thumb|The [[Lindisfarne Gospels are one example of the valuable and prestigious works collected by Sir Robert Cotton. They are now in the British Library.]]

The Cotton or Cottonian library is a collection of manuscripts that came into the hands of the antiquarian and bibliophile Sir Robert Bruce Cotton MP (1571–1631). The collection of books and materials Sir Robert held was one of the three "foundation collections" of the British Museum in 1753. It is now one of the major collections of the Department of Manuscripts of the British Library. Cotton was of a Shropshire family who originated near Wem and were based in Alkington and employed by the Geneva Bible publisher, statesman and polymath Sir Rowland Hill in the mid 16th century.

After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, many priceless and ancient manuscripts that had belonged to the monastic libraries began to be disseminated among various owners, many of whom were unaware of the cultural value of the manuscripts. Cotton's skill lay in finding, purchasing and preserving these ancient documents. The leading scholars of the era, including Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, and James Ussher, came to use Sir Robert's library. Richard James acted as his librarian. The library is of special importance for having preserved the only copy of several works, including Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. and by the seventeenth century Sir Robert Cotton came to hold, and subsequently bound, over a hundred volumes of official papers. There is a theory that the curious incident of the 1643 Battle of Wem was the output of concerns of both sides to secure the Library of Old Sir Rowland at Soulton Hall.

By 1622, his house and library stood immediately north of the Houses of Parliament and was a valuable resource and meeting-place not only for antiquarians and scholars but also for politicians and jurists of various persuasions, including Sir Edward Coke, John Pym, John Selden, Sir John Eliot, and Thomas Wentworth.

Such important evidence was highly valuable at a time when the politics of the realm were historically disputed between king and Parliament. Sir Robert knew his library was of vital public interest and, although he made it freely available to consult, it made him an object of hostility on the part of the government. On 3 November 1629 he was arrested for disseminating a pamphlet held to be seditious (it had actually been written fifteen years earlier by Sir Robert Dudley) and the library was closed on this pretext. Cotton was released on 15 November and the prosecution abandoned the following May, but the library remained shut up until after Sir Robert's death; it was restored to his son and heir, Sir Thomas Cotton, in 1633.

Sir Robert's library included his collection of books, manuscripts, coins and medallions. After his death the collection was maintained and added to by his son, Sir Thomas Cotton (d. 1662), and grandson, Sir John Cotton (d. 1702).</blockquote>

The acquisition of the collection was better secured and managed by the (6 Ann. c. 30), under which the trustees removed the collections from the ruinous Cotton House, whose site is now covered by the Houses of Parliament. It went first to Essex House, The Strand, which, however, was regarded as a fire risk; and then to Ashburnham House, a little west of the Palace of Westminster. From 1707 the library also housed the Old Royal Library (now "Royal" manuscripts at the British Library). Ashburnham House also became the residence of the keeper of the king's libraries, Richard Bentley (1662–1742), a renowned theologian and classical scholar.

Ashburnham House fire (Cotton fire)

thumb|right|The [[Cotton Genesis was badly damaged in the Ashburnam House fire.]]

On 23 October 1731, fire broke out in Ashburnham House, in which 13 manuscripts were lost, while over 200 others faced severe destruction and water damage. Bentley escaped while clutching the priceless Codex Alexandrinus under one arm, a scene witnessed and later described in a letter to Charlotte, Lady Sundon, by Robert Freind, headmaster of Westminster School. The manuscript of The Battle of Maldon was destroyed, and that of Beowulf was heavily damaged. Also severely damaged was the Byzantine Cotton Genesis,

Arthur Onslow, Speaker of the House of Commons, as one of the statutory trustees of the library, directed and personally supervised a remarkable programme of restoration within the resources of his time. The published report of this work is of major importance in bibliography. Copies of some of the lost works had been made, and many of those damaged could be restored in the nineteenth century. However, these early conservation efforts were not always successful: bungled attempts to clean the Magna Carta exemplification rendered it largely illegible to the naked eye. More recently, advances in multispectral photography have enabled imaging specialists at the British Library led by Christina Duffy to scan and upload images of previously illegible early English manuscripts damaged in the fire. Images will form part of Fragmentarium (Digital Research Laboratory for Medieval Manuscript Fragments), an international collaboration of libraries and research institutions to catalogue and collate vulnerable manuscript fragments, making them available for research under a Creative Commons public domain license.

British Museum and Library

In 1753 the Cotton library was transferred to the new British Museum, under the Act of Parliament which established it. In 1973 all these collections passed to the newly established British Library. The British Library continues to organise its Cottonian books according to the famous busts.

Classification

Sir Robert Cotton had organised his library according to the case, shelf and position of a book within a room twenty-six feet long and six feet wide. Each bookcase in his library was surmounted by a bust of a historical personage, including Augustus Caesar, Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Nero, Otho, and Vespasian. In total, he had fourteen busts, and his scheme involved a designation of bust name/shelf letter/volume number from left end.

In 1696, the first printed catalogue of the Cotton library's holdings was published by Thomas Smith, the librarian of Sir John Cotton, Sir Robert Cotton's grandson. The library's official catalogue was published in 1802 by Joseph Planta, which remained the standard guide to the library's contents until modern times.

  • D.iv fos 48–54 De Iniusta Vexacione Willelmi Episcopi Primi (missing introduction and parts of the conclusion)
  • Cleopatra
  • A.ii Life of St Modwenna
  • Domitian
  • A.viii: Bilingual Canterbury Epitome (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle F)
  • A.ix fragment of the Bilingual Canterbury Epitome (ASC H), futhorc row
  • Faustina
  • A.x Additional Glosses to the Glossary in Ælfric's Grammar
  • Galba
  • A.xviii Athelstan Psalter
  • Julius
  • A.vi Julius Work Calendar
  • A.x Old English Martyrology
  • E.vii Ælfric's Lives of Saints
  • Nero
  • A.x Pearl, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
  • D.iv Lindisfarne Gospels
  • Otho
  • A.xii The Battle of Maldon (destroyed in 1731)
  • B.x Mary of Egypt (fragmentary)
  • B.x.165 Anglo-Saxon rune poem (destroyed in 1731)
  • B.xi.2 fragment of a copy of the Parker Chronicle (ASC G or A<sup>2</sup>, the copy of Winchester Chronicle)
  • C.i Ælfric's De creatore et creatura
  • C.v Otho-Corpus Gospels (fragmentary)
  • Tiberius
  • A.vi Abingdon Chronicle I (ASC B)
  • A.xiii Hemming's Cartulary
  • B.i Abingdon Chronicle II (ASC C)
  • B.iv Worcester Chronicle (ASC D)
  • B.v Labour of the Months
  • C.ii Bede, Ecclesiastical History
  • Titus
  • D.xxvi Ælfwine's Prayerbook
  • Vespasian
  • A.i Vespasian Psalter
  • D.xiv Ælfric's De duodecim abusivis
  • Vitellius
  • A.xv Nowell Codex (Beowulf, Judith)

See also

  • British Library
  • Harleian Collection
  • List of manuscripts in the Cotton library

Notes

References

Further reading

  • British Library Digitized Manuscripts Online
  • British Library Images Online

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