Chapter II: =the Founder of the Cottonian Library.= (2)

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.’ [Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 1615. May 24.]

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. [Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: 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.’

[Sidenote: The King to Archbishop of Canterbury, &c. _Domestic Corresp._
James I, vol. lxxxvi, § 16. (R. H.)]

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. [Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: COTTON’S DEALINGS WITH SOMERSET’S CORRESPONDENCE.] [Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: _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. [Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: 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

A man so various, that he seem’d to be
Not one, but all mankind’s epitome,

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—

Stiff in opinions; often in the wrong;
He’s everything by starts, and nothing long.

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. [Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: _Ib._, fol. 288, seqq.] PEIRESC consults him on questions in Numismatics. [Sidenote: _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. [Sidenote: MS. Cott., Julius C., iii, fol. 378.] Roger MAYNWARING begs him to determine the legal amount of burial-fees. [Sidenote: _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. [Sidenote: _Ib._, fol. 229.] Augustine VINCENT implores his help in a tough question about patents of peerage. [Sidenote: _Ib._, fol. 379.] The Lord Keeper WILLIAMS seeks advice on questions of parliamentary form and privilege. [Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: 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.’ [Sidenote: _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.... [Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: 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:—

If I am
Traduced by o’er hasty tongues—which neither know
My faculties nor person, yet will be
The chroniclers of my doing—let me say
’Tis but the fate of place, and the rough brake
That virtue must go through.

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.

[Sidenote: COTTON’S ALLIANCE WITH THE PARLIAMENTARIAN CHIEFS.]

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.

[Sidenote: THE SEARCH FOR PRECEDENTS AGAINST AMBASSADORS.]

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. [Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: _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. [Sidenote: COTTON’S SPEECH IN THE PARLIAMENT AT OXFORD.] On one of these occasions he prepared a speech which proved very effective.

[Sidenote: 1625. 10 August.]

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.

[Sidenote: COTTON’S? OR ELIOT’S?]

If we turn, for help—in our strait—to the admirable biography of ELIOT, by Mr. FORSTER, we shall find that its author rather accepts the doubt, than solves it. Inclining to the opinion that Sir John ELIOT was the actual utterer, he thinks nevertheless that the best course is to ‘let the speech stand double and inseparable; a memorial of a fast friendship.’ It was the friendship, I may add, of two statesmen who fought a good fight, side by side; until one of them was violently torn out of the arena, and thrust into a dungeon, in the hope that slow disease might unstring the eloquent tongue which honours could not bribe, and terrors could not silence.

In Sir Robert’s posthumous tracts (as they were published by James HOWELL) this speech has been printed as unquestionably spoken by him who wrote it. But that publication—as I have had occasion to show already, in relation to the ‘_Twenty-four Arguments_’—carries no grain of authority. Spoken or simply composed by its author, the speech is alike memorable in English history, and in the personal life of the man himself.

The existence of the plague in London had led to the adjournment of the first Parliament of King CHARLES to Oxford. It was there, and on the 10th of August, 1625, that the speech which—whether it came from the lips of John ELIOT or of Robert COTTON—made a deep impression on the House, was spoken. It gave the key-note to not a few speeches of a subsequent date, and it contains passages which, in the event, came to have on their face something of the stamp of prophecy.

Retrenchment in expenditure,—Parliamentary curb on Royal favourites,—No trust of a transcendent power to any one Minister,—Less lavishness in the bestowal of honours and dignities won by suit, or purchase, rather than by public meed,—Wary distrust of Spain,—Abolition of unjust monopolies and oppressive imposts;—these are amongst the earnest counsels which (whether it were as writer, or as speaker) Sir Robert COTTON impressed on his fellow-members in that memorable sitting at Oxford. Both the pith and the sting of the Speech may be found in its concluding words: ‘His Majesty hath ... wise, religious, and worthy servants.... In loyal duty, we offer our humble desires that he would be pleased to advise with them _together; ... not with young and single counsel_.’ Well would it have been for CHARLES, had he taken those simple words to heart, in good time.

