Nor is it unimportant, as bearing on the degree of credibility to be assigned to Gondomar’s despatches, when they chance to be uncorroborated,—to remark that a despatch addressed by him to the Duke of Lerma, in November, contains an express contradiction of an assertion addressed to Philip, in the preceding April. To the King, as we have just seen, he narrates Cotton’s communication of despatches written by Digby. To the Minister he writes, six months later, that ‘a traitor had given information’ against Cotton, for communicating Papers of State to the Spanish Ambassador, and that the charge is ‘false.’ |Simancas MS. 2534, 61 (Gardiner Transcripts).| Discrepancies like this (howsoever easily explained, or explainable) suffice to show that Gondomar’s testimony, when unsupported, needs to be read with caution; and of such discrepancies there are many. Consummate as he was in diplomatic ability of several kinds, this able statesman was nevertheless loose (and sometimes reckless) in assertion. He was very credulous when he listened to welcome news. It is impossible to study his correspondence without perceiving that to him, as to so many other men, the wish was often father of the thought.
On the 22nd of June, Sir Robert paid another visit to Gondomar. He told me, says the Ambassador, that the King’s hesitations had been overcome; that James was now willing to negotiate on the basis of the Spanish articles, with some slight modifications; that Somerset had taken his stand upon the match with Spain, had won the co-operation of the Duke of Lennox, and was now willing to stake his fortunes on the issue. Sir Robert Cotton, adds Gondomar, ‘assured me of his own satisfaction at the turn which things had taken, as he had no more ardent wish than to live and die an avowed Catholic, like his fathers and ancestors.[6] Whereupon I embraced him, and said that God would guide.’
Thus far, I have, advisedly, followed a Spanish account of English conversations. Although believing that there exists, already ample, evidence (both in our own archives and elsewhere) for bringing home to the Count of Gondomar wilful misstatements of |Sir Robert Cotton’s Account of the first interview with Count Gondomar.| fact—in the despatches which he was wont to write from London—as well as very pardonable misapprehensions of the talk which he reports, I have preferred to put before the reader the Ambassador’s own story in its Spanish integrity.
The mere fact, indeed, that an English historian[7], deservedly esteemed for his acute and painstaking research, as well as for his eminent abilities, has honoured Gondomar’s story by endorsing it, is warrant enough for citing these despatches as they stand. But they have now to be compared with another account of the same transaction given by authority of Sir Robert Cotton himself. It was given upon a memorable occasion. The place was the Painted Chamber in the Palace of Westminster. The hearers were the assembled Lords and Commons of the Realm.[8]
The Spaniard, it seems, was far, indeed, from holding—as he says that he held—his first conference with Cotton either in his own ambassadorial lodging, or upon credentials given in the name and by the command of King James. That Cotton sought him he suggests, by implication. That the visit, in which the ground was broken, was made at the King’s instance, he states circumstantially. Both the suggestion and the assertion are false.
As the reader has seen, Sir Robert’s openness in exhibiting his library and his antiquities was matter of public notoriety. |1614. February.| Profiting by that well-known facility of access, the Spanish Ambassador presented himself at Cotton House in the guise of a virtuoso. ‘Do me the favour—with your wonted benevolence to strangers—to let me see your Museum.’ With some such words as these, Gondomar volunteered his first visit; led the conversation, by and bye, to politics; found that Cotton was not amongst the fanatical and undiscriminating enemies of Spain at all price—outspoken, as he had been, from the first, in his assertion both of the wisdom and of the duty of England to protect the Netherlanders; showed him certain letters or papers (not now to be identified, it appears), and in that way produced an impression on Cotton’s mind which led him to confer with Somerset, and eventually with the King. So much is certain. Unfortunately, the speeches at the famous ‘Conference’ on the Spanish Treaty, in 1624, are reported in the most fragmentary way imaginable. The reporter gives mere hints, where the reader anxiously looks for details. Their present value lies in the conclusive reasons which notwithstanding the lacunæ—they supply for weighing, with many grains of caution, the accusations of an enemy of England against an English statesman—whensoever it chances that those accusations are uncorroborated. King James himself (it may here be added), when looking back at this mysterious transaction some years later, and in one of his Anti-Spanish moods—said to Sir Robert: ‘The Spaniard is a juggling jack. I believe he forged those letters;’ alluding, as the context suggests, to the papers—whatever they were—which Gondomar showed to Cotton at the outset of their intercourse, in order to induce him to act as an intermediary between himself and the Earl of Somerset.
