The story which, has been told—on the authority of one of John Chamberlain’s letters to Carleton (April, 1612) that ‘Sir Robert Cotton was sent out of the way’ at a time when certain claims of the Baronets were to be definitively heard at the Council Board, ‘in order that he might not produce records in their favour,’ rests on mere rumour. Charles, Lancaster Herald, wrote to Cotton immediately before the hearing in these terms: ‘On Saturday next the final determination is expected, if some troublesome spirit do not hinder; which end I wish were well made, and am glad that you are not seen in it at this time.’—Cotton MS., Julius, C. iii, f. 86. Footnote 6: ‘Tambien me dijo que el Conde de Somerset havia puesto todo su resto en este negocio, y ganado el Duque de Lenox, ... aventurandose el Conde ... a ganarse y asegurarse si se hazia, o a perderse si no se hacia; concluyendo esta platica el Coton con decirme que el estava loco de contento de ver esto en este estado, porque no pretendia ni desseava otra cosa mas que vivir y morir publicamente Catolico, como sus padres y abuelos lo havian sido.’—_Gardiner Transcripts of MSS. at Simancas_, vol. i, p. 102 (MS.). Footnote 7: Mr. S. R. Gardiner. His account is contained in the able paper entitled _On Certain Letters of the Count of Gondomar giving an Account of the Affair of the Earl of Somerset_, read to the Society of Antiquaries in 1867. Comp. the same historian’s _Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage_ (Vol. I, c. 1, and especially the passage beginning ‘Sarmiento was _surprised by a visit from Sir Robert Cotton_,’ and so on). In these pages I use Sarmiento’s subsequent title of ‘Gondomar,’ simply because English readers are more familiar with it than with the Spaniard’s family name. Mr. Gardiner needlessly deepens the stain on Cotton’s memory, arising—all allowance duly made—out of this intercourse with Gondomar, by the remark that ‘twenty months before’ the interview occurred, Sir Robert had ‘argued his case’ [_i. e._ a tract on the question of the right treatment, by the State, of Romanist priests and recusants] ‘from a decidedly Protestant point of view, and had taken care to put himself forward as a thorough, if not an extreme, Protestant.’ But, unfortunately for Mr. Gardiner’s trenchant conclusion on that point, the pamphlet he refers to—by whomsoever written—was certainly _not_ written by Sir Robert Cotton. Footnote 8: