Early Life
He was born in Alstonefield Staffordshire, at Beresford Hall which is near the North Staffordshire border with the Derbyshire Peak District. His father, Charles Cotton the Elder, was a friend of Ben Jonson, John Selden, Sir Henry Wotton and Izaak Walton. The son was apparently not sent to university, but was tutored by Ralph Rawson, one of the fellows ejected from Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1648. Cotton travelled in France and perhaps in Italy, and at the age of twenty-eight he succeeded to an estate greatly encumbered by lawsuits during his father's lifetime. Like many Royalist gentlemen after the English Civil War the rest of his life was spent chiefly in quiet country pursuits, in Cotton's case in the Peak District and North Staffordshire. But from his Voyage to Ireland in Burlesque (1670) we know that he held a Captain's commission and served in Ireland.
Read more about this topic: Charles Cotton
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“The secret of heaven is kept from age to age. No imprudent, no sociable angel ever dropt an early syllable to answer the longings of saints, the fears of mortals. We should have listened on our knees to any favorite, who, by stricter obedience, had brought his thoughts into parallelism with the celestial currents, and could hint to human ears the scenery and circumstance of the newly parted soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Kittering’s brain. What we will he think when he resumes life in that body? Will he thank us for giving him a new lease on life? Or will he object to finding his ego living in that human junk heap?”
—W. Scott Darling. Erle C. Kenton. Dr. Frankenstein (Sir Cedric Hardwicke)