Author: COTES, William
Biography:
COTES, William (1790-1826: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 29 Apr. 1790 and baptised 13 Aug., the eldest of at least six children of Henry Cotes (q.v.), Rector of Bedlington, Northumberland, and his wife Frances Barker who had married in 1789. He enlisted as a cadet in the Bengal Army in 1805, arrived in India on 11 July 1806, and was shortly posted as Ensign to the 14th Native Infantry. He was commissioned Lieutenant on 24 Sept. 1807 in the 28th Native Infantry and was present at the capture of Java in 1811. He married Carolina Wilhelmina Frederica Hoff, the daughter of a German doctor, on 11 Dec. 1814 at Semarang, Java. They had at least five children. In Java he was given various civilian customs posts by the governor Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles and continued there until its return to Holland in 1816. He was struck off in England on 23 June 1820 but returned initially to India and later to Java with the 3rd Battalion of Bengal Volunteers. He then became a coffee planter and sugar merchant. With the revocation of planters’ leases in 1823 he was ruined. He died at Buitenzorg, Java, on 7 Oct. 1826 with one report claiming he had gone insane--but delirium from fever may be a more likely explanation. He contributed a number of poems to the Java Government Gazette (signature “W.C.”), the most notable being “My Hookah” (6 June 1812) and an “Ode” on the British Invasion of Java (13 June 1812). India(1812), by “W,” is attributed to William Wightman (BL catalogue); HL give it to Captain Cotes of the Bengal Army. Military records and internal evidence establish William Cotes as the author. The work was almost certainly edited by his father ("H"), who had earlier addressed a long poem to his son in India in Metres (1809) and had also published other works with Hodgson of Newcastle. (ancestry.co.uk 1 June 2023; findmypast.co.uk 1 June 2023; PBI 1: 91-95; G. R. Knight, Trade and Empire [2015], 85-6; Hodson, 1: 392; The Java Half-Yearly Almanac and Directory [Batavia 1815]; Durham Chronicle 2 June 1827; GM Apr. 1835, 442; Asiatic Journal May 1818, 507, Aug. 1827, 253; D. M. Campbell, Java: Past and Present [1915], 1: 476-77, 648-9, 654; F. de Haan, “Personalia der Periode van het Engelsch Bestuur over Java 1811-1816,” Bijdragen… van Nederlandsch-Indië 92 [1935], 522-3) AA