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 of the exchequer to Pym, and the court of wards to Say. The ‘sharp expressions’ he had used in the council, made known during Strafford's trial by Vane's notes, added to his danger. In May 1641 he did actually surrender the court of wards to Say (17 May), and also the lieutenancy of Dorsetshire to Salisbury (10 May), but he retained the chancellorship of the exchequer till the appointment of Sir John Colepeper in January 1642. According to Clarendon, Strafford had recommended the king to send Cottington to succeed him in Ireland as deputy, ‘but the winds were too high and too much against him then to venture thither’ (Rebellion, App. M. 6).

Cottington was not one of the peers who joined the king at York at the beginning of the war. In a petition to the House of Lords he represents himself as ill with gout at Founthill, and appears as paying assessments to the parliament (Lords' Journals, v. 417). In 1643, however, he joined the king, and was one of the ‘junto’ set up by Charles in the autumn of that year (, Life, iii. 37). He also took part in the Oxford parliament, was appointed lord treasurer on 3 Oct. 1643 (, Docquets of Letters Patent signed by Charles I at Oxford, p. 80), and signed the capitulation of Oxford in July 1646. Being one of the persons excepted by the parliament from any indemnity or composition, he went abroad, and during the earlier part of his exile seems to have lived at Rouen. Thence the queen summoned him in May 1648 to attend Prince Charles, and after being taken by an Ostend pirate, and losing 1,000l. on the way, he at length reached the Hague (, Rebellion, xi. 23; Life, v. 11). After the king's execution a determined attempt was made by Lord Jermyn to exclude Cottington from the council of Charles II. It was not successful; but, nevertheless, in April 1649, on the suggestion of the prince, it was determined by the king that Cottington should go to Spain to endeavour to raise money, and Hyde resolved to accompany him (Rebellion, xii. 35; Nicholas Papers, Camd. Soc., p. 124). Their instructions are dated 24 May 1649 (Calendar of Clarendon State Papers, ii. 48). The ambassadors, who reached Spain in November 1649, were coldly received, slighted, and could effect nothing. The deliberations of the Spanish council on the question of their reception have been printed by Guizot (Cromwell, i. App. vi. x. xi.), and Clarendon has left a long account of their mission (Rebellion, bk. xiii.). Cottington's old influence had entirely vanished; ‘he is more contemned and hated here than you can imagine,’ writes Hyde; ‘without question we might have done more in the king's business if it had not been for him, who yet will not understand that they are not his friends’ (Clarendon State Papers, iii. 25). The destruction of the Spanish fleet in the Downs by the Dutch in 1639 was ‘most unjustly laid to his want of kindness,’ and another cause of the Spanish king's ‘notable aversion from him was furnished by Cottington's apostasy from the catholic religion.’ His religious history was indeed somewhat remarkable. Cornwallis records an attempt to convert him to catholicism in 1607 (Winwood Papers, ii. 321), but he did not actually become a catholic till 1623, during a dangerous illness which took place while he was at Madrid (Narrative of the Spanish Marriage Treaty, Camd. Soc., 249).

Returning to England he again adopted protestantism, but made a second declaration of catholicism during another illness in 1636 (, History of England, viii. 140). Now resolving, as he wrote to the king on 1 March 1651, to remain in Spain, he determined again to become a catholic, and was after considerable difficulties reconciled by the papal nuncio (, Rebellion, xiii. 27; Calendar of Clarendon State Papers, ii. 97). He succeeded in obtaining license to remain at Valladolid, and a promise that his necessities should be supplied. The care of the English jesuits provided and made ready for him the house in that city where he had before resided during the reign of Philip III, and there he died, on 19 June, 1652, at the age of seventy-four. His body was brought to England in 1679, and interred in Westminster Abbey by his grand-nephew, Charles Cottington. His epitaph and an engraving of his monument are in Dart's ‘Westmonasterium’ (i. 181). Clarendon, who describes his character at length, terms him a very wise man, and praises above all his great self-command. One of his chief characteristics was his dry humour; ‘under a grave countenance he covered the most of mirth, and caused more than any man of the most pleasant disposition.’ ‘His greatest fault was that he could dissemble,’ a fault of which all who had any dealings with him continually complain. He raised by his industry an estate of about 4,000l. a year, and built himself at Hanworth and Founthill two of the finest houses in England (Strafford Papers, i. 51, ii. 118). Clarendon concludes by saying that ‘he left behind him a greater esteem of his parts than love of his person.’ With his death the barony of Cottington became extinct. He married in 1623 Sir Robert Brett's young widow, Anne, daughter of Sir William Meredith, sometime pay-