To us, and now, there is a special interest in an incidental passage of this speech which relates to SOMERSET. The reader has seen how Count GONDOMAR’S secret testimony—just disinterred from Simancas—against SOMERSET, as well as against COTTON, has recently been dealt with by an eminent historian. [Sidenote: (See, also, heretofore, the foot-note to p. 73.)] It is worth our while to remember some other words on that subject spoken publicly in the Parliament at Oxford almost two centuries and a half agone. They were spoken in the ears of men whose eyes had looked with keen scrutiny into the Spanish envoy as well as into the English minister. SOMERSET was still living. Men who then sat in the Parliament Chamber knew every incident in his official life, and not a few incidents in his private life, as well as every charge by which—publicly or privately—he had been infamed. They knew, exactly, Sir Robert COTTON’S position towards the fallen minister. If we choose to suppose that ELIOT was now speaking what COTTON wrote, the inference is unchanged. To those listeners Sir John and Sir Robert were known to be politically ‘double and inseparable.’

[Sidenote: COTTON’S EULOGY ON LORD SOMERSET’S POLICY (August, 1625).]

The facts being so, what is the course taken by the speaker when he finds occasion to remind the House of things that happened when ‘My Lord of Somerset stood in state of grace, and had the trust of the Signet Seal?’ Does he take a line of apology and use words of extenuation? Not a whit. In the presence of some of the wisest and ablest of English statesmen, he eulogises SOMERSET as an honest and unselfish minister of the Crown. He asserts, that the Earl had discovered ‘the double dealings’ of Spanish emissaries, and the dangers of the Spanish alliance; and had made some progress in dissuading even King JAMES from putting faith in Spaniards. Then, winding up this episode, in order to pass to the topic of the hour, COTTON says: ‘Thus stood the effect of SOMERSET’S power with His Majesty, when the clouds of his misfortune fell upon him. What future advisers led to we may well remember. [Sidenote: MS. LANSD.,[12] 491, fol. 195.] The marriage with Spain was renewed; GONDOMAR declared an honest man; Popery heartened; His Majesty’s forces in the Palatinate withdrawn; His Highness’s children stripped of their patrimony; our old and fast allies disheartened; and the King our now master exposed to so great a peril as no wise and faithful counsel would ever have advised.’

At Court, speech such as this was deeply resented, instead of being turned to profit. A curious little incident which occurred at the Coronation of CHARLES in the next winter testifies, characteristically, to the effect which it produced on the minds both of the new King and of his favourite.

At the date of that ceremony, Sir Robert’s close political connection with the future Parliamentary chiefs was but in its infancy. His views of public policy were fast ripening, and had borne fruit. His private friendships were more and more shaping themselves into accordance with his tendencies in politics. Amongst those whose intimacy he cultivated—besides that of ELIOT and others who have been mentioned already—were Symonds D’EWES, and John SELDEN. [Sidenote: FRIENDS AND HOSPITALITIES.] It was at COTTON’S hospitable table, in Old Palace Yard, that the two men last named first made acquaintance with each other. Both were scholars; both were strongly imbued with the true antiquarian tinge; both had an extensive acquaintance with the black-letter lore of jurisprudence, as well as with the more elegant branches of archæology; and both, up to a certain point, had common aims in public life; yet they did not draw very near together. SELDEN’S more robust mind, and his wider sympathies, shocked some of the puritanic nicenesses of D’EWES. Precisely the same remark would hold good of the relations between COTTON and D’EWES. But a certain geniality of manners in Sir Robert, combined with his grandee-like openness of hand and mind, attracted his fellow-baronet in a degree which went some way towards vanquishing D’EWES’ most ingrained scruples. [Sidenote: Harl. MS., as above.] ‘I had much more familiarity with Sir Robert COTTON, than with Master SELDEN,’ jots down Sir Symonds in his Autobiographic _Diary_, and then he adds: ‘SELDEN being a man exceedingly puffed up with the apprehension of his own abilities.’ That last sentence,—as the reader, perhaps, will agree with me in thinking,—may possibly tell a more veracious tale of the writer, than of the man whom it reproves.

