustarum et omnis historiæ, sive priscæ, sive recentis, studiossisimus, qui ex ipsis monumentis publicis et epistolis duarum reginarum Angliæ et Scotiæ veram eorum quæ gesta sunt, historiam didicit, et jam regis jussu eandem componit, digeritque in ordinem.’
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.
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]
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—
at a time when such praise could seldom be given truthfully. It was as a contributor towards the common labours of that Society that Cotton made his earliest appearance as an author. The subjects chosen for his discourses at the periodical meetings of the Elizabethan antiquarians indicate the prevalent bias of his mind. Nearly all of them may be said to belong to our political archæology.
Before the close of the sixteenth century, his collections of Manuscripts and of Antiquities had already become so large and important as to win for him a wide reputation in foreign countries, as well as at home. His correspondence indicates, even at that early period, a generous recognition of the brotherhood of literature, the world over, and proves the ready courtesy with which he had learned to bear somewhat more than his fair share of the obligations thence arising. In later days he was wont to say to his intimates: ‘I, myself, have the smallest share in myself.’ From youth, onwards, there is abundant evidence that the saying expressed, unboastingly, the simple facts of his daily life.
Camden was amongst the earliest of those intimates, and to the dying day of the author of the Britannia the close friendship which united him with Cotton was both unbroken and undiminished. The former was still in the full vigour of life when Cotton had given proof of his worthiness to be a fellow-labourer in the field of English antiquities. In 1599 they went, in company, over the northern counties; explored together many an old abbey and many a famous battle-field. When that tour was made, the evidences of the ruthless barbarism with which the mandates of Henry the Eighth had been carried out by his agents lay still thick upon the ground, and may well have had their influence in modifying some of the religious views and feelings of such tourists. Not a few chapters of the Britannia embody the researches of Cotton as well as those of Camden; and the elder author was ever ready to acknowledge his deep sense of obligation to his younger colleague. For both of them, at this time, and in subsequent years, the storied past was more full of interest than the politics, howsoever momentous or exciting, of the day. But, occasionally, they corresponded on questions of policy as well as of history. There is evidence that on one stirring subject, about which men’s views were much wont to run to extremes, they agreed in advocating moderate courses. In the closing years of the Queen, Cotton, as well as Camden, recognised the necessity that the Government should hold a firm hand over the emissaries of the Church and Court of Rome, whilst refusing to admit that a due repression of hostile intrigues was inconsistent with the honourable treatment of conscientious and peaceful Romanists.
It was, in all probability, almost immediately after Cotton’s return from the Archæological tour to the North which he had made with his early friend, that he received a message from the Queen. Elizabeth had been told of his growing fame for possessing an acquaintance with the mustiest of records, and an ability ‘to vouch precedents’ such as few students, even of much riper years, had attained to. He was now to be acquainted with a dispute about national precedency which had arisen at Calais between Sir Henry Neville and the Ambassador of Spain. |The Tractate on English precedency over Spain.| It was Her Majesty’s wish that he should search the records which bore upon the question, and send her such a report as might strengthen Neville’s hands in his contest for the honour of England.
Such a task could not fail to be a welcome one; and Cotton found no lack of pertinent evidence. The bent and habit of his mind were always methodical. He begins his abstract of the records by tabulating his argument. Precedency, he says, must have respect either to the nation or to the ruler of the nation. A kingdom must rank either (1) according to its antiquity, or (2) according to ‘the eminency of the throne royal,’ by which phrase he means the complete unity of the dominion under one supreme ruler. On the first title to precedency he observes that it may be based either upon the date of national independence, or upon that of the national recognition of Christianity. He claims for England that it was a monarchy at least four hundred and sixty years before Castile became one; that Christianity had then been established in it, without break or interruption, for a thousand years; |Cottoni Posthuma, pp. 76, 77.| whereas in Spain Christianity was ‘defaced with Moorish Mahumetisme,’ until the expulsion of the Moors by Ferdinand, little more than a century before the time at which he was writing.
His assertion of the greater ‘eminency of the throne royal’ in England than in Spain is mainly founded on the union in the English sovereignty alone of supreme ecclesiastical with supreme civil power; and on the lineal descent of the then sovereign ‘from Christian princes for 800 years,’ whereas the descent of the Kings of Spain ‘is chiefly from the Earls of Castilia, about 500 years since,’ and the then King of Spain was ‘yet in the infancy of his kingdom.’
