Sir Robert COTTON was the eldest son of Thomas COTTON of Conington and of Elizabeth SHIRLEY, daughter of Francis SHIRLEY of Staunton-Harold in Leicestershire. He was born on the 22nd of January, 1570, at Denton, in the county of Huntingdon. Denton was a sort of jointure-house attached to that ancient family seat of Conington, which had come into the possession of the Cottons, about the middle of the preceding century, by the marriage of William COTTON with Mary WESENHAM, daughter and heir of Robert WESENHAM, who had acquired Conington by his marriage with Agnes BRUCE.[1] [Sidenote: PARENTAGE AND ANCESTRY OF SIR ROBERT COTTON.] The Cottons of Conington were an offshoot of the old Cheshire stock. They held a good local position in right of their manorial possessions both in Huntingdonshire and in Cambridgeshire, but they had not, as yet, won distinction by any very conspicuous public service. Genealogically, their descent, through Mary WESENHAM, from Robert BRUCE, was their chief boast. Sir Robert was to become, as he grew to manhood, especially proud of it. He rarely missed an opportunity of commemorating the fact, and sometimes seized occasions for recording it, heraldically, after a fashion which has put stumbling-blocks in the way of later antiquaries. But the weakness has about it nothing of meanness. It is not an unpardonable failing. And with the specially antiquarian virtues it is not less closely allied than with love of country. In days of court favour, JAMES THE FIRST was wont to please Sir Robert COTTON by calling him cousin. Sir Robert’s descendants became, in their turn, proud of his personal celebrity, but they too were, at all times, as careful to celebrate, upon the family monuments, their Bruce descent, as to claim a share in the literary glories of the ‘Cottonian Library.’ This cousinship with King James—and also a matter which to Sir Robert was much more important, the descent to the Cottons of the rich Lordship of Conington with its appendant manors and members—will be seen, at a glance, by the following—