If GONDOMAR’S account be true, not only was Sir Robert COTTON’S life as a statesman a protracted lie, but his duplicity was so superbly cloaked as to deceive the most keen-sighted of his contemporaries. The men who sat habitually at his board in his days of health, and who ministered at his bedside in all the offices of tender friendship in his days of sickness and of death, were all wrong about his character. [Sidenote: _A Discours wether yt be fitt for Inglande to make peace with Spaine._ MS. Cott. Vespas. C. xiii, ff. 160, seqq. (B. M.).] And there is this other little fact to boot: Sir Robert COTTON began his public life by as open a declaration of anti-Spanish policy in relation to the great question of the Netherlands as ever came from the lips of our RALEGH. He ended his public life with as staunch an adherence to the principles, both in Church and State, which the rulers of Spain abhorred as that which had been shown by RALEGH on the scaffold in Old Palace Yard, or by ELIOT in the dungeon of the Tower of London. Meanwhile, just in the mid-channel of his career, and in the prime of his faculties, Sir Robert COTTON threw himself, gratuitously, at the feet of GONDOMAR. He humbly asked leave to take Spanish service in the guise of a political slave. The historian’s proposition is a bold one. And its evidence needs to be cogent. English readers now know quite enough about GONDOMAR to judge whether or not his sole testimony is sufficient to damn the fame of such a man as COTTON;—to degrade him from the rank of an English worthy;—to brand him as a criminal virtually convicted of apostacy in religion, and of treason to his avowed convictions in politics?[24] From the nature of things the second charge cannot be so directly, so compactly, or so effectively met. Almost a third of the manuscripts which form the most important section of the Cotton Library consist of, or contain, Papers of State. Of these a very considerable proportion once belonged to the State. How came they to pass into the hands of Sir Robert COTTON? [Sidenote: MR. BREWER’S ACCOUNT OF SIR R. COTTON’S ACQUISITION OF STATE PAPERS.] By Mr. BREWER the question has been answered, unhesitatingly and exhaustively. Large portions of the Diplomatic Correspondence of HENRY THE EIGHTH were, he says, ‘carried off in 1614, if not before, by Sir Robert COTTON.... The original bundles appear to have been broken up under the keepership of AGARDE, when the Treasury of the Exchequer was rifled of its most precious contents to augment the collections of Sir R. COTTON.... [Sidenote: _Calendar of the State Papers_; Reign of Henry VIII, Pref., pp. viii, ix.] For the early years of HENRY, his [Sir Robert’s] collections are more numerous, and even more interesting, than the documents in the English, the French, or the Spanish Archives. They are equally authentic.... By what fraud or negligence they found their way into the possession of Sir Robert COTTON it is not for me to inquire.’