opportunity of crushing him was soon found. In November 1629 there fell into the hands of Wentworth, who had just changed sides, a manuscript tract entitled ‘A Proposition for his Majesty's Service to bridle the Impertinency of Parliaments’ (printed in Rushworth). Its authorship was unknown at the time, and although it proved to have been written seriously it was treated by the king's friends as ironical, and a parody of recent statements of their own policy. A copy was shown to Cotton by the Earl of Clare, father of his friend Denzil Holles. He declared that he knew nothing about it; regarded it as a royalist manifesto; and prepared notes by way of answer. The council, where Laud was ‘a sore enemy,’ took the matter up, and placed Cotton, St. John, and the Earls of Bedford, Somerset, and Clare, all of whom were known to have read the pamphlet, under arrest. St. John was examined, and stated that the original was in Cotton's house. Orders to seal up Cotton's library were issued; a search was made there and the obnoxious document found (20 Nov. 1629). Cotton denied all knowledge of it, and the case was referred to the Star-chamber. On investigation it proved that the original manuscript in Cotton's library was the work of Sir Robert Dudley, titular earl of Northumberland [q. v.]; that it had been sent by Dudley as early as 1614 to Sir David Foulis, in order to restore the author to the favour of James I; that Cotton's librarian, Richard James [q. v.], who was also arrested, had allowed the parliamentary lawyer, Oliver St. John, to read it and to copy it; that St. John had lent his transcript to the Earl of Bedford, who passed it on to the Earls of Somerset and Clare; and that Flood, a young man living in Cotton's house, and reputed to be his natural son, finding the tract likely to be popular, had sold copies of his own making at high prices. On the day fixed for hearing (29 May 1630) an heir to the throne (Charles II) was born, and Charles I announced that proceedings would be stayed and the prisoners released in commemoration of the event. But Cotton's library was not restored to him. An order had been previously made that he might visit it in the presence of a clerk of the council; a commission was now issued to search the library for records to which the king had a right (12 July), and a catalogue was begun but never completed. On 2 Oct. a further instruction to the commission ordered them to note especially everything in the library which concerned state affairs. Cotton was thus practically dispossessed of his most cherished property, and his health began to fail. Twice in May 1631 he pathetically petitioned the king for pardon and for restitution of his books. In the second petition, in which he was joined with his son Thomas, he stated that the documents were perishing from lack of airing, and that no one was allowed to consult them. But before these petitions were answered the antiquary was dead. Anguish and grief, according to his friend Sir Symond D'Ewes, had changed his ‘ruddy and well-coloured’ countenance into ‘a grim blackish paleness, near to the resemblance and hue of a dead visage.’ He died on 6 May 1631, and was buried at Connington. A funeral sermon was preached by one Hughes. Sir John Eliot wrote from the Tower to the author on receipt of a copy: ‘He [i.e. Cotton] that was a father to his countrymen, chariot and horseman to his country, all that and more to me, could not but be sorrowed in his death, his life being so much to be honoured and beloved.’ Richard James wrote an elegy on his death.
To the last Cotton was adding to his library and helping scholars. In 1627 Sir James Ware sent him a manuscript register of St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin; in 1628 Ussher gave him a Samaritan Pentateuch. In 1629 Augustine Baker requested him to help in furnishing the library of the Cambray convent (Ellis, Orig. Lett. 1st ser. iii. 256). Sir Robert's liberality in lending books did his library some inevitable injury. D'Ewes, whose gossip usually bears traces of malice, states that Richard James, the librarian, was ‘a wretched, mercenary fellow,’ who disposed of many of his master's books. Sir John Cotton, Sir Robert's grandson, a better authority, asserts that many works lent to Selden were never returned (Aubrey, i. 23). Cotton himself was at times unwilling to give up books that had been lent him, and Laud complained bitterly of his retention of a volume which he had borrowed from St. John's College. His antiquarian zeal is attested by the story that when he heard, after Dr. Dee's death in 1608, that the astrologer had buried many manuscripts in a field, he straightway purchased the land and began excavations, which were not without success (Aubrey, ii. 311). Colomiès states that he discovered by accident in a London tailor's shop an original copy of the ‘Magna Carta’ (Disraeli, Curiosities). Cotton interested himself in all manner of learning. He owned the skeleton of an unknown fish which he dug up at Connington, and many years later (1658) Sir Thomas Browne begged Dugdale to procure him the loan of it. His collection of coins and medals was one of the earliest. Very many languages were represented in his library. His rich collection of Saxon charters proved the