At this time, the ground was already trembling beneath Somerset’s feet, though he little suspected the source of his real danger. He knew, ere long, that an attempt would be made to charge him with embezzling jewels of the Crown. In connection with this charge there was a State secret, in which Sir Robert Cotton was a participant with Somerset, and with the King himself. And a secret it has remained. Such jewels, it is plain, were in Somerset’s hands, and by him were transferred to those of Cotton. Few persons who have had occasion to look closely into the surviving documents and correspondence which bear upon the subsequent and famous trials for the murder of Overbury, will be likely to doubt that the secret was one among those ‘alien matters’ of which Somerset was so urgently and so repeatedly adjured and warned, by James’s emissaries, to avoid all mention, should he still persist (despite the royal, repeated, and almost passionate, entreaties with which he was beset) in putting himself upon his trial; instead of pleading guilty, after his wife’s example, and trusting implicitly to the royal mercy.
For the purpose of warding off the lesser, but foreseen, danger, Cotton advised the Earl to take a step of which the Crown lawyers made subsequent and very effective use, in order to preclude all chance of his escape from the unforeseen and greater danger. |1615. July.| By Sir Robert’s recommendation he obtained from the King permission to have a pardon drawn, in which, amongst other provisions, it was granted that no account whatever should be exacted from Somerset at the royal exchequer; and to that pardon the King directed the Chancellor to affix the Great Seal. The Seal, however, was withheld, and a remarkable scene ensued in the Council Chamber. There are extant two or three narratives of the occurrence, which agree pretty well in substance. Of these Gondomar’s is the most graphic. The incident took place on the 20th of August. The despatch in which it is minutely described was written on the 20th of October. There is reason to believe that the Ambassador drew his information from an eye-witness of what passed.
‘As the King was about to leave the Council Board,’ writes Gondomar, ‘Somerset made to him a speech which, as I was told, had been preconcerted between them. |The scene in the Council Chamber, respecting the Pardon drawn by Sir R. Cotton for Somerset.| He said that the malice of his enemies had forced him to ask for a pardon; adduced arguments of his innocency; and then besought the King to command the Chancellor to declare at once what he had to allege against him, or else to put the seal to the pardon. |1615. August.| The King, without permitting anything to be spoken, said a great deal in Somerset’s praise; asserted that the Earl had acted rightly in asking for a pardon, which it was a pleasure to himself to grant—although the Earl would certainly stand in no need of it in his days—on the Prince’s account, who was then present.’ Here, writes Gondomar, the King placed his hand on the Prince’s shoulder, and added—‘That he may not undo what I have done.’ Then, turning to the Chancellor, the King ended with the words: ‘And so, my Lord Chancellor, put the seal to it; for such is my will.’ The Chancellor, instead of obeying, threw himself on his knees, told the King that the pardon was so widely drawn that it made Somerset (as Lord Chamberlain) absolute master of ‘jewels, hangings, tapestry, and of all that the palace contained; seeing that no account was to be demanded of him for anything.’ And then the Chancellor added: ‘If your Majesty insists upon it, I entreat you to grant me a pardon also for passing it; otherwise I cannot do it.’ On this the King grew angry, and with the words, ‘I order you to pass it, and you must pass it,’ left the Council Chamber. His departure in a rage, before the pardon was sealed, gave Somerset’s enemies another opportunity by which they did not fail to profit. They had the Queen on their side. On that very day, too, the King set out on a progress, long before arranged. For the time the matter dropped. Before the Ambassador of Spain took up his pen to tell the story to his Court, Villiers, ‘the new favourite,’ had begun to supplant his rival; so that the same despatch which narrates the beginnings of the fall of Somerset, tells also of the first stage in the rapid rise of Buckingham.