Two minor and ancillary arguments in this tract are also notable: The Spanish throne, says Cotton, hath not, as hath the English and French, ‘that virtue to endow the king therein invested with the power to heal the king’s evil; for into France do yearly come multitudes of Spaniards to be healed thereof.’ And he further alleges that ‘absolute power of the King of England, which in other kingdoms is much restrained.’ The time was to come when the close friend and fellow-combatant of Eliot and the other framers of the great ‘Petition of Right’ would rank himself with the foremost in ‘much restraining’ the kingly power in England, and would discover ample warrant in ancient precedents for every step of the process. But, as yet, that time was afar off.
Immediately on the accession of King James, Sir Robert Cotton greeted the new monarch with two other and far more remarkable tractates on a subject bearing closely on our relations with Spain. Their political interest, as contributions to the history of public opinion, is great. Their biographical interest is still greater. But I postpone the consideration of them until we reach a momentous crisis in Sir Robert’s life on which they have a vital bearing. He also wrote,—almost simultaneously,—a much more courtierlike ‘Discourse of his Majesty’s descent from the Saxon Kings,’ which was graciously welcomed. |Domestic Correspondence, James I, vol. i, f. 3 (R. H.).| In the following September he received the honour of knighthood. |Returned to Parliament.| In James’ first Parliament he sat for the County of Huntingdon, in fellowship with Sir Oliver Cromwell, uncle of the future Protector. There is no evidence that at this period he took any active part in debate. Nor did he, at any time, win distinction as a debater. But in the labours of Committees he was soon both zealous and prominent. Two classes of questions, in particular, appear to have engaged his attention:—questions of Church discipline, and questions of administrative reform. |Dom. Cor. as above; vol. xix, pp. 37 seqq.; vol. xxvii, pp. 44 seqq. (R. H.); MS. Cott. Jul. C., iii, p. 10. (B. M.)| He also assisted Bacon in the difficult attempt to frame acceptable measures for a union with Scotland.
The fame of his library and of his museum of antiquities continued to spread farther and wider. He had many agents on the Continent who sought diligently to augment his collections. His correspondence with men who were busied in like pursuits both at home and abroad increased. Much of it has survived. On that interesting point at which a glance has been cast already, its witness is uniform. He was always as ready to impart as he was eager to collect. Few, if any, important works of historical research were carried on in his day to which he did not, in some way or other, give generous furtherance. At a time when he was most busy in forming his own library, he helped Bodley to lay the foundation of the noble library at Oxford.
Readers who can call to mind even mere fragments of that superabundant evidence which tells of the neglect throughout much of the Tudor period of the public archives of the realm, can feel little surprise that Sir Robert Cotton should have been able to collect a multitude of documents which had once been the property of the nation, or of the sovereign. Those who are most familiar with that evidence ought to be the first to remember that, under the known circumstances of the time, the presumption of honest acquisition is stronger than that of dishonest, whenever conclusive proof of either is absent. English State Papers had passed into the possession not only of English antiquarians, but of English booksellers—and not a few of them into that of foreigners—before Cotton was born. Other considerations bearing on this matter, and tending as it seems in a like direction, belong to a later period of Sir Robert’s life. There is, however, a very weighty one which stands at the threshold of his career as a collector.
Almost the earliest incident which is recorded of Cotton’s youthful days, is his concurrence in a petition in which Queen Elizabeth was entreated to establish a Public and National Library, and to honour it with her own name. |Attempt of Cotton and Camden to Establish a National Library.| Its especial and prime object was to be the collection and preservation, as public property, of the monuments of our English history. The proposal was not altogether new. It was a much improved revival of a project which Dr. John Dee had once submitted, in an immature form, to Queen Mary. It was the reiteration of an earnest request which had been made to Queen Elizabeth by Archbishop Parker, at a time when Cotton was still in his cradle. The joint petition of Cotton and Camden met with as little success as had attended the entreaties of those who had taken the same path before them. |Petition, &c. (undated) in Cotton MS. Faustina, E. V, ff. 67, 68.| The petitioners were willing to bind themselves, and others like-minded, to incur ‘costs, and charges,’ for the effectual attainment of their patriotic object, on the condition of royal patronage and royal fellow-working with them in its pursuit. When Cotton, upon bare presumptions, is charged to be an embezzler of records, this Petition comes to have a very obvious relevancy to the matter in question. The relevancy is enhanced by the fact that two, at least, of those who had (at various times) concurred in promoting its object, gave to the Library of their fellow-labourer in the field of antiquity, manuscripts and records which, had the issue of their project been otherwise, they would have given to the ‘Public Library of Queen Elizabeth,’ in express trust for their fellow-countrymen at large.
