Francis Harvey was succeeded by his cousin, William Cotton, M.A., described in the Exeter Registers as "the beloved son of the Bishop." He resigned the living of Breage after holding it but little over a year. Walker, in his "Sufferings of the Clergy," includes William Cotton in his list of suffering Clergy during the Commonwealth. However deeply the sufferings of William Cotton may have touched the feelings of a former age, they are not likely to move the sympathies of our own. As well as being Vicar of Breage, he was also Precentor and a residentiary Canon of Exeter Cathedral, and held the livings of Silverton, Whimple and Duloe, and possibly others at one and the same time. His brother, Edward Cotton, was equally well provided for by his father. It was outrageous pluralism of this kind that alienated the people from the Church and prepared the way for the wild outpourings of religious bigotry and frenzy under the Commonwealth. William Cotton, with the failure of the royal cause, was compelled to resign the mass of patronage which he held. He died at his seat of Bottreux Castle in 1649 or 1650. Walker informs us that in his veins "flowed the blood of crowned heads of England, Scotland and Ireland, and other great personages of the highest rank," and that "he was a person of a meek and humble spirit, of a grave and sober conversation, of exemplary piety, charity and learning." Edward Cotton was succeeded by William Orchard in 1608. In the record of his institution in the Episcopal Registers he is described as "Preacher of the Word of God"; this phrase will perhaps serve to disclose the bias of his mind and the theological bent of the times. Unlike his predecessors Harvey and Cotton, he had graduated at no University. Most possibly in his own mind he regarded such institutions as unnecessary for one who was led by the Spirit of God. It is possible that he owed his appointment to the living of Breage to Sir William Godolphin, the then Squire of Godolphin, and friend of the statesman Cecil, who, it seems more than probable, acquired a Puritan bias when a student at Emmanuel College, the Cambridge home of Puritanism.