Part 3

COTTESWOLD HILLS, or COTSWOLDS, a range of hills in the western midlands of England. The greater part lies in Gloucestershire, but the system covered by the name also extends into Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and Somersetshire. It extends on a line from N.E. to S.W., forming a part of the great Oolitic belt extending through the English midlands. On the west the hills overlook the vales of Evesham, Gloucester and Berkeley (valleys of the Worcestershire Avon and the Severn), with a bold escarpment broken only by a few abrupt spurs, such as Bredon hill, between Tewkesbury and Evesham. On the east they slope more gently towards the basins of the upper Thames and the Bristol Avon. The watershed lies close to the western line, except where the Stroud valley, with the Frome, draining to the Severn, strikes deep into the heart of the hills. The principal valleys are those of the Windrush, Lech, Coln and Churn, feeders of the Thames, the Thames itself, and the Bristol Avon. The last, wherein lie Bath and Bristol, forms the southern boundary of the Cotteswolds; the northern is formed by the valleys of the Evenlode (draining to the Thames) and the Stour (to the Worcestershire Avon), with the low divide between them. The crest-line from Bath at the south to Meon Hill at the north measures 57 m. The breadth varies from 6 m. in the south to 28 towards the north, and the area is some 300 sq. m. The features are those of a pleasant sequestered pastoral region, rolling plateaus or wolds and bare uplands alternating with deep narrow valleys, well wooded and traversed by shallow, rapid streams. The average elevation is about 600 ft., but Cleeve Cloud above Cheltenham in the Vale of Gloucester reaches 1134 ft., and Broadway Hill, in the north, 1086 ft. These heights command splendid views over the rich vales towards the distant hills of Herefordshire and the Forest of Dean. The picturesque village of Broadway at the foot of the hill of that name is much in favour with artists.

In the soil of the hill country is so much lime that a liberal supply of manure is required. With this good crops of barley and oats are obtained, and even of wheat, if the soil is mixed with clay. But the poorest land of the hill country affords excellent pasturage for sheep, the staple commodity of the district; and the sainfoin, which grows wild, yields abundantly under cultivation. The Cotteswolds have been famous for the breed of sheep named from them since the early part of the 15th century, a breed hardy and prolific, with lambs that quickly put on fleece, and become hardened to the bracing cold of the hills, where vegetation is a month later than in the vales. Improved by judicious crossing with the Leicester sheep, the modern Cotteswold has attained high perfection of weight, shape, fleece and quality. An impulse was given to Cotteswold farming by the chartering in 1845 of the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester.

A number of small market-towns or large villages lie on the outskirts of the hills, but in the inner parts of the district villages are few. The "capital of the Cotteswolds" is Cirencester, in the east. In the north is Chipping Campden, its great Perpendicular church and the picturesque houses of its wide street commemorating the wealth of its wool-merchants between the 14th and 17th centuries. Near this town, in the parish of Weston-sub-Edge, Robert Dover, an attorney, founded the once famous Cotteswold games early in the 17th century. Horse-racing and coursing were included with every sort of athletic exercise from quoits and skittles to wrestling, cudgels and singlestick. The games were suppressed by act of parliament in 1851.

See _Proceedings of the Cotteswold Naturalists' Field Club, passim_; W. H. Hutton, _By Thames and Cotswold_ (London, 1903).

COTTET, CHARLES (1863- ), French painter, was born at Puy. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and under Puvis de Chavannes and Roll. He travelled and painted in Egypt, Italy, and on the Lake of Geneva, but he made his name with his sombre and gloomy, firmly designed, severe and impressive scenes of life on the Brittany coast. His signal success was achieved by his painting of the triptych, "_Au pays de la mer_," now at the Luxembourg museum. The Lille gallery has his "Burial in Brittany."