Indirectly, this same petition has also its bearing on a curious passage relating to Sir Robert Cotton which occurs among the Minute-books of the Corporation of London, and which has recently been printed by Mr. Riley, in his preface to Liber Custumarum.
On the 10th of November, 1607, the Court of Aldermen of London recorded the following minute: |Cotton and the City Records of London.| ‘It is this day ordered, that Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Town Clerk, Mr. Edmonds, and Mr. Robert Smith, or any three of them, shall repair to Sir Robert Cotton, from this Court, and require him to deliver to the City’s use three of the City’s books which have been long time missing—the first book called Liber Custumarum; the second, called Liber Legum Antiquorum; and the thirde, called Fletewode, which are affirmed to be in his custody.’ Of the results of the interview of Master Chamberlain and his fellow-ambassadors with Cotton no precise account has been preserved. It is plain, however, from the sequel, that they found the matter to be one for which such extremely curt ‘requisition’ was scarcely the appropriate mode of setting to work. The Corporation appealed in vain to the Lord Privy Seal Northampton; and they had afterwards to solicit the mediation with Cotton of two of their own members—Sir John Jolles and another—who were personally known to him. Their interposition was alike ineffectual. Of the interview we have no report; but Sir Robert, it is clear, asserted his right to retain the City books (or rather portions of books) which were then in his hands, and he did retain them. They now form part of the well-known and very valuable Cottonian MS., ‘Claudius D. XI.’
That these London records had once belonged to the citizens is now unquestioned. That Cotton—both in 1607 and again in the following year—asserted a title, of some sort, to those of them which were then in his hands, seems also to be established. Is the fair inference this: ‘Their then holder, in 1607, had obtained them wrongfully, and he persisted, despite all remonstrance, in his wrongful possession’? Is it not rather to be inferred that, whosoever may have been the original wrongdoer, Sir Robert Cotton had acquired them by a lawful purchase? |The Dispute about City Records.| If that should have been the fact, he may possibly have had a valid reason for declining to give what he had, ineffectually and rudely, been commanded to restore.
On the other hand, it is impossible to defend Sir Robert’s occasional mode of dealing with MSS.,—some of which, it is plain, were but lent to him,—when, by misplacement of leaves, or by insertions, and sometimes by both together, he confused their true sequence and aspect. Of this unjustifiable manipulation I shall have to speak hereafter.
The years which followed close upon this little civic interlude were amongst the busiest years of Cotton’s public life. He testified the sincerity of his desire to serve his country faithfully, by the choice of the subjects to the study of which he voluntarily bent his powers.
|Cotton’s Memorial on Abuses in the Navy.|
Abuses in the management of the navy and of naval establishments have been at most periods of our history fruitful topics for reformers, competent or other. In the early years of James there was a special tendency to the increase of such abuses in the growing unfitness for exertion of the Lord High Admiral. Nottingham had yet many years to live,—near as he had been to the threescore and ten when the new reign began. But even his large appetencies were now almost sated with wealth, employments, and honours; and ever since his return from his splendid embassy to Spain, he seemed bent on compensating himself for his hard labour under Elizabeth by his indolent luxury under James. The repose of their chief had so favoured the illegitimate activities of his subordinates, that when Cotton addressed himself to the task of investigating the state of the naval administration he soon found that it would be much easier to prove the existence and the gravity of the abuses than to point to an effectual remedy.
The abuses were manifold. Some of them were, at that moment, scarcely assailable. To Cotton, in particular, the approach to the subject was beset with many difficulties. He was, however, much in earnest. |The Inquiry instituted by Cotton into Abuses in the Royal Navy.| When he found that some of the obstacles must, for the present, be rather turned by evasion than be encountered—with any fair chance of success—by an open attack in front, he betook himself to the weaker side of the enemy. He obtained careful information as to naval account-keeping; discovered serious frauds; and opened the assault by a conflict with officials not too powerful for immediate encounter,—though far indeed from being unprotected.
