Charles Cotton

“ He was buried in St James’s church, Piccadilly, on the 16th of February 1687. Cotton’s reputation as a burlesque writer may account for the neglect with which the rest of his poems have been treated. Their excellence was not, however, overlooked by good critics. ”

“ Mr. Charles Cotton, Knight of Grace of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem and honorary librarian of Christ Church Cathedral, Canterbury, as announced in our later editions on Saturday, died at The Precincts, Canterbury, on September 28, at the age of 83. ”

“ Who have said nought, since I could say no more.
<85.1> Charles Cotton the younger, Walton's friend. He was born on the 28th of April, 1630. He married, in 1656, Isabella, daughter of Sir Thomas Hutchinson, of Owthorp, co. Notts, Knight. See Walton's ANGLER, ed. 1760, where a life of Cotton, compiled from the notes of the laborious Oldys, will be found. The poet died in 1687, and, two years later, his miscellaneous verses were printed in an octavo volume. ”

“ Cotton was a famous angler and was horticulturist enough to write an excellent Planters’ Manual (1675) . Some of his poems have been much admired for their sweetness and directness of style. Wordsworth and Lamb particularly praised his Ode to Winter. ”

“ Charles Cotton, the Honorary Librarian of Canterbury Cathedral, in a learned but by no means heavy book, 'The Grey Friars of Canterbury,' recently published by the Manchester University Press."—The Times.
"C'est à l'histoire de cette premiere fondation franciscaine en Angleterre qu'est consacré le petit livre de M. Cotton. C'est un fort bon travail ”

“ A light-fingered Mercury would hardly haunt the same spot: however, this is as it may be! It is probable that we owe to this species of accumulation many precious manuscripts in the Cottonian collection. It appears by the manuscript note-book of Sir Nicholas Hyde, chief justice of the King’s Bench from the second to the seventh year of Charles the First, that Sir Robert Cotton had in his library, records, evidences, ledger-books, original letters, and other state papers, belonging to the king ”

“ Drove the ‘Age’ coach from Brighton to London and back for some years from 1836. Died at 5, Hyde Park Terrace, January 25th, 1863.”
It is possible to largely supplement this skeleton biography from the Sporting Magazine and other sources. “The Cottons of Madingley and Landwade,” said that classic authority, “are no ‘soft goods’ of recent manufacture, but have held high rank among the gentry of Cambridgeshire since the reign of Edward I. Sir John Cotton, the first baronet of the family, was advanced to that honour in 1641, by Charles I., to whose cause he was firmly attached. ”

“ Even had there been no war in America, bad times would have come; but with the opening of the civil war between North and South, the Cotton Famine of 1862-3, brought about by the cessation of the supply of raw cotton from the Southern States, brought wealthy cotton-spinners to the verge of ruin, and misery and starvation to hundreds of thousands. Every one in the manufacturing districts suffered, for the classes are dependent one upon another. To manufacturers, workpeople, shopkeepers, professional men, the Cotton Famine was a very grim reality. ”

“ There were then 700,000 operatives, and a sum of £29,400,000 was paid annually in wages. According to the returns for 1905, the exports of cotton goods in that year were valued at £92,000,000, showing an annual increase since 1887 of considerably over a million sterling a year. And still the tide of commercial prosperity is rising; no fewer than eighty new cotton mills having been built in Lancashire in the eighteen months comprising 1906 and the first half of 1907: with the result that there is more work to be done than hands to do it. ”

“ It had to be done by hand, and in each plantation store-house a group of old negroes might be seen, diligently at work in pulling the seeds out from the fibres. Work as hard as they could it was not easy to clean more than a pound a day, so that by the time the crop was ready for market it had cost so much that the planter had to be content with a very small rate of profit. Such was the state of the cotton industry as late as 1792, when the total product was one hundred and thirty-eight thousand pounds. ”

“ When the machine is set in motion the cotton is put into a hopper, which feeds it to the grid, and the revolving saws catch the fibre or lint with their teeth and drag it through the wires. The seeds are too large to follow, so the cotton is torn loose from them and they slide down and out of the way. As the wheel turns round with its teeth full of cotton lint, a revolving brush sweeps it away so that the teeth are cleaned and ready to take up more lint. A simple principle, you may say, but it took a good head to think it out, and to it we owe the famous cotton industry of the South. ”

“ The negroes began to notice that he discontinued his supervisory errands to the fields where the picking of cotton was still in progress and where he had shown himself exceedingly suspicious of the accounts of the weigher and the bulk of the cotton delivered as compared with the distribution of the money furnished by Colonel Kenwynton for paying the cotton pickers. “The ole Cunnel’s crap will sho’ly turn out fur all hit is worf’ dis time,” the grinning darkeys were in the habit of commenting. ”

“ Some have trod, and others may tread, in his footsteps, but Sir Arthur Cotton's task was more difficult than theirs, for he was a pioneer, and had not only to subdue the forces of nature, but to battle with prejudice and ignorance in high places. ”

“ It is well, therefore, sometimes to withdraw a little from the dust and smoke of the battle, which, with us at least, announces the spread of this potentate's power, and to try to disentangle the real questions at issue in the struggle from the eternal complications produced by short-sighted politicians and popular issues. Looking at the policy and tendency of the reign of King Cotton, as hitherto developed and indicated by its most confidential advisers and apostles and by the lapse of time in the so-called Slave States, to what end does it necessarily tend? ”

