Charles Cotton

Charles Cotton (28 April 1630 – 16 February 1687) was an English poet and writer, best known for translating the work of Michel de Montaigne from the French, for his contributions to The Compleat Angler, and for the highly influential The Compleat Gamester which has been attributed to him.

• from http://www.flyfishinghistory.com/cotton.htm

Charles Cotton was a teenager during the Civil War, and was nineteen when the King was executed at Whitehall. He seems to have had a liberal education, and it is thought that he went to Cambridge. He was familiar with French and Italian as well as the Classics. He was well educated, handsome and a great dinner companion, prized for his wit and conversation, though he could also be quarrelsome and something of a firebrand. He married his cousin Isabella Hutchinson in 1656, when he was 26. Two years later, on the death of his father, Charles inherited the estates of Beresford and Bentley, which are on the Staffordshire and Derbyshire border. The river Dove flowed nearby and it was here that he learnt to fly fish.

He published his first piece the same year, a panegyric celebrating the coronation of Charles II. In 1664 he published a burlesque titled Scarronides, a popular and slightly pornographic work which ran to 14 editions. His wife died in 1670, leaving him with three sons and five daughters, but he married again five years later, to the widow of the Earl of Ardglass, a match which may have been an attempt to restore his fortunes, which had declined alarmingly under the pressure of his lifestyle.

Besides being a fly fisherman, Cotton wrote some fairly bawdy poetry (the years haven't treated it kindly, and it would hardly raise an eyebrow if posted on the Internet these days), translated various books from the French, and wrote The Compleat Gamester (1674).

Cotton's later years were marred by financial difficulties. He petitioned Parliament twice to sell parts of his estate and although his literary efforts continued, his income from published works was insufficient to allow him to make ends meet and he had to sell Beresford Hall in 1681. He is buried in St. James' church, Picadilly.

Notes

• Works by Charles Cotton at Project Gutenberg
• Benjamin Britten set Cotton's The Evening Quatrains to music in his Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings in 1943.