COTTON, Sir Robert Salusbury, 5th Bt. (?1739-1809), of Combermere Abbey, Cheshire and Llewenny, Denb.

Cotton, returned unopposed for Cheshire for the fourth successive time in 1790, continued to support Pitt, apparently without speaking in the House. Listed hostile to the repeal of the Test Act in Scotland in 1791, and ‘pro’ in the ministerial survey for the general election of 1796, he was reported to have been one of only five county Members who voted for the estate duty bill, 9 May.1Morning Chron. 12 May 1796. His brother, writing 16 years later, when he confirmed reports that Cotton had declined a peerage, attributed his unexpected retirement from Parliament in 1796 to ill health; but the contemporary story that he withdrew ‘in a pet, for being refused some little place he had asked for’ is given credence by the fact that three applications to Pitt between 12 May and 16 June for a collectorship of salt duties at Nantwich for a friend went unanswered.2Nottingham Univ. Lib. Newcastle mss, Cotton to Newcastle, 7 Nov. 1812; Ormerod, Cheshire, iii. 405; PRO 30/8/126, ff. 18, 20, 22, 24. Cotton’s lavish and open-handed style of life and bad head for business landed him in debt and forced him to sell his Welsh estates, reputedly worth £20,000 a year, for about £390,000.3Lady Combermere and W. W. Knollys, Mems. Visct. Combermere, i. 16-18. He died 24 Aug. 1809, ‘aged 70’.4Gent. Mag. (1809), ii. 889.