Trinity Term 2022

Cottoni Posthuma: Divers choice pieces of that renowned antiquary Sir Robert Cotton, Knight and Baronet, preserved from the injury of time, and expos’d to public light, for the benefit of posterity

Sir Robert Cotton was born on 22 January 1571 in Denton, a hamlet a few miles south-west of Peterborough. He attended Westminster School, and then Jesus College, Cambridge, graduating with a BA in 1586; in 1588 he entered the Middle Temple in London to continue his studies.

One of his schoolmasters at Westminster was William Camden, the pioneering antiquary and historian, and author of Britannia, a topo­graphical and historical survey of the British Isles county by county. Cotton shared Camden’s fascination with the origins and development of Britain and its people, and accompanied him on a trip to Hadrian’s Wall to study inscriptions and other artefacts left by the Romans. In the late 1580s they and others with antiquarian interests began to meet weekly to discuss topics of mutual interest, such as the origins of British titles of nobility, the various terms used in English for land measurement, and the epitaphs on tombs and monuments.

Such topics may appear to be of only harmless scholarly interest, but in the early seventeenth century they often touched on matters of hot political controversy. One such controversy was the question of who would succeed the childless Queen Elizabeth I; two days after her death, Cotton wrote a tract demonstrating King James VI of Scotland’s descent from ancient English kings, and it is possibly for this that he was knighted by James on his accession as James I of England in 1603. But other topics considered by this society of antiquaries, such as the origins and privileges of Parliament, and by implication what constraints these laid on the power of the monarch, were less to the royal liking; when an attempt to revive the society, which had rather petered out as members died or moved out of London, was made in 1614, the antiquaries were told after their first meeting that ‘his Majesty took a little mislike of our society’, and thought it prudent not to proceed to further meetings.

This did not, of course, stop them pursuing their antiquarian investigations and discussing them in private. Sir Robert was by now a member of the House of Commons, where he was appointed to numerous committees and commissions, to which his ability to produce documentary evidence of procedures and precedents was a great asset. His collection of manuscripts and printed books was extensive in both size and scope, and shared freely with other researchers. In 1622 he purchased a house within the precincts of the Palace of Westminster, adjoining the House of Commons; thus, even in those periods when he himself did not have a seat in the Commons, the resources of his library and his own knowledge were readily available to those in government.

Despite his ‘mislike’ of the early Society of Antiquaries, James I seems to have had cordial relations with Sir Robert personally, perhaps initially because Sir Robert could claim descent from Robert the Bruce. But when Charles I came to the throne in 1625, the tensions between King and Parliament escalated sharply. In November 1629, Charles ordered the closure of Cotton’s library on the grounds that he had circulated a seditious pamphlet, but in reality almost certainly because he allowed free access to it to those who sought arguments and precedents for opposing the king’s wishes. On 6 May 1631 Cotton died, reputedly of grief at being denied access to his library.

In 1702 Cotton’s grandson, Sir John Cotton, transferred ownership of the collection to the nation, to be ‘kept and preserved … for Publick Use and Advantage’, and in 1753 it formed one of the foundation collections of the newly-established British Museum; in 1973 it became part of the new British Library. It consists of over 1,400 manuscripts and more than 1,500 charters, rolls, and seals, ranging in date from the 4^th century to the 1600s; Cotton also owned printed books – probably several hundred – but what happened to them is unclear.

Despite his extensive knowledge, Cotton published almost nothing during his lifetime. But many of his tracts and speeches were circulated in hand-written copies, and after his death some were collected together in the volume displayed above. It was published in 1651, two years after the execution of Charles I, when the monarchy had been abolished and the apparently settled orders of church and state were crumbling. The contents demonstrate Cotton’s view that present policy should be informed by what had been done in the past, and that rights and privileges granted in the past should be respected. The final tract in the collection, ‘A Short View of the Long Life and Reign of Henry the Third, King of England’, had previously been published in 1627; in part it was an account of how Henry had allowed his favourite, Simon de Montfort (who eventually rebelled against him), too much influence over him at the expense of the advice of his Privy Council, and was taken to be a thinly-veiled attack on Charles I’s favourite, the Duke of Buckingham. Cotton was called to account for it, but he claimed it had been published without his knowledge or consent, and was able to prove that it had been written in 1614 and presented to James I.

Somerville’s copy of Cottoni Posthuma was bequeathed to the college by Anne de Villiers, who served the college as Librarian, Treasurer, and tutor in Modern History. She also edited the journal kept by Henry Hastings, fifth Earl of Huntingdon, of proceedings in the parliament of 1621, in which Cotton does not appear to have had a seat, although he is referred to for his ability to seek out precedents.