COTTII REGNUM, a district in the north of Liguria, including a considerable part of the important road which led over the pass (6119 ft.) of the Alpis Cottia (Mont Genevre) into Gaul. Whether Hannibal crossed the Alps by this route is disputed, but it was certainly in use about 100 B.C. (see PUNIC WARS). In 58 B.C. Caesar met with some resistance on crossing it, but seems afterwards to have entered into friendly relations with Donnus, the king of the district; he must have used it frequently, and refers to it as the shortest route. Donnus's son Cottius erected the triumphal arch at his capital Segusio, the modern Susa, in honour of Augustus. Under Nero, after the death of the last Cottius, it became a province under the title of "Alpes Cottiae," being governed by a _procurator Augusti_, though it still kept its old name also.

COTTIN, MARIE [called SOPHIE] (1770-1807), French novelist, _nee_ Risteau (not Ristaud), was born in Paris in 1770. At seventeen she married a Bordeaux banker, who died three years after, when she retired to a house in the country at Champlan, where she spent the rest of her life. In 1799 she published anonymously her _Claire d'Albe_. _Malvina_ (1801) was also anonymous; but the success of _Amelie Mansfield_ (1803) induced her to reveal her identity. In 1805 appeared _Mathilde_, an extravagant crusading story, and in 1806 she produced her last tale, the famous _Elisabeth, ou les exiles de Siberie_, the subject of which was treated later with an admirable simplicity by Xavier de Maistre. Sainte-Beuve asserted that she committed suicide on account of an unfortunate attachment. This story is, however, unauthenticated. She died at Champlan (Seine et Oise) on the 25th of April 1807.

A complete edition of her works, with a notice by A. Petitot, was published, in five volumes, in 1817.

COTTINGTON, FRANCIS COTTINGTON, BARON (1578-1652), English lord treasurer and ambassador, was the fourth son of Philip Cottington of Godmonston in Somersetshire. According to Hoare, his mother was Jane, daughter of Thomas Biflete, but according to Clarendon "a Stafford nearly allied to Sir Edward Stafford," through whom he was recommended to Sir Charles Cornwallis, ambassador to Spain, becoming a member of his suite and acting as English agent on the latter's recall, from 1609 to 1611. In 1612 he was appointed English consul at Seville. Returning to England, he was made a clerk of the council in September 1613. His Spanish experience rendered him useful to the king, and his bias in favour of Spain was always marked. He seems to have promoted the Spanish policy from the first, and pressed on Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, the proposal for the Spanish in opposition to the French marriage for Prince Charles. He was a Roman Catholic at least at heart, becoming a member of that communion in 1623, returning to Protestantism, and again declaring himself a Roman Catholic in 1636, and supporting the cause of the Roman Catholics in England. In 1616 he went as ambassador to Spain, making in 1618 James's proposal of mediation in the dispute with the elector palatine. After his return he was appointed secretary to the prince of Wales in October 1622, and was knighted and made a baronet in 1623. He strongly disapproved of the prince's expedition to Spain, as an adventure likely to upset the whole policy of marriage and alliance, but was overruled and chosen to accompany him. His opposition greatly incensed Buckingham, and still more his perseverance in the Spanish policy after the failure of the expedition, and on Charles's accession Cottington was through his means dismissed from all his employments and forbidden to appear at court. The duke's assassination, however, enabled him to return. On the 12th of November 1628 he was made a privy councillor, and in March 1629 appointed chancellor of the exchequer. In the autumn he was again sent ambassador to Spain; he signed the treaty of peace of the 5th of November 1630, and subsequently a secret agreement arranging for the partition of Holland between Spain and England in return for the restoration of the Palatinate. On the 10th of July 1631 he was created Baron Cottington of Hanworth in Middlesex.

