John Cotton, MP

This man:

John Cotton, Mayor of Cambridge

has an ancestry, a brother, and a wife who are (with just about 100% certainty) faked at the time of the 1619 Visitation of Cambridgeshire. There are of course a lot of families which have made up, or tried to reconstruct, lines to William the Conqueror's time. Often these have at least the virtue that there is one documentary reference to the people in the line, even if the relationships are something of a guess. And even where the ancestors are made up, this does not pose problems unless they can be identified with real people, as seems to be the case here for the "maternal line".

The facts are these. John Cotton, MP and Mayor of Cambridge, is the first of the line to whom there is any documentary evidence. Contemporary documents refer to him as "John de Coton" (Coton is a village a couple of miles outside Cambridge). The history of parliament researcher who has compiled his biography (and other genealogical researchers) have found only one wife, a Margaret (NN), but no marriage to Bridget Grace. This marriage, and that of his alleged father, of whom there is no reference in Le Neve's list of knights, to a daughter of "John Hastings, of Landwade", appear to be designed to show that the Cottons acquired Landwade (their principal residence for the next couple of centuries, and possession of which propelled them into the gentry) through inheritance. But, in fact, there is documentary evidence that John's two sons acquired Landwade (jointly) by purchasing it from the Grace and Hastings families.

It is impossible that John Cotton had a brother called "William de Cotentin" (a place in Normandy). England and France were at war at the time. When Philip II Augustus had conquered Normandy in 1204 (150 years before this) he had decreed that people holding land in both England and Normandy had to decide whether they were subjects of the English King, and held land from him, or of the French one, and held land from him: no divided loyalties. At that time you had brothers (from grand families, which this one wasn't) one of whom took over the lands in Normandy, and one the lands in England, so that the family did not lose out. For the late fourteenth century it is flat impossible.

Therefore:
(a) William de Cotentin should be disconnected from the tree.
(b) so should Bridget Grace.
(c) So should all the Cottons above John Cotton, MP.

Mark