The years which followed close upon this little civic interlude were amongst the busiest years of COTTON’S public life. He testified the sincerity of his desire to serve his country faithfully, by the choice of the subjects to the study of which he voluntarily bent his powers. [Sidenote: COTTON’S MEMORIAL ON ABUSES IN THE NAVY.] Abuses in the management of the navy and of naval establishments have been at most periods of our history fruitful topics for reformers, competent or other. In the early years of JAMES there was a special tendency to the increase of such abuses in the growing unfitness for exertion of the Lord High Admiral. NOTTINGHAM had yet many years to live,—near as he had been to the threescore and ten when the new reign began. But even his large appetencies were now almost sated with wealth, employments, and honours; and ever since his return from his splendid embassy to Spain, he seemed bent on compensating himself for his hard labour under ELIZABETH by his indolent luxury under JAMES. The repose of their chief had so favoured the illegitimate activities of his subordinates, that when COTTON addressed himself to the task of investigating the state of the naval administration he soon found that it would be much easier to prove the existence and the gravity of the abuses than to point to an effectual remedy. The abuses were manifold. Some of them were, at that moment, scarcely assailable. To COTTON, in particular, the approach to the subject was beset with many difficulties. He was, however, much in earnest. [Sidenote: THE INQUIRY INSTITUTED BY COTTON INTO ABUSES IN THE ROYAL NAVY.] When he found that some of the obstacles must, for the present, be rather turned by evasion than be encountered—with any fair chance of success—by an open attack in front, he betook himself to the weaker side of the enemy. He obtained careful information as to naval account-keeping; discovered serious frauds; and opened the assault by a conflict with officials not too powerful for immediate encounter,—though far indeed from being unprotected. [Sidenote: Cotton, _Memorial on Abuses of the Navy;—Domestic Corresp._ James I, vol. xli, p. 21. (R. H).] Of Sir Robert’s _Memorial_ to the King, I can give but one brief extract, by way of sample: ‘Upon a dangerous advantage,’ he writes, ‘which the Treasurer of the Navy taketh by the strict letter of his Patent, to be discharged of all his accounts by the only vouchee and allowance of _two_ chief officers, it falls out, strangely, at this time—by the weakness of the Controller and cunning of the Surveyor—that these two offices are, in effect, but _one_, which is the Surveyor himself, who—joining with the Treasurer as a Purveyor of all provisions—becomes a paymaster to himself ... at such rates as _he_ thinks good.’ It is a suggestive statement.