Of Sir Robert’s Memorial to the King, I can give but one brief extract, by way of sample: ‘Upon a dangerous advantage,’ he writes, ‘which the Treasurer of the Navy taketh by the strict letter of his Patent, to be discharged of all his accounts by the only vouchee and allowance of two chief officers, it falls out, strangely, at this time—by the weakness of the Controller and cunning of the Surveyor—that these two offices are, in effect, but one, which is the Surveyor himself, who—joining with the Treasurer as a Purveyor of all provisions—becomes a paymaster to himself ... at such rates as he thinks good.’ It is a suggestive statement.
Cotton’s most intimate political friendships were at this time with the Howards. Henry Howard (now Earl of Northampton),—whatever the intrinsic baseness and perfidy of his nature, was a man of large capacity. He was not unfriendly to reform,—when abuses put no pelf in his own pocket. To naval reforms, his nearness of blood to Nottingham, the Lord High Admiral, tended rather to predispose him; for when near relatives dislike one another, the intensity of their dislike is sometimes wonderful to all bystanders. Interest made these two sometimes allies, but it never made them friends. Northampton gave his whole influence in favour of Sir Robert’s plan. He began the inquiries into this wide subject by persuading the King to appoint a Commission. On the 30th of April, 1608, Letters Patent were issued, in the preamble of which the pith of the Memorial is thus recited: ‘We are informed that very great and considerable abuses, deceits, frauds, corruptions, negligences, misdemeanours and offences have been and daily are perpetrated ... against the continual admonitions and directions of you, our Lord High Admiral, by other the officers of and concerning our Navy Royal, and by the Clerks of the Prick and Check, and divers other inferior officers, ministers, mariners, soldiers, and others working or labouring in or about our said Navy;’ |Commission for Inquiry on the Abuses in the Navy.| and thereupon full powers are given to the Commissioners so appointed to make full inquiry into the allegations; and to certify their proceedings and opinions. Cotton was made a member of the Commission, and at the head of it were placed the Earls of Northampton and of Nottingham. It was directed that the inquiry should be carried at least as far back as the year 1598. The Admiral’s share was little more than nominal. The proceedings were opened on the 7th of May, 1608, when, as
Cotton himself reports, an ‘elegant speech was made by Lord Northampton, of His Majesty’s provident and princely purposes for reformation of the abuses.’ Northampton, he adds, ‘took especial pains and care for a full and faithful discharge of that trust.’ At his instance Sir Robert was made Chairman of a sort of sub-committee, to which the preliminary inquiries and general array of the business were entrusted; |Proceedings in the Commission for the Navy Royal; MS. Cott. Julius F. iii, fol. 1. (B. M.)| ‘Sir Robert Cotton, during all the time of this service, entertaining his assistants at his house at the Blackfriars as often as occasion served.’
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.
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.
With some of this man’s contemporaries it was quite otherwise. Some English statesmen whose names we have all learnt to venerate, looked upon the murder of Overbury as a revengeful deed instigated by Lady Somerset, wholly without her husband’s complicity; and they looked at Somerset’s conviction of complicity in the crime as simply the issue of a skilfully-managed court intrigue, for a court object. They knew that Somerset’s enemies had been wont to say amongst themselves, ‘A nail is best driven out by driving in another nail,’ and had, very effectually, put the proverb into action. They knew, too, that to the rising favourite the King had committed—most characteristically—the pleasing task of communicating, on his behalf, with the Crown lawyers, as their own task of compiling the depositions against the falling favourite went on from stage to stage.
Sir Robert Cotton believed not only that Somerset was guiltless of the murder of Overbury, and that the Earl’s political extinction was resolved upon, as the readiest means of making room for a new favourite, but he also believed that Somerset’s loss of power involved the loss by England—for a long time to come—of some useful domestic reforms, as well as its subjection to several new abuses. This belief was a favourite subject of conversation with him to his dying day. He was in the habit of imparting it to the famous men who, in the early years of the next reign, joined with him in fighting the battles of parliamentary freedom against royal prerogative. There may well have been an element of truth in Cotton’s view of the matter, though, in these days, it seems but a barren pursuit to have discussed the preferability to England of the rule of a Robert Carr rather than that of a George Villiers.