About a month after this wrangling at the Council Board, Somerset again advised with Sir Robert Cotton on the same subject. |Report of the Trial of the Earl of Somerset. (MS. R. H.)| Cotton recommended him to have the Pardon renewed; saying to the Earl, ‘In respect you have received some disgrace in the opinion of the world, in having passed’ [i. e. missed] ‘that pardon which in the summer you desired, and seeing there be many precedents of larger pardons, I would have you get one after the largest precedent; that so, by that addition, you may recover your honour.’ Strangely as these closing words now sound, in relation to such a matter, they seem to embody both the feeling and the practice of the times.
In another version of the proceedings at the trial of May, 1616, Somerset is represented as using in the course of his defence these words: ‘To Sir Robert Cotton I referred the whole drawing and despatch of the Pardon.’ And again: ‘I first sought the Pardon by the motion and persuasion of Sir Robert Cotton, who told me in what dangers great persons honoured with so many royal favours had stood, in former times.’ |MS. Report of Trial (R. H.)| Sir Robert’s own account of this and of many correlative matters of a still graver sort has come down to us only in garbled fragments and extracts from his examinations, such as it suited the purposes of the law-officers of the Crown to make use of, after their fashion. The original documents were as carefully suppressed, as Cotton’s appearance in person at the subsequent trial was effectually hindered. At that day it was held to be an unanswerable reason for the non-appearance of a witness,—whatever the weight of his testimony,—to allege that he was regarded by the Crown as ‘a delinquent,’ and could not, therefore, be publicly questioned upon ‘matters of State.’ There is little cause to marvel that a scrutinising reader of the State Trials (in their published form) is continually in doubt whether what he reads ought to be regarded as sober history, or as wild and, it may be, venomous romance.
One other incident of 1615 needs to be noticed before we proceed to the catastrophe of the Gondomar story.
In May of this year Sir Robert wrote a letter to Prince Charles, which is notable for the contrasted advice, in respect to warlike pursuits, which it proffers to the new Prince, from that more famous advice which had but recently been offered to his late brother. |Comp. MS. Cott. Cleop. F. vi, § 1. ‘An Answer ... to certain military men, &c., (April, 1609).| He had lately found, he tells Prince Charles, a very ancient volume containing the principal passages of affairs between the two kingdoms of England and France under the reigns of King Henry the Third and King Henry the Fifth, and had caused a friend of his to abstract from it the main grounds of the claim of the Kings of England to the Crown of France; translating the original Latin into English. This he now dedicates to the Prince, ‘as a piece of evidence concerning that title which, at the time when God hath appointed, shall come unto you.’ He ends his letter in a strain more than usually rhetorical:—‘This title hath heretofore been pleaded in France, as well by ordinary arguments of civil and common law, as also by more sharp syllogisms of cannons in the field. There have your noble ancestors, Kings of this realm, often argued in arms; there have been their large chases; there, their pleasant walks; there have they hewed honour out of the sides of their enemies; there—in default of peaceable justice—they have carried the cause by sentence of the sword. |Sir R. Cotton to Prince Charles. (MS. Lansd. 223. fol. 7.) (Copy.) (B. M.)| God grant that your Highness may, both in virtues and victories, not only imitate, but far excel them.’
The royal commission for the first examination of Cotton was issued on the 26th of October, 1615. Two months afterwards he was committed to the custody of one of the Aldermen of London. His library and papers were also searched.
