Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/327

 has given his views on various Indian military questions, which, as embodying the experience of a queen's officer whose knowledge of India was exceptionally great, and who possessed in a remarkable degree the confidence of his soldiers, are of lasting value, although they give but an imperfect idea of the assiduity with which for years the writer persevered in the too often thankless task of pointing out abuses and in endeavouring in every possible way to ameliorate the condition of the British soldier in India. 

COTTON, WILLIAM (d. 1621), bishop of Exeter, was the eldest son of John Cotton, a citizen of London, but descended from an ancient family of Staffordshire, by Pery, daughter of Mr. Cheyne. Though he was born in London, ‘his infancy,’ says Fuller, ‘was much conversant about Finchley in Middlesex.’ He went to Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1572, and became M.A. in 1575. Almost as soon as he had taken orders in the English church, its honours were showered upon him. The prebendal stall of Sneating in St. Paul's Cathedral was held by him from 1577 to 1598, and the archdeaconry of Lewes from 1578 to 1598. On 12 Nov. in the latter year he was consecrated bishop of Exeter, and in 1600 he obtained a dispensation to hold with this see the rich rectory of Silverton. He also held the office of precentor of the cathedral, with a canonry annexed, from 1599 to 1606, when he resigned this piece of preferment to his son, but quickly consoled himself (1 April 1608) with a prebendal stall in his cathedral. Cotton was notorious for the preferments which he bestowed upon his family, and for the fierceness of his opposition to any doctrines or practices savouring of puritanism. A clergyman called Snape (according to Fuller) came from Jersey and sowed the seeds of nonconformity in the diocese of Exeter, but the bishop plucked them up soon. In his old age he was apoplectic, and for some days before his death was deprived of speech; all that he could say was ‘Amen, amen, often reiterated,’ which made ‘some scandalous tongues’ exclaim that he lived like a bishop, but died like a clerk. He died of stone at Silverton, where he usually resided, on Sunday, 26 Aug. 1621, and on 31 Aug. was buried on the south side of the choir, a monument to his memory, ‘containing his portraicture, at large in his robes, cut in alabaster, curiously carved and painted,’ with a long set of Latin verses, being placed in a different part of the cathedral. His widow, Mary, daughter of Thomas Hulme, of the county of Chester, and relict of William Cutler, citizen of London, was buried near the bishop in Exeter Cathedral on 29 Dec. 1629. A full genealogical table of the children and descendants of the bishop is in Maclean's ‘Trigg Minor,’ i. 642–53. 

COTTON, WILLIAM (1786–1866), merchant and philanthropist, was the third son of Joseph Cotton [q. v.] He was born at Leyton on 12 Sept. 1786, and was educated at the Chigwell grammar school. Despite an inclination (which recurred more than once during his life) to take holy orders, he entered the counting-house of his father's friend, Charles H. Turner, at the early age of fifteen; and henceforth all his education was self-acquired in the intervals of business. In 1807 he was admitted a partner in the firm of Huddart & Co. at Limehouse, which had been founded a few years earlier by Sir R. Wigram, Captain J. Woolmore, and C. H. Turner, in order to carry out on a large scale Captain Joseph Huddart's ingenious inventions for the manufacture of cordage. Of this business he was soon entrusted with the general management; and as surviving partner he disposed of Huddart's beautiful machinery to the government in 1838. In that year he wrote a memoir of Huddart, with an account of his inventions, which obtained from the Institution of Civil Engineers a Telford medal, and was privately printed in 1855. In 1821 he was first elected a director of the Bank of England, an office that he continued to hold until a few months before his death, having been for many years ‘father of the bank.’ From 1843 to 1845 he was governor, the usual term of two years being extended to three years, in consideration of his services in connection with the renewal of the charter, which was then being managed by Sir Robert Peel. A permanent memorial of his governorship is preserved in the automatic weighing machine for sovereigns, invented by him, which is still in use,