Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub
[graphic][merged small][merged small]

MEMOIR OF CHARLES COTTON.

"All he desires, all that he would demand,

Is only that some amicable hand
Would but irriguate his fading bays

With due, and only with deserved praise."

THE family of Cotton, of which the subject of this memoir was a younger branch, is both ancient and honourable; and his immediate ancestor, Sir Richard Cotton, Comptroller of the Household and Privy Councillor to Edward the Sixth, was settled at Warblenton, in the county of Sussex, and at Bedhampton, in Hampshire.3 His grandfather, Sir George Cotton, who died in 1613, left issue by Cassandra Mac William, his wife, two children, Charles and Cassandra. The latter died unmarried before the year 1649, and an elegy was written on her decease by the friend of her father and brother, Colonel Richard Lovelace.5

4

Charles Cotton, the father of the poet, and the only son of Sir George Cotton, is said to have lived at Ovingdean in Sussex; but having married Olive, the daughter of Sir John Stanhope, of

Sir George Cotton (the poet's grandfather) who died in 1613, is described in the Heralds' Visitation of Staffordshire in 1664, as "a younger son of Cotton, of Warblenton, in the county of Sussex, and of Bedhampton, in the county of Hants;" but though considerable trouble has been taken to ascertain the connection, it has not been successful. Sir George Cotton of Warblenton was living in 1595, and by Mary, daughter of John Shelley, of Michelgrove, in Sussex, had several children, but none of the name of Charles or George are mentioned in the pedigrees of the family; and it is doubtful whether Sir George Cotton (the grandfather of the poet) was a younger son of Sir George Cotton by Mary Shelley, or whether he was that identical person, who may have married Cassandra Mac William to his second wife, and by her have been the father of a son named Charles, who was possibly so called after Charles Earl of Kent, the husband of Susan Cotton, sister of the said Sir George Cotton of Warblenton.

It is most probable that Cassandra Mac William was the daughter of Henry Mac William, by Margaret or Maria, daughter and coheir of Richard Hill, Sergeant of the Wine-cellar to Henry VIII., and widow of Sir John Cheeke, Secretary of State and Preceptor to Edward VI. The said Maria Hill was one of the maids-of-honour to Queen Elizabeth. Vide Harleian MS. 801, f. 49, and Anthony Wood's MSS. 8469, f. 102b. Cassandra Mac William is said, in the Visitation of Staffordshire in 1664, to have been the "daughter and heiress of Mac William," but the pedigree in the Harleian MS. 891, states that Henry Mac William had by Margaret (or Maria) Hill two sons, Henry and Ambrose, and three daughters, Susan, the wife of Edward Saunders, Cicely, and Cassandra.

3 Lucasta, 8vo, 1649, p. II only sister to Mr C. Cotton."

"An Elegie on the death of Mrs Cassandra Cotton,

Elvaston in Derbyshire, by his first wife Olive, daughter and heiress of Edward Beresford, of Beresford in Staffordshire, and of Bentley in the county of Derby, he succeeded to those estates in her right, and settled at Beresford. Mr Cotton was distinguished for his talents and accomplishments, and was the friend and companion of many of the most eminent of his contemporaries, including Ben Jonson, Sir Henry Wotton, Dr Donne, Selden, Fletcher, Herrick, Carew, Lovelace, Davenant, and May, the Lord Chief Justice Vaughan, and the great Lord Clarendon. Some of those writers celebrated his merits in their verses; and Lord Clarendon has particularly mentioned him in his well-known autobiography.8

6

7

Mr Cotton's marriage connected him with the families of Stanhope, Cokayne, Aston, Port, and others of the highest rank in the counties of Derby and Stafford. Mrs Cotton died at Beresford between 1650 and 1658, in the thirty-eighth year of her age; and her cousin, Sir Aston Cokayne, wrote some verses to her memory.9

6 Vide Cokayne's Poems, p. 91, and the Apology to the Reader.

7 Herrick inscribed one of his poems to the elder Cotton, 8vo, 1648, p. 352.

8 "CHARLES COTTON was a gentleman born to a competent fortune; and so qualified in his person and education, that for many years he continued the greatest ornament of the town, in the esteem of those who had been best bred. His natural parts were very great, his wit flowing in all the parts of conversation; the superstructure of learning not raised to a considerable height: but having passed some years in Cambridge, and then in France, and conversing always with learned men, his expressions were ever proper and significant, and gave great lustre to his discourse upon any argument; so that he was thought by those who were not intimate with him, to have been much better acquainted with books than he was. He had all those qualities which in youth raise men to the reputation of being fine gentlemen; such a pleasantness and gaiety of humour, such a sweetness and gentleness of nature, and such a civility and delightfulness in conversation, that no man, in the court or out of it, appeared a more accomplished person: all these extraordinary qualifications being supported by as extraordinary a clearness of courage and fearlessness of spirit, of which he gave too often manifestation. Some unhappy suits in law, and waste of his fortune in those suits, made some impression on his mind; which, being improved by domestic afflictions, and those indulgences to himself which naturally attend those afflictions, rendered his age less reverenced than his youth had been, and gave his best friends cause to have wished that he had not lived so long."Clarendon's Life, vol. i. p. 36, ed. Oxford, 1827. 9 Cokayne's Poems, 8vo, 1658. "On the death of my dear cousin germane Mrs Olive Cotton, who deceased at Beresford the 38th year of her age, and lyes buried at Bently by Ashbourne."-He also wrote verses "To my cousin german Mrs Olive Cotton," p. 138; and “Of my staying supper with my cousin Mrs Olive Cotton," p. 139; and the following

EITAPH ON MY DEAR COUSIN GERMAN MRS OLIVE COTTON.

Passenger, stay, and notice take of her
Whom this sepulchral marble doth inter:
For Sir John Stanhope's daughter and his heir,

By his first wife, a Beresford, lies here.

Her husband of a noble house was, one

Every where for his worths belov'd and known.

One only son she left, whom we presage

A grace t' his family, and to our age.

« AnteriorContinuar »