| Notes |
- Research by Hikaru Kitabayashi, as of 2007
Edmund was born around 1315. He was probably not a first son, but was his father's only surviving son. It was from him, that the manor he owned in Christleton came to be called Cotton Edmund's, an indication of the respect with which he was held. He did, however, continue his grandfather Simon's feud with the local Abbey and there survives an order coming directly from the Prince of Wales (also at the time, the Earl of Chester) ordering to leave the Abbot's lands and cattle alone. What the family name of Edmund's descendants would have been, if he had lived as the lord of a different manor having a different place name attached to it, is unknowable. What can be said is that there are many other places in England known as Cotton, and many other families did as Edmund's ancestors had done, meaning that, barring a "non-paternal event", no Cotton's first Cotton was ever more than just an ordinary bloke.
Edmund's wife was Katherine. Her family name may be Brett or Brett de Dana, but this is first evidenced in a family tree appearing more than 250 years after she lived. One should not place a high reliance on this and, though not dismissing it entirely, refrain from including a family name for her in a Cotton family tree or, at least, should make some designation that this family name is only to be considered on a provisional basis.
Edmund had two children, William and Robert, probably both by Katherine. Both married heiresses in Stafford.
The coat of arms Edmund used was different from the one received by his father William I from the Grosvenors. As Edmund's oldest son William II inherited the lands which had originally come from the Grosvenors, the Grosvenor-based coat of arms were the ones he used until the ones received from the Grosvenors were ruled by King Richard II, himself, as representing a theft of the arms used by the Scrope family and ordered the Grosvenors to abandon their coat of arms and chose one completely different from what they had been using. With this, William II of Cotton Edmund's felt desirable for him and his children to adopt his wife, Agnes Ridware's coat of arms inherited from her highly respected Staffordshire family. Edmund's other coat of arms was used by his son Robert and Robert's descendants who possessed the Staffordshire manor of Cotton-under-Needwood. Robert's coat of arms and not that received from the Grosvenors was most likely the original coat of arms, though no surviving Cotton family today uses this coat of arms, but there are supposed branches of the Cotton family who revived and still use the old modified Grosvenor coat of arms and others who continued to use the Ridware coat of arms until the 19th century. Some branches of the Cottons of Cotton Edmund's, by the way, also inherited the right to quarter yet a fourth Cotton coat of arms from a completely unrelated Cotton family which daughtered out and whose heiress married a Venables whose heiress, in turn, married a Cotton of the Cotton Edmund's line of Cottons.
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Abt 1315 -