22 Sporting and Rural Records of the Cheveley Estate. 



The Cotton 

 Family. 



Sir John H. 

 Cotton, Bart. 



Admiral Sir 

 Charles Cotton. 



Sir " Vinny 

 Cotton. 



Being hurt when his valet was pulHng off his boots after an attack 

 of the gout, Sir John, in the extremity of the pain he felt, swore 

 at his leg. His valet, an old and trusted servant, took the liberty 

 to advise his master, not only to not exceed six bottles of port, but 

 to stint himself to a less quantity, upon which Sir John hastily told 

 him that if his leg could not bear his daily quantity of six bottles, it 

 was no leg for him. He died February 4, 1752, and was succeeded 

 by his only son and heir, Sir John Hynde Cotton, third Baronet, 

 the fifteenth heir male of the family, and the sixth of the name of 

 John in a regular succession. He was educated at Westminster 

 School and Emanuel College, Cambridge. He was elected M.P. 

 for the borough of Marlborough on the vacancy which was caused 

 there by the death of his father in i 752, and he was re-elected for the 

 same constituency in 1745. He married, in 1745, his cousin Anne, 

 one of the daughters of Humphrey Parsons, Esq., Alderman, and 

 twice Lord Mayor of London, on whose decease he had a share in 

 the then famous brewery in the parish of St. Catherine's, London, 

 where he had the honour to entertain, on Saturday, April 22, 

 1763, the Duke of York, with " beef-stakes dressed upon the coals 

 in the stoak-hole of the said brewhouse." He died January 23, 

 1795, aged 78, and was succeeded by his son, Admiral Sir Charles 

 Cotton, Bart., who died on board the Pe/onis frigate, off Plymouth, 

 February 23, 181 2. 



His eldest son. Sir St. Vincent Cotton, sixth and last Baronet, 

 was born at Madingley Hall, Cambridgeshire, on October 6, 1801. 

 He was educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, and 

 obtained a lieutenancy in the loth Light Dragoons on December 13, 

 1827, and served with his regiment in Portugal. During his resi- 

 dence abroad he kept up a correspondence with the driver of the 

 " Cambridge Times " coach, in which he did not give a very 

 favourable opinion of the Portuguese. After his return to England 

 in 1830, he retired from the army. He very soon distinguished 

 himself in the hunting, shooting, racing, cricketing, and pugilistic 

 world. He was familiarly known either as Vinny Cotton or as Sir 