Cotton’s accusation was that of having communicated papers and secrets of State to the Spanish Ambassador. He was subjected to repeated examinations, which (as we have seen) are extant only in part. He maintained his innocence of all intentional offence. |Cotton’s examinations by Commission Jan.-April, 1616.| ‘The King,’ he said, ‘gave me instruction to speak as I did. If I misunderstood His Majesty my fault was involuntary. I followed the King’s instruction to the best of my belief and recollection.’ The examiners, however, were more intent by far on extracting something from Cotton that would tell against Somerset, than on the punishment of the fallen favourite’s ally and agent. Coke, in particular, was indefatigable in the task. It was as congenial to him as was the study of Bracton or of Littleton.
What then must have been his delight when,—whilst attending a sermon at Paul’s Cross,—word was brought to him which gave hope of a discovery of Somerset’s most secret correspondence? The pending proceedings had stirred men’s minds in city and suburb, as well as at Court. A London merchant had been asked, a little while before, to take into his charge a box of papers. The depositor was a woman of the middle class, with whom his acquaintance was but slight. At that time there was nothing in the incident to excite suspicion. But, at a moment when strange rumours were afloat, the depositor suddenly requested the return of the deposit. The merchant bethought himself that the circumstances now looked mysterious. If the papers should chance to bear on matters of State, to have had any concern with them, howsoever innocent, might be dangerous. He carried the box to Sir Edward Coke’s chambers. Not a moment was lost in apprising the absent lawyer of the incident. Such news was of more interest than the sermon. Probably, the preacher had not finished his exordium, before all the faculties of Coke and of a fellow-commissioner were bent on the letters which had passed between Somerset and Northampton.
If Gondomar is to be believed, some secret papers belonging to King James himself were part of the precious spoil.[9]
As usual, there are two accounts of the original secretor of the papers so opportunely discovered. According to one of them, the box was delivered by Somerset’s own order to the woman by whom it was carried to the London merchant. |Cotton’s dealings with Somerset’s Correspondence.| |1615.| According to another, Somerset entrusted the papers to Cotton; and the latter, anticipating the search and sealing up of his library, gave them to a female acquaintance with whom he thought they would remain in safety, but whose own fears led her to shift their custody, in her turn.
That the letters which Northampton had received from Somerset—containing, amongst many other things, numerous references to the imprisonment of Overbury in the Tower—had been in Sir Robert Cotton’s hands is unquestioned. After Northampton’s death, Cotton, to use his own words, had been ‘permitted to peruse and oversee all the writings, books, &c. in the Earl’s study.’ In the course of this examination he proceeds to say, ‘I had collected thirty several letters of my Lord of Somerset to the Earl of Northampton, which, upon request, I delivered to my Lord Treasurer [the Earl of Suffolk,] who sent them to the Earl of Somerset.’ Suffolk, it is to be remembered, was Northampton’s heir.
Thus far, no charge rests upon Cotton in relation to this correspondence. What he did in disposing of Somerset’s letters was done by order of the representatives of their deceased owner. It is far otherwise with respect to their treatment after they had repassed, by Suffolk’s gift, into the hands of Somerset, their writer.
The letters were undated. That they should be so was in accordance with the practice of a majority of the letter-writers of the time—as students of history know to their sorrow. |Extracts of Examinations, &c. (R. H.).| When suspicion was aroused and inquiry commenced about the real cause of Overbury’s death, Cotton’s advice was sought by Somerset. He told me, says Somerset himself: ‘These letters of yours may be dated, so as may clear you of all imputation.’ Did he mean that the dates might be forged, and so be made to bear false witness? Or did he mean that, by putting their true dates to the letters, their contents would exculpate an innocent man? To these questions there is absolutely no answer, save the presumptive answer of character.[10]
Whatever may be our estimate of the difficulty attending on the admission of such exculpation as that, in respect of a charge which amounts (in substance) to participation, after the fact, in the crime of murder, there is really now no alternative. That Sir Robert Cotton put dates to Somerset’s undated letters is certain. It was found to be absolutely impossible, after desperate effort, to prove that the dates were false. It is alike impossible to prove that they are true. These dates are in Cotton’s own hand, without any attempt to disguise it.
