They were prominent in Shropshire by the 16th century with centres of power at Alkington[4] and Norton in Hales where a member of the family, Rowland Cotton, gave one of the first architectural commissions to Inigo Jones.

He helped to devise the institution of the title of baronet as a means for King James I to raise funds: like a peerage, a baronetcy was heritable but, like a knighthood, it gave the holder no seat in the House of Lords.

One of his scarce monographs, Twenty-Four Arguments, proposed the bolstering of royal powers to suppress Catholic elements in England[9] in the wake of the Popery Act 1627.

From the Court party's point of view, this was anti-royalist in nature, and the king's ministers began to fear the uses being made of Cotton's library to support pro-parliamentarian arguments.

Cotton was appointed to the joint conference with the House of Lords during his work on the bill pertaining to the full union between Scotland and England in 1606–07.

In 1610/11 the royal revenues were low, and Cotton wrote Means for raising the king’s estate in which he suggested the formation of the baronetcy, a new order of social rank, higher than the knight but lower than the baron.

In 1621, Cotton advised James I on the impeachment of Sir Francis Bacon concerning the respective roles of the king and Parliament.

In 1624, Cotton was elected to represent Old Sarum after the previous member, Sir Arthur Ingram, decided to sit for York.

[10] The discussion of the Society in the summer of 1600 focused on ancient burial customs, probably the result of a recent visit to Hadrian's Wall by Camden and Cotton during which they collected Roman coins, monuments and fossils.

Below is a letter written by fellow antiquarian Roger Dodsworth to Cotton: Honble- Sr The last recorded meeting of the Society of Antiquaries was in 1607.

This marriage took place about a year after the death of Cotton's father, and helped to shore up his financial position, as Elizabeth was an heiress.

He spent several years, and possibly more than a decade, living with the widowed Lady Hunsdon, perhaps as her lover during an overt separation from his wife.

[16] Counterclockwise, these were catalogued as Julius, Augustus, Cleopatra, Faustina, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian.

Sir Robert Cotton began developing the works and manuscripts into a collection for his library shortly after the birth of his son in 1594.

[10] From the period 1609 to 1614 the deaths of various people (including Lord Lumley, Earl of Salisbury, Prince Henry, William Dethick and Northampton) all contributed to Sir Robert Cotton's purchase of works for his library.

[10] Selden, in 1623 said of Cotton: “his kindness and willingness to make them [his collection of books and manuscripts] available to students of good literature and affairs of state".