“Ja Armachanus.”

* Sir Robert Cotton had married Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of William Brocas of Thedingworth, Leicestershire, by whom he had several sons, the eldest Thomas, alone surviving him.

Sir Edward Dering writes in 1630: 

“Sir; I received your very welcome letter, whereby I find you abundant in courtesies of all natures.  I am a great debtor to you, and those obligations likely still to be multiplied.  As I confess so much to you, so I hope to witnesse it to posterity.  I have sent up two of your bookes which have much pleasured me.  I have here the charter of King John, dated at Running Meade.* By the first safe and sure messenger it is yours, so are the Saxon charters, as fast as I can copy them, but in the meantime I will enclose King John in a boxe and send him.  I shall much long to see you at this place, where you shall command the heart of your affectionate friend and servant,

“E.  Dering.” 
Dover Castle, May 10, 1630.

* There are two original drafts of Magna Charta in the Cottonian Library.

It would be extremely interesting were Cotton’s own letters extant, to have some account from his pen of the manner in which he came by many manuscripts, the history of which is a blank to us from the time of the dissolution of the monasteries till they found a safe haven in his library.  But his letters are very rare; two only have been preserved in the Record Office.  They are addressed to his brother, Thomas, in the years 1623 and 1624, and they begin “Loving David,” and end “Thy Jonathon.”  One is much stained, and difficult to read; both treat of political matters.

In 1629 the origin of a seditious pamphlet, entitled, “How to bridle the impertinency of Parliaments,” which was handed about in London, causing some commotion, was traced to the Cottonian library.  In spite of all that Cotton could put forward to exculpate himself, an order was issued by the Privy Council for the sequestration of his books, on the ground that they were not of a nature to be exposed for public inspection.  And this was not all.  Once before he had been deprived of access to them for a time, and now again he was himself debarred from entering his own library, a privation which affected him so seriously, that from the moment of sequestration his health visibly declined, and he declared to his friends that they had broken his heart, who had locked up his books from him.

Disraeli, in his Amenities of Literature, says that, “Tormented by the fate of a collection which had consumed forty years, at every personal sacrifice to form it for ‘the use and services of posterity,’ he sank at the sudden stroke.  In the course of a few weeks he was so worn by injured feelings that, from a ruddy-complexioned man, his face was wholly changed into a grim blackish paleness, near to the resemblance and hue of a dead visage.”