Upon the hypothesis of Somerset’s guilt, the question is beset with as much difficulty, as upon the hypothesis of his innocence. By procuring Overbury’s imprisonment—with whatever motive, or beneath whatever influence—Somerset had brought himself under inevitable suspicion of complicity in the ultimate result of that imprisonment. He was already within the web. His struggles made it only the more tangled.
Sir Robert Cotton remained in custody until the middle of the year 1616. He was effectually prevented from appearing in May of that year as a witness at his friend’s trial. |Domestic Corresp. James I, vol. lxxxvii, f. 67 (R. H.).| He was himself put to no form of trial whatever. But he had to purchase his pardon at the price of five hundred pounds. It received the Great Seal on the 16th July. |Bacon to Villiers, Feb. 1; and April 18; 1616.| Remembering Bacon’s share in each stage of the proceedings against Somerset, and the lavishness of his professions to Villiers of the extreme delight he felt in following the lead of the new favourite throughout every step of the prosecution of the old one, it is suggestive to note that the framers, five years afterwards, of a pardon for the Lord Chancellor Bacon were directed to follow the precedent of the pardon granted in July 1616 to Sir Robert Cotton.
Nor is it of less interest to observe that, to some of Sir Robert Cotton’s closest friends, it seemed—at the moment when every part of the matter was fresh in men’s minds—that it was much more needful for him to exonerate himself from a suspicion of having stood beside Somerset too lukewarmly, than to clear himself from the charge of committing a forgery in order to cloke a murder. Very significant, for example, are the words of one of those friends which I find in a letter addressed to Cotton on the very day on which his pardon passed the Great Seal:—‘If I say I rejoice and gratulate to you your return to your own house, as I did lament your captivity, ... it will easily be credited.... The unsureness of this collusive world, and the danger of great friendships, you have already felt; and may truly say, with holy David, Nolite fidere in principibus.... As I hear, you have begun to make good use of it, by receiving to you your Lady which God himself had knit unto you. It is a piety for which you are commended. And, were it not for one thing I should think my comfort in you were complete.... It is said you were not sufficiently sincere to your most trusting friend, the pitied Earl. |E. Bolton to Sir R. Cotton; Cott. MS. Julius C., iii, fol. 32. (B. M.)| Though I hold this a slander, yet being not able to make particular defences, I opposed my general protestation against it as an injury to my friend. Yet wanting apt countermines to meet with those close works by which some seek to blow up a breach into your honour, I was not a little afflicted.... I leave the arming of me in this cause to your own pleasure.’
The caution as to the danger of the friendships of grandees and great favourites was one which Cotton took to heart. In the years to come he had occasionally to give critical advice, in critical junctures. But, in the true sense of the words, he learnt, at last, not to put his trust in Princes. Long before his acquaintance with Somerset and his private conferences with James, a very true and dear friend had noted a dangerous proclivity in Sir Robert’s character. |Arthur Agarde to Sir R. Cotton: Cott. MS. Julius C., iii, fol. 1.| It prompted, by way of counsel, the words: ‘Be yourself; and no man’s creature; but [only] God’s. And so He will prosper all your designs, both to his glory and your good.’
That ply had been taken too deeply, however, to be very easily smoothed out. In the years to come Sir Robert Cotton approached—more than once, perhaps—the brink of the old peril. As Buckingham clomb higher and higher, and busied himself with many transactions of the nature of which he had but a very insecure mental grasp, he felt his need of the counsels of experienced men. He made occasional advances to Cotton, amongst others. They were met; and not always so warily, as might now have been expected.
