Researching John Cotton

Many ministers were removed from their pulpits in England for their Puritan practices, but Cotton thrived at St. Botolph's for nearly 20 years because of supportive aldermen and lenient bishops, as well as his conciliatory and gentle demeanor. By 1632, however, the church authorities had greatly increased pressure on non-conforming clergy, and Cotton was forced into hiding. The following year, he and his wife boarded a ship for New England.

Cotton was highly sought as a minister in Massachusetts and was quickly installed as the second pastor of the Boston church, sharing the ministry with John Wilson. He generated more religious conversions in his first six months than had been made the whole previous year. Early in his Boston tenure, he became involved in the banishment of Roger Williams, who blamed much of his trouble on Cotton. Soon after, Cotton became embroiled in the colony's Antinomian Controversy when several adherents of his "free grace" theology (most notably Anne Hutchinson) began criticizing other ministers in the colony. He tended to support his adherents through much of that controversy; near its conclusion, however, he realized that many of them held theological positions that were well outside the mainstream of Puritan orthodoxy, which he did not condone.

Following the controversy, Cotton was able to mend fences with his fellow ministers, and he continued to preach in the Boston church until his death. A great part of his effort during his later career was devoted to the governance of the New England churches, and he was the one who gave the name Congregationalism to this form of church polity. A new form of polity was being decided for the Church of England in the early 1640s, as the Puritans in England gained power on the eve of the English Civil War, and Cotton wrote numerous letters and books in support of the "New England Way". Ultimately, Presbyterianism was chosen as the form of governance for the Church of England during the Westminster Assembly in 1643, though Cotton continued to engage in a polemic contest with several prominent Presbyterians on this issue.

Cotton became more conservative with age. He battled the separatist attitude of Roger Williams and advocated severe punishment for those whom he deemed heretics, such as Samuel Gorton. He was a scholar, an avid letter writer, and the author of many books, and was considered the "prime mover" among New England's ministers. He died in December 1652 at age 67, following a month-long illness. His grandson Cotton Mather also became a New England minister and historian.

Cotton was born in Balham, London and educated in Richmond. Afterwards he was articled to a firm of solicitors at Lincoln's Inn for a time, before focusing his interest on art and ornithology. In 1829 he became a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London. In 1835 he published privately The Resident Song Birds of Great Britain, with 17 colour plates and descriptive text, as well as The Song Birds of Great Britain, with 16 pages in colour.

In 1843 Cotton migrated with his family (comprising his wife Susanna and nine children) to the Port Phillip District of New South Wales in Australia, now better known as the state of Victoria. Following his arrival in Melbourne he leased from the government two pastoral properties on the Goulburn River where he farmed sheep. In 1847 Susanna gave birth to their tenth child and sixth daughter.

From 1844 Cotton was preparing sketches for a book to be named Birds of Port Phillip, as well as accumulating a collection of bird skins. However, circumstances were against him; John Gould's monumental illustrated handbook The Birds of Australia, issued in seven volumes from 1840 to 1848, was dominating the potential market for Cotton's intended publication, and there was little interest in, or appreciation for, his paintings. Moreover, he died in 1849, three days before his 48th birthday, his wife dying three years later, and his artwork remained unpublished, scattered among his descendants and largely lost to the world for the next 120 years.

In 1974 a limited edition book, John Cotton's Birds of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales 1843-1849, authored by Allan McEvey was published, containing reproductions of some of the illustrations Cotton had prepared for the book that never eventuated. In it McEvey concludes his account of Cotton's life with:

"But apart from his historical position, apart from his records of value, he was to have a continuing if indirect link with Australian ornithology through the marriages of his children. A grandson-in-law, W.H.D. Le Souef (1857–1923) was to be a founder of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists' Union and its fourth President; another, Colonel Sir Charles Ryan (1853–1926) was its third President; a grand-daughter, Mrs Ellis Rowan, was to attain renown for her flower and bird painting; and a great-grand-daughter, Maie Ryan, as Her Excellency the Lady Casey, was to declare open the 67th R.A.O.U. Congress at Canberra in 1968, and now, at last, to achieve for John Cotton the publication of these selected drawings from his Birds of Port Phillip.

Gentle, sensitive, artistic, and educated in the age of the Grand Tour, John Cotton was a man of the time not an innovator; in natural history a compiler and painter rather than a chronicler. In ornithology his capacity and ambition to be more than a naturalist in Colonial solitude were hampered by distance, impoverished by lack of encouragement, and ended with his early death.

He had been trained however to appreciate a quality of life and he remained true to himself and to that spirit of his age. As shown by numerous entries and sketches in his journals he loved Antiquity no less than Nature. In his own words, in one of his lines of poetry, 'Sweet [was] the retrospect of classic lore.' In this, one hopes, there lay a solace for him."