LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON. 233 



Or if she be discontented, 

 Lord ! how am I then tormented ! 

 And am ready to persuade her 

 That I have unhappy made her ; 

 But if sick, then I am dying, 

 Meat and med'cine both defying. 



This lady, the delight of his heart, and the partner of his 

 sorrows, 'he had the misfortune to lose ; but in what period 

 of his life is not certain. 



We might flatter ourselves, that his sun set brighter than 

 it rose ; for his second marriage, which was with the 

 Countess Dowager of Ardglass, who possessed a jointure 

 of fifteen hundred a-year, and survived him, might suggest 

 a hope that he might have been thereby enabled to 

 extricate himself out of the greatest of his difficulties ; and, 

 in reality, to enjoy that tranquillity of mind which he 

 describes with so much feeling in the Stanzes Irreguliers : 

 but this supposition seems to be contradicted by a fact, 

 which the act of administration of his effects, upon his 

 decease, discloses, namely, that the same was granted " to 

 Elizabeth Bludworth, his principal creditrix ; the Hon. 

 Mary Countess Dowager of Ardglass, his widow, Beres- 

 ford Cotton, Esq., Olive Cotton, Catherine Cotton, Jane 

 Cotton, and Mary Cotton, his natural and lawful children, 

 first renouncing." 



The above act, bearing date the 12th day of September, 

 1687, fixes, perhaps, within a few days, the day of his death ; 

 and describes him as having lived in the parish of St James, 

 Westminster : it also ascertains his issue, which were all by 

 his first lady. 



There is a tradition current in his neighbourhood, that 

 he had, by some sarcastic expression in his writings, so 

 offended an aunt of his, that she revoked a clause in her 

 will, whereby she had bequeathed to him an estate of five 

 hundred pounds a-year : but as two unlikely circumstances 

 must concur to render such a report credible, great impru- 

 dence in himself, and want of charity in her ; and there is 

 no such offensive passage to be found in any of his writings, 

 we may presume the tradition to be groundless. 



Of the future fortunes of his descendants, little is known, 

 save that, to his son, Beresford Cotton, was given a company 

 in a regiment of foot, raised by the Earl of Derby for the 

 service of King William ; and that one of his daughters 

 became the wife of that eminent divine, Dr George 