But against the danger which over-confiding intercourse with too-powerful courtiers was sure to bring in its train, Cotton found a better safeguard in wounded self-esteem, than even in dearbought experience. He soon saw that in Buckingham’s character there was at least as much of vacillation as of versatility. The famous lines which describe the son as
would have a spice of truth if applied to the father. But their applicability is only partial; whereas the lines which follow are almost as true—a single word excepted—of the first Duke of Buckingham as they were of the second—
When Sir Robert Cotton perceived that James’s new favourite would listen, in the morning, to grave advice on a grave subject, and affirm his resolution to act upon it; and yet, in the afternoon suffer himself to be carried from his purpose by the silly jests or malicious suggestions of youngsters and sycophants, unacquainted with affairs and often reckless of consequences, he saw the wisdom of standing somewhat aloof. He rarely, however, refused his advice, when it was asked. In regard to matters of naval administration,—the authoritative value of his opinion on which was now everywhere recognised, save in the dockyards and their dependencies,—he gave it with especial willingness. But henceforward, to use Agarde’s words, he was ‘no man’s creature.’
Five years passed on, marked by events which stirred England to its core, but to Sir Robert Cotton they were years of comparative quiet. He was, indeed, very far from being a careless bystander. He observed much, and learnt much. |Growth of Cotton’s Literary and Public Correspondence.| Had it not been for the lessons which those publicly eventful years impressed on his receptive mind, he might have gone to his grave with no other reputation than that of a profound antiquary, and the Founder of the Cottonian Library.
Meanwhile, his pen worked as hard in the service of scholars, both at home and abroad, as though he had been a busy proof-reader in a leading printing-office. He supplied, at the same time, on the right hand and on the left, precedents and formulæ, with a diligence and readiness which would have won both fame and fortune for a long-accustomed conveyancer. Camden consults him, continually, for help in his historical labours. Ben Jonson puts questions to him about intricate points of Roman geography. |MS. Cott., Julius C., iii, fol. 239. (B. M.)| William Lisle seeks Cotton’s aid in the prosecution of his studies of the language and literature of the Anglo-Saxons. |Ib., fol. 288, seqq.| Peiresc consults him on questions in Numismatics. |Domestic Corresp., Jas. I, vol. lxxxi, § 15. (R. H.)| If great officers of State chance to quarrel amongst themselves about their respective claims to carry before the King the sword Curtana, at some special ceremony, they agree to refer the dispute to Sir Robert Cotton and to abide—without fighting a duel—by his momentous decision. If a courtier obtains for a friend the royal promise of an Irish viscounty he writes to Cotton, asking him to choose an appropriate and well-sounding title. |MS. Cott., Julius C., iii, fol. 378.| Roger Maynwaring begs him to determine the legal amount of burial-fees. |Ib., fol. 252.| Dr. Lambe asks him to settle conflicting pretensions to the advowson of a living which, in old time, belonged to an abbey. |Ib., fol. 229.| Augustine Vincent implores his help in a tough question about patents of peerage. |Ib., fol. 379.| The Lord Keeper Williams seeks advice on questions of parliamentary form and privilege. |Edwards’ Life and Letters of Ralegh, vol. ii, p. 321.| Ralegh writes to him, from that ‘Bloody Tower’ which he was about to turn into a literary shrine for all generations of Englishmen to come, by composing in it a noble ‘History of the World’—beseeching him to supply a desolate prisoner with historical materials. |MS. Julius C. iii, fol. 204.| The Earl of Arundel writes to him from Padua, begging that he would compile ‘the story of my ancestors.’ |Ib., fol. 320.| The Earl of Dorset entreats him to make out a list of the gifts which some early Sackville had piously bestowed upon the Church—not, however, with the smallest intention of himself increasing them. And, anon, there comes to Sir Robert, from a third great peer, the second of the Cecil Earls of Salisbury, an entreaty—expressed in terms so urgent that one might call it a supplication—‘Permit me, I pray you, to see my Lord of Northampton’s letters.... |Salisbury to Cotton, in MS. Cott., Julius C., iii.| I will return them unread, and unseen, by anybody,’ save himself. And then the Secretary of State writes to him in an impetuous hurry which made his letter scarcely legible:—‘If you be not here’ [i. e. at the Council Chamber] ‘with those precedents for which there is present use, we are all undone. |MS. Cott., Julius C., iii, fol. 57.| For His Majesty doth so chide, that I dare not come in his sight.’
