Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/312

Cotton of the chamber, an office which conferred upon its holder rooms adjoining the palace, and the supervision of the accounts of the king's tradesmen. Cotton was very tall and very stout, and the caricatures of the day represented the ministers thrusting him down the king's throat. The office of treasurer he held until 1746, during which period he never voted with the court. In 1746 he was dismissed, and shortly afterwards led the remnant of his Jacobite friends to the standard of the Prince of Wales, in opposition to the ministry of the day. He died, at Park Place, St. James's, London, on 4 Jan. 1752, and was buried at Lanwade, in a vault made by himself, between his two wives. The first of these was Lettice, second daughter of Sir Ambrose Crowley, who brought him 10,000l. She died in August 1718, leaving one son, Sir John Hynde, father of Sir Charles Cotton [q. v.], and one daughter. His second wife was Margaret, daughter of James Craggs the elder [q. v.], and widow of Samuel Trefusis of Trefusis in Cornwall, and through her Cotton obtained a third of the property of her father and brother. She died on 23 Aug. 1734, having had issue one daughter, who died very young. Cotton possessed great ‘wit, and the faithful attendant of wit, ill-nature,’ and was famed for his knowledge of the arts of the House of Commons; but his speeches were usually marked by brevity, as he was subject to ‘great hesitation and stammering in his speech,’ defects which, like many other stammerers, he knew how to turn to his advantage. Triennial parliaments and some other measures afterwards identified with radicalism were advocated by him; but his support of these views arose from the fact that they were disliked by the whigs rather than from a belief in their justice. He took pleasure in antiquarianism, numbering Gough and Zachary Grey among his correspondents; and when Carte went to Cambridge to collect materials for his history, he dwelt at Madingley, and made great use of the family collection of pamphlets published between 1640 and 1660. Good living was also among his pleasures. It was an age of hard drinking; but Cotton was credited with the power of consuming as much wine as any man in England.

 COTTON, JOSEPH (1745–1825), mariner and merchant, the second surviving son of Dr. Nathaniel Cotton [q. v.], was born at St. Albans on 7 March 1745–6, and entered the royal navy in 1760. After passing the examination for lieutenant he left the navy and was appointed fourth mate in the marine service of the East India Company. After two voyages in command of the Queen Charlotte, East Indiaman, he retired on the fortune thus acquired, and lived for the rest of his life at Leyton in Essex. In 1788 Captain Joseph Cotton was elected an elder brother of the Trinity, and in 1803 deputy-master, which office he held for about twenty years. In 1803 the Trinity House raised a corps of volunteer artillery 1,200 strong, of which Pitt (as master) was colonel and Captain Cotton lieutenant-colonel, to safeguard the mouth of the Thames against a foreign fleet. A picture of the naval review held on this occasion is preserved at the Trinity House, and has been engraved. Captain Cotton compiled a ‘Memoir on the Origin and Incorporation of the Trinity House of Deptford Strond’ (1818), published without his name on the title-page, though it is appended to the dedication to Lord Liverpool. Shortly before this time the administration of the Trinity House had been the subject of parliamentary inquiry, and the special object of this work is to explain the public duties of the corporation and to defend the management of its large revenues. Incidentally the book gives much curious information about the lighting of the English coast at that time and formerly. Captain Cotton was a director of the East India Company from 1795 to 1823; he was also a director of the East India Docks Company (chairman in 1803), and a governor of the London Assurance Corporation. In 1814 the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufactures awarded to him a silver medal for the introduction into the country of rhea, or China grass, an Eastern fibre of extraordinary strength and fineness, which to this day has not been profitably utilised in manufacture. He was a fellow of the Royal Society. Portraits of him and his wife were painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and engraved in mezzotint by C. Turner. The pictures are now in the possession of his grandson, Lord-justice Cotton. A marble bust of him by Chantrey is preserved at the Trinity House. He died at Leyton on 26 Jan. 1825, and is buried, with his wife and many others