“ Prosperity had made him giddy. Cotton was not merely King—it was God. Moral considerations were nothing. The sentiment of right, he argued, would have no influence over starving operatives; and England and France, as well as the Eastern States of the Union, would stand aghast and yield to the masterstroke which should deprive them of the material of their labor. Millions were dependent on it in all the great centres of civilization, and the ramifications of its power extended into all ranks of society and all departments of industry and commerce. ”

“ Fit for freedom at present they are not, and, under the existing policy of the Cotton dynasty, never can be. "Whether under any circumstances they could become so is not here a subject of discussion; but, surely, the day will come when the white caste will wish the experiment had been tried. The argument of the Cotton King against the alleviation of the condition of the African is, that his nature does not admit of his enjoyment of true freedom consistently with the security of the community, and therefore he must have none. ”

“ The reviewer is referred to the facts, in the present edition, where he will find, that the amount of crime, at the date to which he refers, was six times greater among the colored people of Massachusetts, in proportion to their numbers, than among those of New Jersey. The next time he undertakes to review King Cotton, it will be best for him not to rely upon his imagination, but to look at the facts. He should be able at least, when quoting a writer, to discriminate between evils resulting from insurrections, and evils growing out of common immoralities. ”

“ John Cotton is of the age of fourtie eight yeeres, or thereabouts, of a reasonable tall stature, slender of body, the haire of his head and beard flaxen, but now inclining to white, well complexioned, with somewhat a long and leane visage. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Slavery, thus intrenched in the midst of such powerful allies, and without competition in tropical cultivation, has become the sole reliance of King Cotton. Lest the sources of his aggrandisement should be assailed, we can well imagine him as being engaged constantly, in devising new questions of agitation, to divert the public from all attempts to abandon free trade and restore the protective policy. ”

“ Yet it would be impossible to try the system of tenant-industry more judiciously than it was tried under those circumstances; and if even that was found, on the whole, to retard the development of self-reliance in the freedmen, what must it be where this is a part of a great system of coercion, and where the mass of the employers are still slaveholders at heart?
It is a fact of the greatest importance, that King Cotton turns out to be a thorough citizen-king, and adapts himself very readily to changed events. ”

“ King Cotton cares not whether he employs slaves or freemen. It is the cotton, not the slaves, upon which his throne is based. Let freemen do his work as well, and he will not object to the change. The efforts of his most powerful ally, Great Britain, to promote that object, have already cost her people many hundreds of millions of dollars, with total failure as a reward for her zeal; and she is now compelled to resort to the expedient of employing the slave labor of Africa, to meet the necessities of her manufacturers. One-sixth of the colored people of the United States are free ”

“ Cotton is recognized as an able advocate, possessed of a comprehensive knowledge of the law and a practical ability in its application, and his developed powers and wide experience are bringing him constantly increasing prominence in his chosen field.
Mr. Cotton is a member of the Anglican church and was formerly a captain in the Fifteenth Shefford Field Battery. A strong liberal, he takes an intelligent interest in public affairs, opposing political corruption wherever he finds it and supporting by word and action pure and clean politics. ”

“ Since, if I may borrow the idea, the nation has caught the old inspiration from his lips and written it in the new organic world. Less than twenty-five years ago slavery clasped hands with King Cotton, and said slavery fights and cotton conquers for American slavery. Since then slavery is dead, the colored man has exchanged the fetters on his wrist for the ballot in his hand. Freedom is king, and Cotton a subject. ”

“ How much may be done in this direction by the genius of a single man has been already shown in this Presidency. Sir Arthur Cotton has scarcely received all the local honors which he deserved, but he has left enduring monuments behind him in the great works, which have made the Deltas of the Cauvery and and the Godavery the granaries of Southern India. ”

“ Edred had had to take up arms against the Northumbrians on account of their revolt, and it was then that Ripon was burnt and destroyed; peace, however, came to the country about 954, and the Danes became obedient to the Saxon king. ”

“ There are several places called Cotton, and antiquaries have doubted from which of them the present family is called. The house usually assigned is that of Cotton, near Wem, in Shropshire, where Sir Hugh Cotton was seated in the reign of Edward I., and whose descendant, Roger Cotton, acquired the estate of Alkington, in the same county, by marriage of the heiress, in the reign of Richard II. He was the ancestor of Sir George Cotton, grantee of Combermere after the Dissolution in 1540, from whom the present family directly descend. ”

“ In his mysterious eyes we may read a dark enthusiasm, akin to that of the woman whose cause he has espoused, combined with a shrewd worldly foresight, which tells him that her doctrines will be productive of change and tumult, the elements of his power and delight. On her left, yet slightly drawn back, so as to evince a less decided support, is Cotton, no young and hot enthusiast, but a mild, grave man in the decline of life, deep in all the learning of the age, and sanctified in heart, and made venerable in feature, by the long exercise of his holy profession. ”

“ Cotton is a little bristly, bohemian man, as fidgetty as a kitten, who runs round the table while he talks to you. When he agrees with you he shuts his eyes tight and shakes his head. When he means anything rather seriously he ends up with a loud nervous laugh. He talks incessantly and is mad on the history of Oxford. ”

“ Here, in what was becoming the heart of the Saxon City, was the Cathedral, but its treasure was at St. Austin's. Cuthbert determined that the law prohibiting intramural burials should cease, and to that end he procured from Eadbert, King of Kent, authority that in future the bodies of the Archbishops deceased should not be buried at St. Austin's as heretofore, but at Christ Church Cathedral; to the intent that they might have their resting-place where they had, living, ruled in honour. ”