By way of pleasant diversity to his troubles in Huntingdonshire and Bedfordshire Sir Thomas received, presently, a letter from John SELDEN—the old and warmly-attached friend of his family—warning him that the capabilities of Cotton House in London had caught the eye of certain other Committee-men, and had made a deep impression on them. [Sidenote: THE ATTEMPT TO SEIZE ON COTTON HOUSE.] They saw that it would do capitally both as a lodging house for the entertainment of distinguished strangers who might come to Westminster, to wait on the Parliament, and as a State prison for very eminent delinquents. These watchful Committee-men were also members of the Council of State; and the time had now come when King JAMES’ sarcastic and well-remembered jest—‘Bring me sax chairs, for I see sax kings approaching’—was turning itself into a very awkward fact. These Committee-men, too, (like their humbler fellows at Huntingdon,) had their Serjeant at hand to give them advice on elastic points of law. ‘Serjeant DENDY,’ wrote SELDEN, ‘fairly told me that the Committee and Council were informed that, by the Patent under which you claim, it was provided that your interest [in Cotton House] should cease, _during the time of the Parliament_.’ [Sidenote: Selden to Sir T. Cotton; in an Appendix to Cotton MSS. marked ‘16. l.’ fol. 50 (B. M.)] Certainly, an awkward clause to appear in a man’s lease, in days when a Parliament, beginning its ‘time’ in 1641 had not quite ended it until 1660. This claim of the Council of State proved, in the sequel, to have in it no more of real validity than had that other claim to procure the Conington rents to be paid ‘to us at Huntingdon’; but, like that, it gave Sir Thomas COTTON a good deal of annoyance before he succeeded in getting quit of it. It is much to his honour that petty but cumulative misfortunes like these did not sour Sir Thomas COTTON’S temper. When quieter times came, he showed himself the worthy son of his eminent father, both by the improvement of his library, at considerable charge, and by the liberality with which he lent his choicest manuscripts, and, in many ways, made them and his other collections serviceable to literature. The still extant acknowledgments of service of this sort from historians and great scholars are very numerous.[19] By his first marriage with Margaret HOWARD, daughter of William Lord HOWARD of Naworth, Sir Thomas had one son and two daughters. By his second marriage with Alice CONSTABLE he had four sons, two of whom died without issue. Alice was the daughter and sole heir of Sir John CONSTABLE of Dromondley in Yorkshire, and the relict of Edmund ANDERSON of Eyworth and of Stratton in Bedfordshire, and she brought with her a considerable dowry.