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The John Cotton who settled in York Co., VA was married to a woman named Ann. One genealogist (Francis Burton Harrison) claimed that she was related to a Harrison family from Northamptonshire, England though I have never seen any reference to the source of that information. He didn't say her name was Harrison but it may have been. Another possibility is that she was the Ann Dunbar who is named along side John Cotton in several applications for land grants. A paper that John Cotton wrote about Nathaniel Bacon's rebellion show that he was well educated and that he may have been related to some landed family who supported the king in the English Civil War. However that is nothing to indicate that he was a knight or that he held any sort of title.
The identification of this man with Sir John Cotton of Connington is the invention of a man who backed it up with a falsified journal supposedly written by a grandson of John Cotton of Bertie County. This man also invented the name Hutchinson for the elder John Cotton's wife. He very freely shared this "information" with a lot of legitimate genealogists who passed it on in the belief that it was true. The name Anne Hutchinson Harrison is evidently just an attempt by confused genealogists to justify the two different versions.
John Cotton of Bertie County was not a "Sir" and his name was not Bertie. Genealogists often referred to him as Bertie John Cotton because he spent the last few years of his life in Bertie Co., NC as a way to distinguish him from other John Cottons. This has been corrupted over the years by people who thought that this was actually his name. He probably was the son of John and Ann Cotton of York Co., VA though this has never been proven.
There is no documented evidence to connect either of these John Cottens with the Cotton family of Connington and the elder Cotten was certainly not the same man as the Baronet of Connington who married Margaret Howard.
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