Communicated ly Mr. James Waylen. 



337 



Grimstead, and Moor Overton, witb their demesnes and tenements^ 

 worth £173 9s. 2d. per annum ; old rents belonging thereto, £22 ; 

 dry freehold rents, do., £12. His fine was at first declared at 

 £5134 165.76?., but on his settling ministers in four rectories, it 

 was reduced to £1459 16s. 7d. See further in the Falstone day 

 book, under date 3rd December, 1645. 



Francis, Lord Cottington, of Fonthill, was the fourth son of 

 Philip Cottington, of Godmanstone, in Somerset, Esq. Having 

 held the offices of Clerk of the Council in the reign of King James 

 and Secretary to Prince Charles, he was created a baronet in 1623, 

 and after Charles's accession became Chancellor and Under Treasurer 

 of the Exchequer, and eventually Lord Treasurer and Master of the 

 Wards. For some years he was ambassador at the Court of Madrid, 

 where he acquired an attachment for the country, and perhaps also 

 a touch of Spanish manners, for during the wars which followed 

 he was frequently satirised as " Cottington the Spaniard " and " Don 

 Diego Cottington." The able sketch of his character in Lord 

 Clarendon's History exhibits that combination of stateliness and 

 drollery which sufficiently accounts for the above sobriquet. On 

 his return from Spain he was elevated to the peerage in 1631 as 

 Lord Cottington, Baron of Hanworth, in Middlesex. It is hardly 

 necessary to say that throughout the war he was Charles's un- 

 flinching adherent, or rather, perhaps, a steady hater of the Re- 

 publicans, for he was too old to have wantonly courted the collision, 

 and was hardly capable of a generous enthusiasm in any man's 

 behalf. After the King's death he went into exile with the young 

 Prince, and in 1653 died at Valladolid, in Spain, having outlived all 

 his children, whereby his title expired, and Fonthill with other 

 estates passed to his nephew, Charles Cottington, Esq. In 1716 

 this nephew, or his son, was nominated a peer with the title of 

 Baron Cottington, of Fonthill, by James Stuart, known as the 

 elder Pretender, but the next representative died, s.p., in 1758 ; 

 previously to which he had, as is supposed, alienated Fonthill to 

 William Beckford, the London alderman. The lady of the first 

 Lord Cottington was Anne, daughter of Sir William Meredith, 

 Knight. Fonthill had been in possession of the Mervins ever since 



