Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cotterell, William
COTTERELL, WILLIAM (d. 1744), bishop of Ferns and Leighlin, was grandson of Sir Charles Cotterell [q. v.], and the third son of Sir Charles Lodowick Cotterell, by his second wife, Elizabeth, only daughter of Chaloner Chute of the Vyne, near Basingstoke, Hampshire. Sir Clement Cotterell was his brother. One of the same name (probably the future bishop), having passed through Pembroke College, Cambridge, graduated B.A. in 1721, and M.A. three years later (see Notes and Queries, 6th ser. iv. 385). In 1725, on the death of Dean John Trench, he was presented to the deanery of Raphoe in the north of Ireland, and the degree of D.D. was conferred upon him by diploma from the university of Oxford 1 March 1733. His promotion to the bishopric of Ferns and Leighlin was by patent dated 24 March 1742–3; but he enjoyed this dignity for little more than twelve months, his death taking place in England on 21 June of the following year. The mention made of him in a letter from Swift to Mrs. Cæsar, dated Dublin, 30 July 1733, would lead us to infer that he was on terms of intimacy with the dean. He died unmarried on 21 June 1744, and was buried at St. Anne's Church, Soho, London, where there is a brief inscription to his memory.
[Burke's Dictionary of the Landed Gentry (1849), i. 342; Catalogue of Oxford Graduates; Cotton's Fasti Ecclesiæ Hibernicæ; Scott's ed. of Swift's Works (1824), xviii. 152.]