Notes for Robert Bruce Cotton

Notes for Robert Bruce Cotton

!Information found on Ancestry.Com web site of David Parsons at:
http://awt.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=davidparsons&id=I00860
NOTE: Cotton, Sir, Robert Bruce (1571 - 1631) English politician and bibliophile:
Born in Denton, Huntingdonshire, the son of a wealthy landowner, Cotton was educated at Cambridge university, and then moved to London where he began his political career in 1601 as member of parliament for Newtown. By this time he had begun to assemble one of the finest collections of books and manuscripts ever seen in private hands. Used by many contemporary scholars, such as Bacon, Camden, and Speed, it contained such items as the Lindisfarne Gospels and the manuscript of Beowulf. Although initially on good terms with James I, Cotton was arrested in 1615 for involvement in the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury (1613). Released soon afterwards, he was later suspected by Charles I of sedition and arrested once more in 1629. Although released in the general amnesty of 1630 he was denied access to his own library. The collection itself was placed in the British Museum in 1753 where it remains today.