In March 1635 he was appointed master of the court of wards, and his exactions in this office were a principal cause of the unpopularity of the government. He was also appointed a commissioner for the treasury, together with Laud. Between Cottington and the latter there sprang up a fierce rivalry. In these personal encounters Cottington had nearly always the advantage, for he practised great reserve and possessed great powers of self-command, an extraordinary talent for dissembling and a fund of humour. Laud completely lacked these qualities, and though really possessing much greater influence with Charles, he was often embarrassed and sometimes exposed to ridicule by his opponent. The aim of Cottington's ambition was the place of lord treasurer, but Laud finally triumphed and secured it for his own nominee, Bishop Juxon, when Cottington became "no more a leader but meddled with his particular duties only."[1] He continued, however, to take a large share in public business and served on the committees for foreign, Irish and Scottish affairs. In the last, appointed in July 1638, he supported the war, and in May 1640, after the dismissal of the Short Parliament, he declared it his opinion that at such a crisis the king might levy money without the Parliament. His attempts to get funds from the city were unsuccessful, and he had recourse instead to a speculation in pepper. He had been appointed constable of the Tower, and he now prepared the fortress for a siege. In the trial of Strafford in 1641 Cottington denied on oath that he had heard him use the incriminating words about "reducing this kingdom." When the parliamentary opposition became too strong to be any longer defied, Cottington, as one of those who had chiefly incurred their hostility, hastened to retire from the administration, giving up the court of wards in May 1641 and the chancellorship of the exchequer in January 1642. He rejoined the king in 1643, took part in the proceedings of the Oxford parliament, and was made lord treasurer on the 3rd of October 1643. He signed the surrender of Oxford in July 1646, and being excepted from the indemnity retired abroad. He joined Prince Charles at the Hague in 1648, and became one of his counsellors. In 1649, together with Hyde, Cottington went on a mission to Spain to obtain help for the royal cause, having an interview with Mazarin at Paris on the way. They met, however, with an extremely ill reception, and Cottington found he had completely lost his popularity at the Spanish court, one cause being his shortcomings and waverings in the matter of religion. He now announced his intention of remaining in Spain and of keeping faithful to Roman Catholicism, and took up his residence at Valladolid, where he was maintained by the Jesuits. He died there on the 19th of June 1652, his body being subsequently buried in Westminster Abbey. He had amassed a large fortune and built two magnificent houses at Hanworth and Founthill. Cottington was evidently a man of considerable ability, but the foreign policy pursued by him was opposed to the national interests and futile in itself. According to Clarendon's verdict "he left behind him a greater esteem of his parts than love of his person." He married in 1623 Anne, daughter of Sir William Meredith and widow of Sir Robert Brett. All his children predeceased him, and his title became extinct at his death.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Article in the _Dict. of Nat. Biography_ and authorities there quoted; Clarendon's _Hist. of the Rebellion, passim_, and esp. xiii. 30 (his character), and xii., xiii. (account of the Spanish mission in 1649); Clarendon's _State Papers and Life_; Strafford's _Letters_; Gardiner's _Hist. of England and of the Commonwealth_; Hoare's _Wiltshire_; Laud's _Works_, vols, iii.-vii.; Winwood's _Memorials: A Refutation of a False and Impious Aspersion cast on the late Lord Cottington_; Dart, _Westmonasterium_, i. 181 (epitaph and monument). (P. C. Y.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Strafford's _Letters_, ii. 52.

COTTON, the name of a well-known family of Anglo-Indian administrators, of whom the following are the most notable.

SIR ARTHUR THOMAS COTTON (1803-1899), English engineer, tenth son of Henry Calveley Cotton, was born on the 15th of May 1803, and was educated at Addiscombe. He entered the Madras engineers in 1819, served in the first Burmese war (1824-26), and in 1828 began his life-work on the irrigation works of southern India. He constructed works on the Cauvery, Coleroon, Godavari and Kistna rivers, making anicuts (dams) on the Coleroon (1836-1838) for the irrigation of the Tanjore, Trichinopoly and South Arcot districts; and on the Godivari (1847-1852) for the irrigation of the Godavari district. He also projected the anicut on the Kistna (Krishna), which was carried out by other officers. Before the beginning of his work Tanjore and the adjoining districts were threatened with ruin from lack of water; on its completion they became the richest part of Madras, and Tanjore returned the largest revenue of any district in India. He was the founder of the school of Indian hydraulic engineering, and carried out much of his work in the face of opposition and discouragement from the Madras government; though, in the minute of the 15th of May 1858, that government paid an ample tribute to the genius of Cotton's "master mind." He was knighted in 1861. Sir Arthur Cotton believed in the possibility of constructing a complete system of irrigation and navigation canals throughout India, and devoted the whole of a long life to the partial realization of this project. He died on the 24th of July 1899.