What is now chiefly important in the close political connection which was formed between Cotton and Somerset is the fact that it eventually thrust Sir Robert’s fortune and entire future into great peril, even if it did not actually hazard his life itself, as well as his fair fame with posterity. The life that was preserved to him was also to be redeemed by future and brilliant public service. |1615.| His fortune sustained no great damage, and much of it was afterwards spent upon public objects. His reputation as a statesman, however, suffered, and must suffer, some degree of loss. Somerset led him to become an agent in urging on the treaty for the marriage of Prince Charles with the Infanta of Spain. As it seems, his agency was—for a very brief period—even active and zealous. Neither Somerset nor Cotton, however, set that intercourse with Gondomar afoot which presently brought Sir Robert within the toils. It was pleasantly originated by the wily Spaniard himself, in the character of a lover of antiquities, deeply anxious to study Sir Robert’s Museum, in its owner’s company.
It is unfortunate for a truthful estimate of the degree of discredit attachable to Cotton for this agency in promoting a scheme pregnant with dishonour to England, that little evidence of the share he took in it is now to be derived from any English source. His own extant correspondence yields very little, though it suffices to establish the fact of the agency, apart from that testimony of Gondomar, which will be cited presently.
Under Cotton’s own hand we have the fact that in a conversation with himself the Ambassador of Spain on one occasion held out (by way, it seems, more immediately, of inducement to the English Government to shape certain pending negotiations on other matters into greater conformity with Spanish counsels) |Cotton to Somerset; (undated) Harleian MS. 7002, fol. 378. (B. M.)| the threat that, if such a course were not taken, ‘turbulent spirits—of which Spain wanteth not—might add some hurt to the ill affairs of Ireland, or hindrance to the near affecting of the great work now in hand;’ a threat which Cotton transmits to Somerset without rebuke or comment.
Early in 1615, Cotton had an interview with Gondomar in relation to the progress of the marriage negotiation in Spain. Of what passed at this interview we have no detailed account other than that which was sent to the King of Spain by his Ambassador. The way in which Cotton’s name is introduced, and the singular misstatement that he had the custody of ‘all the King’s archives,’ seem to imply that Gondomar had still but little knowledge of the messenger now employed by James and by Somerset to confer with him. Throughout, the reader will have to bear in mind that the narrative is Gondomar’s, and that all the material points of it rest upon his sole authority.
‘The King and the Earl of Somerset,’ writes the Ambassador, ‘have sent in great secrecy by Sir Robert Cotton—who is a gentleman greatly esteemed here, and with whom the King has deposited all his archives—to tell me what Sir John Digby has written about the marriage of the Infanta with this Prince. Cotton informed me that he was greatly pleased that the negotiation had been so well received in Spain, because he desired its conclusion and success. He enlarged upon the conveniencies of the marriage, but said that the King considered Digby not to be a good negotiator, because he was a great friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and of the Earl of Pembroke, who were of the Puritan faction, and was in correspondence with them.’... ‘In order to make a beginning,’ continued Cotton, as Gondomar reports his conversation, ‘the King must beg your Majesty to answer three questions: (1.) “Does your Majesty believe that with a safe conscience you can negotiate this marriage?” (2.) “Is your Majesty sincerely desirous to conclude it, upon conditions suitable to both parties?” (3.) “Will your Majesty abstain from asking anything, in matters of Religion, which would compel him to do that which he cannot do without risking his life and his kingdom; contenting yourself with trusting that he will be able to settle matters quietly?” |Gardiner Transcripts of Simancas MSS.| When an answer is given to these questions he will consider the matter as settled, and will immediately give a commission to the Earl of Somerset to arrange the points with me. |See also S. R. Gardiner, in Letters of Gondomar, giving an Account of the affair of the Earl of Somerset; (Archæologia, vol. xli.)| This Sir Robert Cotton is held here, by many, to be a Puritan, but he told me that he was a Catholic, and gave me many reasons why no man of sense could be anything else.’ He afterwards adds: ‘Sir Robert Cotton, who has treated with me in this business, tells me that after the marriage is agreed upon, [and] before the Infanta arrives in England, matters of Religion will be in a much improved condition.’ The writer of this remarkable despatch, it may be well to mention, had asserted with equal roundness, but a few months before, that James himself had said, at the dinner-table: ‘I have no doubt that the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church.’