education should especially engage his attention in his new sphere; and through his zealous endeavours a large number of schools were established, the working of which must be among the most beneficent influences of English rule in India. Bishop Cotton endeared himself to men of all parties, and his sudden death was mourned as a loss throughout his vast diocese. On his return journey from a visitation tour in the autumn of 1866, he slipped while passing in the twilight, October 6, along the plank from his barge towards the shore at Kooshtea, on the Ganges, and was drowned. The body was borne away by the current and never seen again. A memoir of his life, with selections from his journals and correspondence, edited by
his widow, was published in 1870.COTTON, Sir Robert Bruce (1570-1631), the founder of the Cottonian Library, born at Denton in Huntingdon shire in 1570, was a descendant, as he delighted to boast, of Robert Bruce. He was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree at the age of fifteen. His antiquarian tastes were early displayed in the collection of ancient records, charters, and other manu scripts, which had been dispersed from the monastic libraries in the reign of Henry VIII. ; and throughout the whole of his life he was earnestly engaged in gathering materials for his library and museum of antiquities from all parts of England and the Continent. Perhaps his first pamphlet is that maintaining the right of the English ambassador to precedence over the envoy of Spain, which was written at the request of Elizabeth. On the accession of James I. he was knighted, and soon after he was employed in drawing up a Memorial on Abuses in the Navy, in consequence of which a navy commission was appointed, of which he was made a member. He also presented to the king an historical Inquiry into the Grown Revenues, in which he speaks freely about the expenses of the royal household, and asserts that tonnage and poundage are only to be levied in war time, and to " proceed out of good will, not of duty." In this paper he proposed the creation of the order of baronets, each of whom was to pay the Crown 1000 ; and in 1611 he himself received the title. In 1615 Cotton, as the in timate of the earl of Somerset, whose innocence he always maintained, was placed in confinement on the charge of being implicated in the murder of Overbury ; nor did he obtain his release till he had paid 500 for a pardon. Shortly before he had been examined before a royal com mission, being suspected of having made known to Gon- domar, the Spanish ambassador, the intentions of the English court. The charge is supported by the despatches of Gondomar to Madrid, though probably Cotton deserves no serious blame. From Charles I. and Buckingham Cotton received no favour ; he was the .intimate friend of Sir John Eliot, Sir Symonds d Ewes, and John Selden. In 1626 he gave advice before the council against debasing the standard ; and in January 1628 he was again before the council, urging in courtly language the summons of a Parliament. His arguments on the latter occasion are con tained in his tract entitled The Danger in ivhich the Kingdom now standeth and the Remedy. In October of the next year he was arrested, together with the earls of Bedford, Somerset, and Clare, for having circulated a tract known as the Proposition to bridle Parliament, which had been addressed some fifteen years before by Sir Robert Dudley to James I., advising him to govern by force ; the circula tion of this by Parliamentarians was regarded as intended to insinuate, that Charles s government was arbitrary and unconstitutional. Cotton was himself released the next month ; but the proceedings in the Star Chamber con tinued, and, to his intense vexation, his library was sealed up by the king. The pain caused by a base attempt to extort money by attacking his character further weakened his already failing health ; and on the 6th of May 1631 he died. He was buried in Conington Church, where a monument is erected to his memory. His son, Sir Thomas, added considerably to the Cottonian library; and Sir John, the fourth baronet, presented it to the nation in 1700. In 1731 the collection, which had in the interval been removed to the Strand, and thence to Ashburnham House, was seriously damaged by fire. In 1757 it was transferred to the British Museum.
See the article Libraries, and Edwards a Lives of the Founders of the British Museum, vol. i. Several of Cotton s papers have been printed under the title Cottoni Posthuma ; others have been published by Thomas Hearne.
COTYS, a name common to several kings of Thrace. Of these the most important began to reign in 382 B.C. He was notorious both for cruelty and for drunkenness. Almost the whole of the information we possess of his reign is connected with his quarrels with the Athenians. The first of these was for the Thracian Cheronese, in which Cotys was assisted by the Athenian Iphicrates, to whom he had given his daughter in marriage. On the revolt of Ariobarzanes from Persia, Cotys opposed him and his ally, the Athenians. In 358 he was murdered by the sona of a man whom he had wronged, and the Athenians rewarded his assassins with golden crowns.
COULOMB, Charles Augustin (1736-1806), a distinguished French natural philosopher, was born at Angouleme, June 14, 1736), and belonged to a noble family of Montpellier. He chose the profession of military engineer, spent three years, to the decided injury of his health, at Fort Bourbon, Martinique, and was employed on his return at Aix, Rochelle, and Cherbourg. He gained great distinction in 1773 by his Statical Problems Applied to Architecture, which he presented to the Academy of Sciences in 1779 ; he shared with Van Swinden the prize for improvements in the construction of compasses, and two years later he obtained the prize of the Academy by his Theory of Simple Machines, comprehending the Effects of Friction and the Sti/ness of JRopes. In 1781 he was stationed permanently at Paris. There being a proposal for the construction of a system of canals in Brittany, Coulomb was sent as royal commissioner to the estates of that province. He expressed decided disapproval of the scheme, and his opinion caused him to be thiown into prison. He remained firm, however, and refused to give any other verdict, and at length he succeeded in convincing the estates, who showed their appreciation of his candour by making him handsome offers, and presenting him with a seconds watch, adapted for scientific experiments. Coulomb was also appointed intendant-general of waters and fountains, chevalier of St Louis, member of the legion of honour, and member of the Academy of Sciences. On the outbreak of the revolution he gave up his offices, and retired from Paris to a small estate which he possessed at Blois. He was recalled to Paris for a time in order to take part in the new determination of weights and measures, which had been decreed by the Revolutionary Government. Of the National Institute he was one of the first members ; and he was appointed inspector of public instruction in 1802. But his health was already very feeble, and four years later he died of slow fever. His fame rests chiefly on his most elaborate and important investigations in elec tricity and magnetism, and on his invention of the torsion balance.
Coulomb s chief works, besides those already mentioned, are Methods of executing without Water all Kinds of Hydraulic Works; Observations mi the Daily Labour of Men ; On Heat ; Experiments on the Circulation of Sap ; On the Cohesion of Fluids, and their Resistance to Slow Motions ; Theoretical and Experimental _ Re searches on the Force of Torsion ; and several treatises on electricity and magnetism.
