an eminent English antiquary, descended from an ancient family, was born in 1570. In his eighteenth year he began to collect ancient records, charters, and other manuscripts. Camden, Selden, and Speed have acknowledged their obligations to him in their respective works. He was highly distinguished by Queen Elizabeth, and also by James I, who created him a baronet. He wrote many things himself; but the principal obligation which the country owes him is for his valuable library, consisting of curious manuscripts, which he was forty years in collecting, and of which a catalogue was published by Thomas Smith, entitled Catalogus Librorum manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Cottoniana, etc. 1696, fol. At his death in 1631 he left the property of this collection to his family, though he designed it for public use. Large accessions were made to this library by private benefactions before the death of the founder, and afterwards by purchases of his heirs, and donations of others, who added to it a great number of books, chiefly relating to the history and antiquities of our own country. At the request of Sir John Cotton, an act of parliament was passed for preserving it after his decease, under the above denomination, for public use. It is now fixed in the British Museum.