Such, in few words, was the career of the man, the forgotten production of whose pen was to shorten the life of a statesman whose only connection with it—so far as the evidence goes—lay in the fact that a copy chanced to turn up in his library; fell under the keen eye of a lawyer who thought that something might be made of it; and was then copied—probably by some clerk, who was in the habit of making transcripts for students to whom money was less precious than time.[14] In some points of the story there is still considerable uncertainty. But so much as this seems to be established. How the tract came, at the first, into Sir Robert COTTON’S library there is no evidence whatever to shew. It is not the least curious point in this transaction that the Earl of SOMERSET should have been mixed up with it. He had been released from the Tower almost eight years before (namely, on the 28th of January, 1622), but was prohibited from living near the Court. At first, he was ordered to restrict himself to one or other of two old mansions in Oxfordshire—Caversham and Grey’s Court. [Sidenote: _Council Registers, James I_, vol. v, pp. 230, 425 (C. O.).] Afterwards, his option was enlarged, by including, in the license, Aldenham, in Hertfordshire. It is evident that, after BUCKINGHAM’S death, he began to hope that a political career might be still possible for him. And statesmen like BEDFORD and CLARE—as well as COTTON—kept up with him a correspondence. More than once or twice, coming events had cast their preliminary shadows over Sir Robert, in relation to the very matter which so vexed his heart in the winter of 1629. ‘Sir Robert COTTON’S Library is threatened to be sealed up’ is a sentence which made its occasional appearance in news-letters, long before King CHARLES hurried down to the Council Chamber to vent his indignation on the handing about of DUDLEY’S ‘_Proposition to bridle Parliaments_.’ [Sidenote: BEN JONSON AND THE VERSES TO FELTON.]