Family and Education

b. c.1739, 1st s. of Sir Lynch Salusbury Cotton, 4th Bt.  educ. Westminster; Trinity Hall, Camb. 1756. m. 1767, Frances, da. and coh. of James Russel Stapleton of Bodrhyddan, Flints., 4s. 4da. suc. fa. 14 Aug. 1775.

Offices Held

Biography

In March 1780, at the general election in September 1780, and again in 1784, Cotton was returned unopposed for Cheshire. He voted regularly with Opposition till the fall of North; for Shelburne’s peace preliminaries, 18 Feb. 1783; for parliamentary reform, 7 May 1783; and against Fox’s East India bill, 27 Nov. 1783. Robinson wrote of Cotton in his electoral survey of December 1783: ‘might perhaps without reckoning too much be classed pro’.1 In January 1784, when Pitt was rallying the country gentlemen, R. P. Arden wrote to Lloyd Kenyon: ‘Sir Robert Cotton has written a letter to Pitt, which does him much honour, in my opinion, and will certainly be here [for the debate of 20 Jan.]’;2 and in Robinson’s list of January 1784 he was classed as ‘pro’. Cotton was a member of the St. Alban’s Tavern group, January 1784. He was classed in Stockdale’s list, 19 Mar. 1784, and in Adam’s, May 1784, as ‘Administration’, and supported Pitt till he left Parliament. There is no record of his having spoken in the House.

He died 24 Aug. 1809.

Ref Volumes: 1754-1790

Author: Mary M. Drummond

Notes

• 1. Laprade, 66.
• 2. HMC Kenyon, 517.