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This portrait appears in old Museum lists as ‘Sir John Cotton’ (1621–1702). However, it is now thought that it is in fact a portrait of Sir John’s father Sir Thomas Cotton (1594–1602), 2nd Bt, son of the 1st Bt Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571–1631), who founded the Cottonian Library. Sir Thomas petitioned Charles I for the return of his father’s library after its closure in 1629. He succeeded in protecting the Library through the Civil War and the Interregnum when he was suspected of Royalist sympathies. He is said to have added to the Library and also to have made it available to scholars, but less generously than his father.