Be that as it may, the dining-room in Old Palace Yard witnessed frequent meetings of many groups of visitors of whose tabletalk it would be delightful could we find as good a record as we have of the tabletalk in Bolt Court, or at Streatham Park; or even as we have of almost contemporary talk around the board at Hawthornden. Glorious old Ben himself was a frequent guest at Sir Robert COTTON’S table. Until late in JAMES’ reign, CAMDEN, when his growing infirmities permitted him to journey up from Chislehurst, would still be seen there, now and again. During the rare sessions of Parliament, many a famous member, as he left the House of Commons, would join the circle. And the high discourse about Greeks and Romans, about poetry and archæology, would be pleasantly varied, by the newest themes of politics, by occasional threnodies on the exorbitant power of court minions, but also by occasional and glowing anticipations of a better time to come.

At one of these festive meetings, occurring not long before the Coronation of CHARLES THE FIRST, the talk seems to have turned on the coming solemnity. The plague at this time was still in London, though it was fast abating. [Sidenote: COTTON AND THE CORONATION OF CHARLES I.] That circumstance was to abridge the ceremonies, in order to permit the Court to leave Westminster more quickly; but it was known that great attention had been given by the King, personally, when framing the programme, to the strict observance of ancient forms. D’EWES was one of Sir Robert’s guests. Like his host, he had a great love for sight-seeing on public occasions. And they would both anticipate a special pleasure in witnessing the revival of certain coronation observances which had been pretermitted during two centuries. In regard to the coronation oath COTTON had been consulted, and he expected to be present, carrying in his hand his own famous copy of the Gospels known as the ‘_Evangeliary of King Ethelstan_.’ It was also expected that the watergate of Cotton House would be the King’s landing-place, and that he would cross the garden in order that he might enter the Palace more conveniently than he could from its usual stairs, then under repair, or in need of it. Sir Robert invited D’EWES, with other of his guests—not privileged to claim places in Westminster Abbey on the great occasion—that at least they might see their new sovereign, as he passed to take his crown.

When the morning came D’EWES was early in his visit, but, he found Cotton House already filled with ladies. The Earl Marshal had decorated the stairs to the river and the watergate very handsomely. Sir Robert had done his part by decorating his windows, and his garden, more handsomely still. But to the chagrin alike of the fair spectators and of their host, as they were standing, in all their bravery, from watergate to housedoor, to do respectful obeisance, the royal barge, by the King’s own commandment—given at the moment, but pre-arranged by BUCKINGHAM—was urged onward. To our amazement, writes Sir Symonds, ‘we saw the King’s barge pass to the ordinary stairs, belonging to the backyard of the Palace, where the landing was dirty ... and the incommodity was increased by the royal barge dashing into the ground and sticking fast, before it touched the causeway.’ [Sidenote: D’Ewes; in Harl. MS., 646, as before.] His Majesty, followed by the Favourite, had to leap across the mud,—certainly an unusual incident in a coronation show.

When COTTON—swallowing the mortification which he must have felt, on behalf of his bevy of fair visitors, if not on his own—presently showed himself in the Abbey, bearing the _Evangeliary_, he and it were contemptuously thrust aside.

As a straw tells the turn of the wind, this trivial incident points to a policy. The insults both within the Abbey and without, had been planned, by the King and Duke, in order to mark the royal indignation at the close fellowship of COTTON with ELIOT and the other Parliamentary leaders. That the insults might be the more keenly felt, the Earl Marshal was left in ignorance of the plan. It is a help to the truthful portraiture of CHARLES, as well as to that of BUCKINGHAM, to note that to insult a group of English ladies was no drawback to the pleasure of putting a marked affront upon a political opponent. Perhaps, it increased the zest, from the probable near relationship of some among them to the offender.

But it is more important to note that another and graver intention in respect to Sir Robert COTTON had been already formed. It was in contemplation to do, in 1626, what was not really done until 1629. [Sidenote: Mede to Stuteville; MS. Harl., 383, 18 April, 1626.] BUCKINGHAM had advised the King to put the royal seals on the Cottonian Library. That done, he thought, there would surely be an end to the communication of formidable precedents for parliamentary warfare. More wary counsellors however interposed with wiser advice. A fitting pretext was lacking. Slenderness in the pretext would be no serious obstacle to action. But some excuse there must be. The project, though abandoned for the time, will be seen to have its value when considering, presently, the strange story which is told, in the Privy Council Book, of the ‘_Proposition to bridle the impertinency of Parliaments_,’ and when narrating the sequel of that high-handed act of power, which brought COTTON’S head—as yet scarcely gray—with sorrow to the grave.

