298 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
[2n4 S. No 15., Aprin 12. °56. 
rates, viz. the eagle, “41s. sterling; half-eagle, 
20s. 6d.; quarter-eagle, 10s. 3d.; and the gold 
dollar at the rate of 4s, 1d. New: 
COTTON FAMILY. 
(24 S, i, 250.) 
Cutusert Bepe will find the fullest particulars 
of all he requires in Wotton’s Baronetage, ed. 
1741, vol. i. p.137. It is so common a book that 
it would be encroaching on the valuable space of 
“N. & Q.” to repeat them here, but he will dis- 
cover also that he has made some wrong de- 
ductions, which his own information does not 
warrant. 
He supposes Dame Alice to be the jirst wife, 
and as she had given birth to a daughter in 1642, 
if Dame Margaret were the second, and born in 
1593, the earliest period she could have been 
married would have been at the age of fifty, and 
this is rather late to become the mother (as the 
epitaph assures us) of four sons and two daughters. 
I name four, for though Curazert Bens imagines 
there were only three, the epitaph does not in 
truth oppose the pedigree. The “uno prerepto” 
is not included in the three. This was Thomas, 
who died et. seventeen, and was buried (CuTH- 
BERT BepE says) at Steeple Gidding. 
The argument deduced from the date of Jan- 
sen’s picture will, on consideration, be found of no 
value. Curupert Breve says that Margaret, born 
1593, was painted at the age of seventy-three by 
Cornelius Jansen, and consequently in the year 
1666; but this would be eighteen years after 
Jansen had given up painting in England and re- 
tired to Holland, and what is a still stronger ob- 
jection, a year after Jansen’s death, which took 
place in 1665. The error is probably not in the 
date of her birth, but rather of her age when 
painted. As Alice was a wife and mother in 
1642, the latest period to affix to the picture is 
1640, and Margaret, if then seventy-three, must 
have been born in 1567; consequently, at the 
birth of her son John in 1621, she was fifty-four ! 
Is this likely ? 
On the other hand the statement in Wotton, 
that Margaret was first, and Alice second, wife of 
Sir Thomas Cotton, does not militate against any 
fact advanced by Cutusert Bens, except that of 
Jansen painting Margaret in 1666, which is proved 
erroneous on other grounds. 
The entry in the register, 1688, to Mrs. Mar- 
garet Cotton, could not possibly mean Lady or 
Dame Margaret. It was probably that of one of 
Sir John’s daughters, of whom many died young. 
Curnsert Bepe is aware that at that period the 
term Mistress was applied more to single than 
married ladies, the latter being called Madam. 
I hope Curunert Bene will excuse the liberty 
Ihave taken in enforcing the necessity of carefully 
sifting deductive evidence, for upon this depends 
its value or its danger to a genealogist. May I 
now add a Query of my own: Of what family was 
Thomas Cotton, a member of Gray’s Inn, who in 
1632 married, at Kensington, Magdalen, a daugh- 
ter of Sir Thomas Monson ? Monson. 
Gatton Park. 
In reply to Curusert Beve I have the plea- 
sure of sending an extract from an ancient pedi- 
gree of the family of Cotton, which was given to 
me by one of the descendants and representatives 
of Sir Robert the antiquary. The first wife of 
Sir Thomas was “ Margaret, daughter of Lord 
William Howard, third son of Thomas, Duke of 
Norfolk. He was K.G., and ancestor of the 
Earls of Carlisle: married June 17, 1617 ; died 
March 5, 1625.” His second wife was “ Alice, 
daughter and heir of John Constable of Dro- 
monby, in Yorkshire. She was relict of Edward 
Anderson of Stretton, Bedfordshire, Esq.; he 
died April 4, 1638. Quarterly gules and vaire, 
over all a bend or, thereon an annulet sa. for 
difference.” By his first wife he had “ Sir John 
Cotton, Bart., of Stretton, in right of his wife 
member for the town of Hunts, 13 Car. II., and 
for the county, 1 Jac. II.; died Sept. 12, 1702, 
aged eighty-one.” This Sir John married two 
wives, ‘ Hlizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas 
Honeywood, of Markshall in Essex, Knight;” 
and “Dorothy, daughter and heir of Edmond 
Anderson, of Stretton, Esq., by Alice his wife. 
Argent, a chevron between three crosses, patonce 
sable.” The other children of Sir Thomas by his 
first wife were “ Lucy, born 1618 (who married 
Sir Philip Wodehouse, of Kimberley, Norfolk, 
Bart.) ; and Frances, born 1619,” who died 1636, 
unmarried. By his second wife, Alice, he had 
“ Thomas, ob. s.p., zt. seventeen;” Sir Robert 
Cotton, Knt., married “ Gertrude, daughter of Sir 
William Morice, of Werrington, Devon, Bart ;” 
“ Phillip, of Conington, died -s.p.;” “ William, of 
Cotton Holme, Cheshire,” who married Mary, 
daughter of Robert Pulleyn, Rector of Thurleston, 
Leicestershire ; ‘“‘ Frances Cotton,” who married 
Sir Thomas Proby, of Elton, Hunts; and “ Alice 
Cotton,” who married Sir Humphrey Mamonx, of 
Wotton, in Beds, Bart. L. B.L 
Sir Thomas Cotton’s first wife was Margaret 
Howard, eldest daughter of Lord William Howard, 
of Naworth Castle, married June 17, 1617; she 
died March 3, 1621. 
His second wife was Alice, only daughter and 
heir of Sir John Constable, Knt., of Dromonby, 
York. She had married for her first husband 