Along with this busy correspondence—of which, in these brief sentences I have given the reader but a very inadequate and scanty sample—the surviving records of these years of comparative retirement supply us with abundant notices of the growth and of the sources, from time to time, of the Cottonian Library. It would be no unwelcome task to tell that story at length. It would, indeed, be but the paying, in very humble coin, of a debt of gratitude to a liberal benefactor. But within the compass of these pages so many careers have to be narrated that the due proportions of some of them—and even of one so interesting as Cotton’s—must needs be closely shorn. On this point it must, for the present, suffice to say that the acquisition of many Cottonian State Papers, and of such as carry on their face the most irrefragable marks of former official ownership, can be distinctly traced. The assertion is no hasty or inconsiderate one. It is founded on an acquaintance with the Cottonian MSS., which is now, I fear, thirty years old, and on the strength of which (when reading some recent assaults on the fair fame of their Collector), I have been tempted to put certain well-known lines into Sir Robert’s mouth:—
Were it not, however, for one pregnant circumstance in Sir Robert Cotton’s subsequent life, all this would have but a very meager attractiveness for nineteenth-century readers. The story of the growth of a great library has its charm, but the sphere of potency is of small dimension. Few but those who are themselves imbued with a spice of literary antiquarianism ever enter within the narrow circle. Just in like manner, that active literary and political correspondence—spreading from Exeter to Durham, and from Venice to Copenhagen—would nowadays have but a slender interest for anybody (not belonging to the scorned fraternity of Oldbuck and Dryasdust), were it not for that great war between King and Parliament, Cavalier and Roundhead, of which, in one sense, Cotton lived only long enough to see the gathering of forces, and the early skirmishes, but in which, nevertheless, he played a part second only to that played by Eliot and by Pym. His close connection with the Parliamentarian leaders of 1625–1629 lifts the whole story of the man out of the petty circuit of mere ‘curiosities of literature,’ into the broad arena of the hard-won liberties of England.
All students of the deeds done in that arena now know—and their knowledge is in no slight degree due to the persistent labours of a living writer—that the battle of the ‘Petition of Right’ was even a greater battle than Naseby or Marston Moor. They know that the marshalling of the forces which, at a period antecedent to that famous Petition, succeeded in winning a safe place on ‘the fleshy tables’ of the hearts of Englishmen for those political immunities it embodied—after the first written record had been vainly torn from the Council Book—was a feat of arms not less brilliant, in its way, than was that arraying of Ironsides, on much later days of the long strife, which resulted in ‘Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbued,’ and placed Worcester’s laureat wreath on the brow of Cromwell. There are many senses in which we have all of us (or nearly all) learnt to see the truth of the familiar words, ‘Peace hath her victories, not less renown’d than War,’ but in no sense have those words a deeper truth than when we simply invert Milton’s own application of them. By him they were pointed at something yet to be done, and which, as he hoped, might be done by Cromwell. Nowadays, the historian has good ground to point them at an earlier victory, won when the great soldier was but looking on at the parliamentary contest, which he could not much advance, and might very possibly have seriously impeded. The one thing which has transmuted Robert Cotton from the status of a dead antiquary into that of a living English worthy, is his close fellowship with Eliot, Rudyard, and Pym. His rights to a place amongst our national worthies is due—more than all else—to the fact that the services which he rendered in that strife of heroes were services which one man, and only one, throughout broad England had made himself capable of rendering. Cotton could no more have led the parliamentary phalanx, than he could have led the Ironsides. To stir men’s minds as Eliot or Pym could stir them was about as much in his power as it was to have invented logarithms, or to have written ‘Lear.’ But if he could not command the army, he could furnish the arsenal. At that day and under the then circumstances that service was priceless.