[Sidenote: ADVICE TO PRIVY COUNCIL ON CHANGE OF COINAGE.]

Although, thus early in the reign of CHARLES, a court insult was inflicted upon Sir Robert COTTON, after a fashion the extreme silliness of which rather serves to set off the intended malignity than to cloke it, only a few months passed before his advice was called for in presence of the Council Board, on an important question of home policy. The question raised was that of an alteration of the coinage. The Privy Council was divided in opinion. There was a desire for the advice of statesmen who were not at the Board, but who were known to have studied a subject beset with many difficulties. Among these, Sir Robert COTTON was consulted. He appeared at the Council Table on the 2nd of September, 1626, and we have a report of his speech to the Lords, which from several points of view is notable. [Sidenote: MS. LANSD., ff. 141–152. (B. M.)[13]] [Sidenote: _Council Registers_, James I, vols. v and vi, _passim_. (C. O.)] But a preliminary word or two needs to be said on what may seem the singularity that a man who, in 1625, was fighting zealously beside the Parliamentary patriots, should, in 1626, be speaking at the Council Table as a quasi-councillor of the Crown.

It might be sufficient to point attention to the obvious difference between questions affecting the liberty of the subject, and questions of mere administration, were this the only occasion—or were it a fair sample of the only class of occasions—in which COTTON appears as an unofficial Councillor. But the fact is otherwise. And it is best to be explained, partly, by the unsettled character of party connection during the political strife of CHARLES’ reign, as well as long afterwards, and partly by peculiarities belonging to the man himself. [Sidenote: _Life of Sir John Eliot_, vol. i, p 468.] There are not many statesmen, even of that period, of whom it could be said as the able biographer of Sir John ELIOT says of Sir Robert COTTON: ‘He acted warmly with ELIOT and with the patriots in the first Parliament of CHARLES. At the opening of the third, he was tendering counsel to the King, _of which the obsequious forms have yet left no impression unfavourable to his uprightness and honour_.’ The result is unusual. How came it to pass?

Perhaps the preceding pages may have already suggested to the reader’s mind more than one possible and plausible answer to this question. Here it may suffice to say that while Sir Robert COTTON was plainly at one with the Parliamentarian leaders in the main points of their civil policy, he never went to the extreme lengths of the puritanic faith, either in things secular, or in matters pertaining to Religion. On some religious questions he differed from them widely. In secular matters, a tyrannic Parliament would have been as little to his liking as a despotic king. Neither friend nor enemy—GONDOMAR excepted—ever called him a Puritan (or pretended-Puritan) in his lifetime, any more than they would have called him a Republican. His ultimate divergence was not cloaked. It was no bar to the entire respect, or to the love and close fellowship, of men like ELIOT, just because it was frankly avowed, and had no selfish aim. COTTON,—had he lived long enough,—would probably have ranged himself, at last, with the Cavaliers, rather than with the Roundheads. He would have had FALKLAND’S misgivings, and FALKLAND’S sorrow, but I think he would not have lacked FALKLAND’S self-devotion also.

And, in another point, he resembled Lord FALKLAND. Both would have advised CHARLES to yield much of so-called ‘prerogative.’ Neither of them would have bade him to yield a grain of true royal honour. In later years, some words which COTTON wrote,—in 1627,—for the King’s eye may well have come back painfully into CHARLES’ memory:—‘To expiate the passion of the People,’ said Sir Robert, ‘with sacrifice of any of His Majesty’s servants, I have ever found to be no less fatal _to the Master_ than to the Minister, in the end.’

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. [Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: _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. [Sidenote: 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_.’ [Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: 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.’ [Sidenote: _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. [Sidenote: _Ib._] _This pernicious device he had communicated to divers Lords._’