Weston's influence secured Cottington a seat in the privy council (12 Nov. 1628), and on 30 March 1629 the attorney-general was ordered to prepare for him a grant of the chancellorship of the exchequer. In the autumn of 1629 he was sent ambassador to Spain, and signed with that power (5 Nov. 1630) a treaty which put an end to the war, and reproduced, with a few unimportant modifications, the treaty of 1604. This was followed on 2 Jan. 1631 by a secret treaty for the partition of Holland between England and Spain, as the price of the restoration of the Palatinate (Gardiner, History of England, vii. 176; Clarendon State Papers, i. 49). As a reward the negotiator was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Cottington of Hanworth, Middlesex (10 July 1631). With Weston and Windebanke Cottington was throughout in the king's confidence with respect to his secret foreign policy, and represented with them in the council the party favourable to Spain, and hostile to France and Holland. Himself a catholic at heart, and usually declaring himself such when seriously ill, Cottington supported the catholic propaganda in England, but was yet not trusted by the catholics. In March 1635 Cottington became master of the court of wards, in which capacity he ‘raised the revenue of that court to the king to be much greater than it had ever been before his administration; by which husbandry all the rich families of England, of noblemen and gentlemen, were exceedingly incensed, and even indevoted to the crown’ (Clarendon, ii. 102). His activity in extending the rights of his office was one of the chief causes of its abolition; it also led him into a quarrel with the lord-keeper Coventry (Heylyn, Life of Laud, i. 225). More serious was the hostility between Laud and Cottington which began about the same time. On 16 March 1635 the treasury was put in commission, and both Cottington and the archbishop named commissioners. Both at the treasury board and in the committee for foreign affairs Cottington frequently came into collision with Laud, whose correspondence is full of complaints of his ‘Spanish tricks’ and general untrustworthiness. In two important cases, the case of the soap-makers' monopoly and the case of Bagge and Pell, Laud and Cottington took opposite sides. He also alarmed Laud by interceding on behalf of Williams, bishop of Lincoln, although, when his case actually came to a judgment, Cottington gave his sentence for the imposition of a fine of 10,000l. on the bishop (Laud, Works, vii. 139; Rushworth, ii. 416). In the archbishop's confidential correspondence with Strafford he had termed Portland ‘the Lady Mora,’ the delayer of the honest and economical administration he sought to introduce; he now wrote of Cottington as the great obstacle, ‘the Lady Mora's waiting-maid,’ who, perhaps, ‘would pace a little faster than her mistress did, but the steps would be as foul’ (Works, vii. 145). All Cottington's activity was directed to obtaining the treasurership for himself, to secure which he intrigued on every side. In this struggle his self-control, and his acquaintance with the business of the exchequer, enabled him to hold his own against Laud, and sometimes, as in the instance of the enclosure of Richmond Park, to make his adversary ridiculous to the king (Clarendon, i. 208). Nevertheless, Laud succeeded in securing the treasury for Juxon (6 March 1636), and Cottington became ‘no more a leader, but meddled with his particular duties only’ (Strafford Papers, i. 523, ii. 52). Besides serving on the committee of the council for foreign affairs, Cottington acted also as a member of the committee for Irish affairs appointed in April 1634 (Laud, Works, iii. 67), and of the far more important committee for Scotch affairs (reproachfully called ‘the junto,’ according to Clarendon) appointed in July 1638 (Strafford Letters, ii. 181). In the latter committee he formed one of the war party (ib. ii. 186), but his position as chancellor of the exchequer made him still more prominent in the different devices for raising money for the war. In June 1639 Cottington attempted to raise a loan from the city, and, when the aldermen refused, supported Windebanke in urging coercion (Gardiner, History of England, ix. 39). In the following May, after the dissolution of the Short parliament, he advocated war against the Scots as a necessary measure of self-defence, and argued that in such an extremity money might be raised without a parliament. According to Vane's notes he added that the lower house were weary both of king and church (Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. 3). In July he in vain attempted to persuade the city to lend, and the French ambassador to procure, the king a loan of 400,000l.; in the end he was obliged to raise money by a speculation in pepper (Gardiner, History of England, ix. 175, 190). He also prepared the Tower for a siege, having been appointed constable of that fortress (ib. 191). At the meeting of the Long parliament the parliamentary leaders resolved to call Cottington to an account (Sanford, Studies of the Great Rebellion, 308). Seeing the danger, he resolved to efface himself and give up his offices. He was ready, in exchange for an assurance of indemnity, to surrender the chancellorship