Sir Robert Cotton’s best and most memorable parliamentary service was rendered under Charles; not under James. But there is one incident in his public career which occurred just before the change in the wearers of the Crown that has a claim to mention, even in so brief a memoir as this.
Among the revenges wrought by the ‘whirligigs of time’ before James went to his grave, was the necessity laid upon him to direct a search for precedents how best to put a mark of disgrace on a Spanish Ambassador for misconduct in his office. The man selected by the Duke of Buckingham to make the search, and to report upon it, was Sir Robert Cotton. Some weeks before he had been chosen to draw up, in the name of both Houses of Parliament, a formal address to the King for the rupture of the Spanish match.
When Buckingham made that famous speech at the Conference of Lords and Commons on the relations between England and Spain, to which Cotton’s well-known Remonstrance of the treaties of Amity and Marriage of the Houses of Austria and Spain with the Kings of England,[11] was to serve as a preface, he spoke with considerable force and incisiveness. |1624. 27 April.| His arguments were not hampered by many anxieties about consistency with his own antecedents. His words were chosen with a view to clinch his arguments to English minds rather than to spare Spanish susceptibilities. The ambassadors—there were then, I think, two of them—were furious at a degree of plain-speaking to which they had been little accustomed. They appealed to the King. They knew that the versatile favourite, once loved, was now dreaded. They tried to work on the King’s cowardice. The Duke, they told His Majesty, had plotted the calling of Parliament expressly to have a sure tool with which to keep him in control, should he prove refractory to the joint schemes of the Duke and Prince Charles. ‘They will confine your Majesty’s sacred person,’ said they, ‘to some place of pleasure, and transfer the regal power upon the Prince.’
The framing of such an accusation, writes Sir Robert, in the Report which he addressed to Buckingham on ‘Proceedings against Ambassadors have miscarried themselves,’ would, by the laws of the realm, amount to High Treason, had it been made by a subject. |Relation of Proceedings, &c.; MS. Lansd., 811, ff. 133–139.| He then adduces a long string of precedents for the treatment of offending envoys; advises that the Spaniards should first be immediately confined to their own abode; and should then, by the Speakers of both Houses of Parliament, in person, be exhorted and required to ‘make a fair discovery of the ground that led them so to inform the King.’
If, says Sir Robert, they refuse—‘as I believe they will’—then are they authors of the scandal, and His Majesty should be addressed to send a ‘letter of complaint to the King of Spain, requiring justice to be done according to the law of nations, which claim should the King of Spain refuse, the refusal would amount to a declaration of war.’ This advice was given by Cotton to the Duke on the 27th of April, 1624. Its author’s momentary favour with the favourite of the now fast-rising sun was destined (as we shall see presently) to be of extremely brief duration.
Pen-service of this sort was eminently congenial with Sir Robert Cotton’s powers. To his vast knowledge of precedents he added much acumen and just insight in their application. Though never admitted to the Privy Council as a sworn councillor of the Crown, his service as an adviser on several great emergencies was conspicuous.
And it did not stand alone. Small as were his natural gifts for oratory, Cotton’s earnestness in the strife of politics prompted him, more than once, to put aside his own sense of his disadvantages, and to endeavour himself to strike a good blow, with the weapons which he knew so well how to choose for others. |Cotton’s Speech in the Parliament at Oxford.| On one of these occasions he prepared a speech which proved very effective.
Curiously enough, whilst the best contemporary reports of that speech agree amongst themselves in substance; they differ as to the name of the speaker by whom it was actually uttered within the walls of the House of Commons. Internal evidence and external authority are also agreed that the speech, if not spoken, was at all events prepared by Sir Robert Cotton. On that point, all parties coincide. But according to one account, he both wrote and uttered it. According to another, he wrote it; but was prevented from the intended delivery,—either by an accidental absence from the House, or by some inward and unwaivable misgiving which led him at the eleventh hour to hand over the task to the able and well-accustomed tongue of his comrade Eliot.