The poet of Coopers Hill, Sir John Denham, has just crossed our ken in truer colors than at any time these 270 years; and his poem has fallen into our hands in a better version than even he saw. Professor Brendan O Hehir is responsible, in his life of Denham, Harmony from Discords (1968), and his edition of the poem, Expans'd Hieroglyphicks (1969). Unlike those who preceded him, O Hehir went carefully through the printed calendars of the great collections of primary materials. He did not, however, go through more arcane matters, especially those unnoticed in print. He missed, for example, the millions of documents which survive from the law courts of Denham's century. For a man like Denham, who was constantly going to the courts of record to sue and be sued, to register debts, sales, and purchases, that is a significant omission. Moreover, by omitting the state papers unnoticed in print, O Hehir also missed what should be the copy text of his Draft I of Coopers Hill.' The legal documents which O Hehir did not see constitute by themselves a reliable study of the rake's progress and recovery. When his father died on January 6, 1639, Denham was about twenty-five years old. He had been married three and a half years. Like most young men of his class, he had worried his father by gambling. Now he was master of a considerable fortune, consisting at least of two properties in Egham in Surrey (the rectory, some lands, tithes, and the advowson, worth a good deal, and a house, Inworths, in which he lived, worth only ?3 a year), five valuable estates clustered on both sides of the River Stour-four in Essex (three at West Bergholt, one at Little Horkesley) and one in Suffolk (Wissington Mills)-and another valuable estate in Essex, Woodhall, in the western end of the county. Together they were worth upward of ?10,000 to sell or mortgage. His father was scarcely quiet in Egham Church when Denham stepped forth as a systematic if a rather well meaning and repentant wastrel. He could already have borrowed ?400 from one Huntington Hastings Corney and given him some claim on the properties at Egham as security. Five weeks later (on February 12, 1639) he borrowed ?500 more from John Derbyshire. Both loans were undoubtedly at the customary 8 percent interest. Denham was yet a good enough risk that Derbyshire (later to his sorrow) did not insist on a mortgage. Six weeks later, Denham needed another large sum, and he had to grant a mortgage to get it. He began at home. He started a negotiation on March 28 to borrow ?500 from a neighbour at Weybridge, Anthony Samwell, and to give what amounted to a mortgage on the rectory, lands, tithes, and advowson of Egham. He would promise to pay Samwell ?100 a year for eight years. But Denham and Samwell delayed drawing up the indenture, so six weeks later, on May 8, Denham seems to have gone to the well again, this time for an unstated sum, and this time the mortgage was literally at home, being on his house, Inworths, at Egham. The money was provided by a family of Cottons to whom Denham's father had leased one of the estates at West Bergholt.2 Denham's wife belonged to a family of Cottons from Gloucestershire.