COTTON, SIR ROBERT BRUCE, an eminent English antiquary, descended from an ancient family, was the son of Thomas Cotton, Esq., and born at Denton, in Huntingdonshire, January 22, 1570. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where be took the degree of ILA. in 1555. Ilia taste for antiquarian studies induced him to repair to London, where he became a member of a society of learned men attached to similar pursuits. He soon distinguished himself as a diligent collector of records, charters, and instruments of all kinds relating to the history of his country. The dissolution of monasteries, half • century before, had thrown so many manuscripts of every description into private hands, that Mr. Cotton enjoyed peculiar advan tages in forming his collection. In 1600 he accompanied Camden, the historian, to Carlisle, who acknowledges himself not a little obliged to him for the assistance he received from him in carrying on and com pleting his 'Britannia.' The same year Cotton wrote 'A Brief Abstract of the Question of Precedency between England and Spain.' This was occasioned by Queen Elizabeth desiring the thoughts of the Society of Antiquaries already mentioned upon that point, and is still extant in the Cottoniao Library. ('Jul.' C. ix. fol. 120.) Upon the accession of King James I. he received the honour of knighthood, and during this reign was not only courted and esteemed by the great, but consulted as an oracle by the privy councillors and ministers of state upon very difficult point, relating to the constitution. In 1603 he was appointed one of the commissioners to ioquire into the state of the navy, which had been neglected after the death of Queen Elizabeth ; and he drew up a memorial of their proceedings to be presented to the king, a copy of which is also preserved in the Cottonian Library. (MS. 'Jul.' F. iii.) In 1609 he wrote 'A Discourse of the Lawfulness of Combats to be performed in the Presence of the King. or the Constable and Marshall of England,' which was printed in 1051 and in 1672. He drew up also in the same year, 'An Answer to such Motives as were offered by certain Military Men to Prince Henry, to incite him to affect Arms more than Peace.' This was composed by order of that prince,
and the original tnannicript remains in the Cottonian Library.
(' F. rL fol. 1.) New projects being contrived to fill the royal treasury, which had been prodigally squandered, none pleased the king, it is said, so much as the creating a new order of knights, called baronets ; and Sir Robert Cotton, who had been the principal suggester of this scheme, was in 1611 chosen to be one, being the thirty-sixth on tha list His principal residence was then at Great Conumgton, in Huntingdonshire, which he soon exchanged for Halley St. George, in Cambridgeshire. He was afterwards employed by King James to vindicate the conduct of Mary, queen of Soots, from the supposed misrepresentations of Buchanan and Thuanue. What he drew up on this subject is thought to be interwoven in Camden. Annals of Queen Elizabeth,' or alas printed at the end of Camden. Epistles.' In 1010 the king ordered him to examine whether the Papists, whose numbers then mads the nation uneasy, ought by the laws of the land to be put to death, or to be imprisoned. This task lie performed with great learning, and produced upon that occasion twenty.four arguments, which were published afterwards, in 1672, among Cotton! Posthuma.' It was probably then that he wrote a piece, still preserved in the Royal Library, entitled ' Considerations for the repressing of the Increase of Priests, Jesuits, and Recounts, without drawing of blood.' Ile was also employed by the House of Commons when the match between Prince Charles and the Infanta of Spain was in agitation, to show, by a short examination of the treaties between England and tho House of Austria, the unfaithfulocss and insincerity of the latter, dud to prove that in all their transactions they aimed at nothing but uni versal monarchy. Sir It lbert Cotton wrote various other works, many of them small pieces in the shape of dissertations, too numerous to be mentioned here; wino of them are among his ' Postliuma: others are printed in Hearne's 'Disbourses,' and a few more still remain in manuscript.