See Lady Hope, _General Sir Arthur Cotton_ (1900).

SIR HENRY JOHN STEDMAN COTTON (1845- ), Anglo-Indian administrator, son of J. J. Cotton of the Madras Civil Service, was born on the 13th of September 1845, and was educated at Magdalen College school and King's College, London. He entered the Bengal Civil Service in 1867, and held various appointments of increasing importance until he became chief secretary to the Bengal government (1891-1896), acting home secretary to the government of India (1896), and chief commissioner of Assam (1896-1902). He retired in 1902, and soon became known as the leading English champion of the Indian nationalists. In 1906 he entered parliament as Liberal member for East Nottingham. He was the author of _New India_ (1885; revised 1904-1907).

His brother, JAMES SUTHERLAND COTTON (1847- ), was born in India on the 17th of July 1847, and was educated at Magdalen College school and Trinity College, Oxford. For many years he was editor of the _Academy_; he published various works on Indian subjects, and was the English editor of the revised edition of the _Imperial Gazetteer of India_ (1908).

COTTON, CHARLES (1630-1687), English poet, the translator of Montaigne, was born at Beresford in Staffordshire on the 28th of April 1630. His father, Charles Cotton, was a man of marked ability, and counted among his friends Ben Jonson, John Selden, Sir Henry Wotton and Izaak Walton. The son was apparently not sent to the university, but he had as tutor Ralph Rawson, one of the fellows ejected from Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1648. Cotton travelled in France and perhaps in Italy, and at the age of twenty-eight he succeeded to an estate greatly encumbered by lawsuits during his father's lifetime. The rest of his life was spent chiefly in country pursuits, but from his _Voyage to Ireland in Burlesque_ (1670) we know that he held a captain's commission and was ordered to that country. His friendship with Izaak Walton began about 1655, and the fact of this intimacy seems a sufficient answer to the charges sometimes brought against Cotton's character, based chiefly on his coarse burlesques of Virgil and Lucian. Walton's initials made into a cipher with his own were placed over the door of his fishing cottage on the Dove; and to the _Compleat Angler_ he added "Instructions how to angle for a trout or grayling in a clear stream." He married in 1656 his cousin Isabella, who was a sister of Colonel Hutchinson. It was for his wife's sister, Miss Stanhope Hutchinson, that he undertook the translation of Corneille's _Horace_ (1671). His wife died in 1670 and five years later he married the dowager countess of Ardglass; she had a jointure of L1500 a year, but it was secured from his extravagance, and at his death in 1687 he was insolvent. 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. Coleridge praises the purity and unaffectedness of his style in _Biographia Literaria_, and Wordsworth (_Preface_, 1815) gave a copious quotation from the "Ode to Winter." The "Retirement" is printed by Walton in the second part of the _Compleat Angler_. His masterpiece in translation, the _Essays of M. de Montaigne_ (1685-1686, 1693, 1700, &c.), has often been reprinted, and still maintains its reputation; his other works include _The Scarronides, or Virgil Travestie_ (1664-1670), a gross burlesque of the first and fourth books of the Aeneid, which ran through fifteen editions; _Burlesque upon Burlesque, ... being some of Lucian's Dialogues newly put into English fustian_ (1675); _The Moral Philosophy of the Stoicks_ (1667), from the French of Guillaume du Vair; _The History of the Life of the Duke d'Espernon_ (1670), from the French of G. Girard; the _Commentaries_ (1674) of Blaise de Montluc; the _Planter's Manual_ (1675), a practical book on arboriculture, in which he was an expert; _The Wonders of the Peake_ (1681); the _Compleat Gamester_ and _The Fair one of Tunis_, both dated 1674, are also assigned to Cotton.

William Oldys contributed a life of Cotton to Hawkins's edition (1760) of the _Compleat Angler_. His _Lyrical Poems_ were edited by J. R. Tutin in 1903, from an unsatisfactory edition of 1689. His translation of Montaigne was edited in 1892, and in a more elaborate form in 1902, by W. C. Hazlitt, who omitted or relegated to the notes the passages in which Cotton interpolates his own matter, and supplied his omissions.

