Robert COTTON was educated at Trinity College in Cambridge, where he took the degree of B.A. towards the close of 1585.[4] Of his collegiate career very little is discoverable, save that it was an eminently studious one. [Sidenote: COTTON’S EARLY FRIENDSHIPS.] Long before he left Trinity, he had given unmistakeable proofs of his love for archæology. Some among the many conspicuous and lifelong friendships which he formed with men likeminded took their beginnings at Cambridge, but most of them were formed during his periodical and frequent sojourns in London. John JOSCELINE, William DETHICK, Lawrence NOWELL, William LAMBARDE, and William CAMDEN were amongst his earliest and closest friends. Most of them were much his seniors. Whilst still in the heyday of youth he married Elizabeth BROCAS, daughter and eventually coheir of William BROCAS of Thedingworth in Leicestershire. Soon after his marriage he took a leading part in the establishment of the first Society of Antiquaries. Some of COTTON’S fellow-workers in the Society are known to all of us by their surviving writings. Others of them are now almost forgotten, though not less deserving, perhaps, of honourable memory; for amongst these latter was— ‘that good Earl, once President Of England’s Council and her Treasury; Who liv’d in both unstain’d with gold or fee,’ at a time when such praise could seldom be given truthfully. It was as a contributor towards the common labours of that Society that COTTON made his earliest appearance as an author. The subjects chosen for his discourses at the periodical meetings of the Elizabethan antiquarians indicate the prevalent bias of his mind. Nearly all of them may be said to belong to our political archæology. [Sidenote: GROWTH OF THE COTTONIAN LIBRARY AND GALLERY.] Before the close of the sixteenth century, his collections of Manuscripts and of Antiquities had already become so large and important as to win for him a wide reputation in foreign countries, as well as at home. His correspondence indicates, even at that early period, a generous recognition of the brotherhood of literature, the world over, and proves the ready courtesy with which he had learned to bear somewhat more than his fair share of the obligations thence arising. In later days he was wont to say to his intimates: ‘I, myself, have the smallest share in myself.’ From youth, onwards, there is abundant evidence that the saying expressed, unboastingly, the simple facts of his daily life. [Sidenote: FRIENDSHIP WITH CAMDEN.]