clxxviii LIFE OF 



Part of this story is, however, rendered extremely doubtful by the 

 following facts. The lady 6 was a younger child of a large family, 

 and therefore was not likely to have had much fortune at her own 

 disposal : moreover, she appears to have died before Cotton was 

 twenty years of age, and long before " Virgil Travestie " was 

 published and whilst he was only distantly related to her, 

 she had a brother, several sisters, and many nephews and 

 nieces. 



In the same year, 1670, Cotton published a translation of Ger- 

 ard's History of the Life of the Duke of Espernon, in a folio 

 volume, which he dedicated to Dr Gilbert Sheldon, Archbishop of 

 Canterbury. His motive for inscribing it to that prelate he thus 

 explained in his letter to the Archbishop, dated at Beresford on the 

 3oth of October 1669 : 



" I have been prompted thereunto by an honest vanity I have, the world 

 should take notice, that how private soever my life has been, I have not 

 altogether conversed with obscurity ; but that I have had the honour to be 

 sometime known unto, and to have been favoured by one of the greatest 

 Prelates, and the best men upon earth. " 



He also said that the work " has so the much better title to your 

 acceptance, as it is the fruit of the most innocent part of my time ; 

 and offered with a heart as grateful for the many favours I have 

 received from your Grace's bounty, and as full of honour and 

 reverence for your person and dignity, as any man who in a better 

 and more studied stile, may take the boldness to subscribe himself," 

 &c. 



Some extracts from the preface will be read with interest 

 because they afford information about Cotton himself : 



"Having about three years since, and in the vacancy of a country life, 

 taken this volume in hand, before I had gone through the first three 

 books, I was called away first by employment, and after dismissed from 

 that, taken off by so long and so uncomfortable a sickness, that I found 

 myself utterly unfit for any undertaking of this, or any other kind ; and 

 consequently, had almost given over all thoughts of proceeding in a work, 



well. That gentleman added, " This tradition has been handed down in a family for 

 four generations from the great-grandfather, John Marsh, who was a servant in the 

 Cotton family, and a great favourite of the poet's, to John Marsh, his great-grandson, 

 who has often related it to me as being certainly what happened." 



6 Lucy Cokayne was the fifth daughter of Thomas Cokayne. She was born shortly 

 after 1612, and died unmarried at the age of thirty-four, probably about 1647, and cer- 

 tainly before 1658. See an epitaph by Sir Aston Cokayne on his dear sister Mrs Lettice 

 Armstrong, ''who deceased about the 43d of her age, and of Mrs Lucy Cokayne, who 

 died about the 34th of hers, and lye both buried at Ashborn." Cokayne' s Poems, p. 

 214. 



