LIFE OF COTTON. 249 



says he had been at Roan. His father having married a lady of a 

 Derbyshire family, and she being the daughter and heiress of Edward 

 Beresford, of Beresford and Enson in Staffordshire, and of Bendy in 

 the county of Derby ; it may be presumed, that the descent of the 

 family-seat at Beresford to her, might have been the inducement with 

 her husband to remove, with his family, from their first settlement at 

 Ovingden, to Beresford, i near Ashbourne in Derbyshire, and in the 

 neighbourhood of the Dove, a river that divides the counties of 

 Derby and Stafford, and of which the reader will be told so much 

 hereafter. 



And here we may suppose the younger Mr. Cotton, tempted by the 

 vicinity of a river plentifully stored with fish of the best kinds, to have 

 chosen angling for his recreation; and looking upon it to be, what 

 Walton rightly terms it, an Art, to have applied himself to the im- 

 provement of that branch of it, fishing with an artificial fly. To this 

 end he made himself acquainted with the nature of aquatic insects, 

 with the forms and colours of the several flies that are found on or 

 near rivers, the times of their appearance and departure, and the me- 

 thods of imitating them with furs, silks, feathers, and other materials: 

 in all which researches he exercised such patience, industry, and in- 

 genuity, and succeeded so well, that having, in the following l)m- 

 logues, communicated to the public the result of his experience, he 

 must be deemed the great improver of this elegant recreation, and a 

 benefactor to his posterity. 



There is reason to think, that, after his leaving the university, he 

 was received into his father's family; for we are told that his father, 

 being a man of bright parts, gave him themes and authors whereon 

 to exercise his judgment and learning, even to the time of his entering 

 into the state of matrimony; - the first fruit of which exercises was, 

 as it seems, his Elegy on the gallant Lord Derby. 3 



In 1656, being then twenty-six years of age, and before any patri- 

 mony had descended to him, or he had any visible means of subsisting 

 a family, he married a distant relation, Isabella, daughter of Sir Tho- 

 mas Hutch inson, of Owthorp, in the county of Nottingham, Knt. 4 The 

 distress in which this step might have involved him was averted by 

 the death of his father, in 1658, an event that put him into possession 

 of the family estate : but from the character of his father, as given by 

 Lord Clarendon, it cannot be supposed but that it was struggling with 

 law-suits, and laden with incumbrances. 



The great Lord Falkland was wont to say, that he pitied unlearned 

 gentlemen in rainy weather. Mr. Cotton might possibly entertain 

 the same sentiment; for, in this situation, we find that his employ- 

 ments were, STUDY, for his delight and improvement; and FISHING, 

 for his recreation and health ; for each of which several employments 

 we may suppose he chose the fittest times and seasons. 



In 1660 he published A Panegyric to the Km^s most Excellent 

 Majesty, a prose Pamphlet, in folio, a copy of which is preserved in 

 the Library at the British Museum. 



In 1663 he published the Moral Philosophy of the Stoics, translated 



(1) Beresford is in the hundred of Totmanslow, in Staffordshire. 



(2) Oldy's Life, xii. (3) Ibid. (4) Ibid. xiii. 