COTTON, GEORGE EDWARD LYNCH (1813-1866), English educationist and divine, was born at Chester on the 29th of October 1813. He received his education at Westminster school, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. Here he joined the Low Church party, and was also the intimate friend of several disciples of Thomas Arnold, among whom were C. J. Vaughan and W. J. Conybeare. The influence of Arnold determined the character and course of his life. He graduated B.A. in 1836, and became an assistant-master at Rugby. Here he worked devotedly for fifteen years, inspired with Arnold's spirit, and heartily entering into his plans and methods. He became master of the fifth form about 1840 and was singularly successful with the boys. In 1852 he accepted the appointment of headmaster at Marlborough College, then in a state of almost hopeless disorganization, and in his six years of rule raised it to a high position. In 1858 Cotton was offered the see of Calcutta, which, after much hesitation about quitting Marlborough, he accepted. For its peculiar duties and responsibilities he was remarkably fitted by the simplicity and strength of his character, by his large tolerance, and by the experience which he had gained as teacher and ruler at Rugby and Marlborough. The government of India had just been transferred from the East India Company to the crown, and questions of education were eagerly discussed. Cotton gave himself energetically to the work of establishing schools for British and Eurasian children, classes which had been hitherto much neglected. He did much also to improve the position of the chaplains, and was unwearied in missionary visitation. His sudden death was widely mourned. On the 6th of October 1866 he had consecrated a cemetery at Kushtea on the Ganges, and was crossing a plank leading from the bank to the steamer when he slipped and fell into the river. He was carried away by the current and never seen again.

A memoir of his life with selections from his journals and correspondence, edited by his widow, was published in 1871.

COTTON, JOHN (1585-1652), English and American Puritan divine, sometimes called "The Patriarch of New England," born in Derby, England, on the 4th of December 1585. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1603 and M.A. in 1606, and became a fellow in Emmanuel College, Cambridge, then a stronghold of Puritanism, where, during the next six years, according to his friend and biographer, Rev. Samuel Whiting, he was "head lecturer and dean, and Catechist," and "a dilligent tutor to many pupils." In June 1612 he became vicar of the parish church of St Botolphs in Boston, Lincolnshire, where he remained for twenty-one years and was extremely popular. Becoming more and more a Puritan in spirit, he ceased, about 1615, to observe certain ceremonies prescribed by the legally authorized ritual, and in 1632 action was begun against him in the High Commission Court. He thereupon escaped, disguised, to London, lay in concealment there for several months, and, having been deeply interested from its beginning in the colonization of New England, he eluded the watch set for him at the various English ports, and in July 1633 emigrated to the colony of Massachusetts Bay, arriving at Boston early in September. On the 10th of October he was chosen "teacher" of the First Church of Boston, of which John Wilson (1588-1667) was pastor, and here he remained until his death on the 23rd of December 1652. In the newer, as in the older Boston, his popularity was almost unbounded, and his influence, both in ecclesiastical and in civil affairs, was probably greater than that of any other minister in theocratic New England. According to the contemporary historian, William Hubbard, "Whatever he delivered in the pulpit was soon put into an order of court, if of a civil, or set up as a practice in the church, if of an ecclesiastical concernment." His influence, too, was generally beneficent, though it was never used to further the cause of religious freedom, or of democracy, his theory of government being given in an oft-quoted passage: "Democracy, I do not conceyve that ever God did ordeyne as a fitt government eyther for church or commonwealth.... As for Monarchy and aristocracy they are both for them clearly approved, and directed in Scripture yet so as (God) referreth the sovereigntie to himselfe, and setteth up Theocracy in both, as the best form of government." He naturally took an active part in most, if not all, of the political and theological controversies of his time, the two principal of which were those concerning Antinomianism and the expulsion of Roger Williams. In the former his position was somewhat equivocal--he first supported and then violently opposed Anne Hutchinson,--in the latter he approved Williams's expulsion as "righteous in the eyes of God," and subsequently in a pamphlet discussion with Williams,

## particularly in his _Bloudy Tenent, Washed and made White in the Blood