CUTTS (CUTTE), Richard (1623-69), of Arkesden, Essex.

The Cutts or Cuttes of Arkesden in Essex were a cadet branch of the family of Childerley, Cambridgeshire, being descended from Richard Cutte, the younger brother of Sir John Cutte, the founder of the Childerley line. Sir John Cutts* of Childerley was this MP’s fourth cousin twice removed.12Vis. Essex (Harl. Soc. xiii-xiv), i. 44; B. Burke, Geneal. Hist. of the Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages (1866), 151-2; King, ‘Horham’, 25-42. Since the early sixteenth century the members of the Essex branch had owned land at Arkesden in the north-east corner of the county, just to the south of Audley End, seat of the earls of Suffolk.13Morant, Essex ii. 589-90. It was this family’s misfortune to be cursed in the early seventeenth century with two lengthy minorities. Sir William Cutte died in 1609 leaving a son, Richard, who was then aged 11 and who, in turn, would die when he was aged only about 28.14C142/428, no. 113. Richard Cutte had by then married his stepsister, a sister of Sir Henry Vane I*, and produced two sons and two daughters. More worryingly, he had also found time to sell off some of his lands.15VCH Essex viii. 198-9. The younger of those sons, Richard, the future MP, was no more than an infant when his father died in 1626. His mother later married Sir Thomas Morton and it is likely that the young Richard spent part of his childhood in the Morton household at Wimbledon in Surrey.16PROB11/187/356. However, the school he attended was at Stoke on the Essex-Suffolk border, close to the seat of his uncle, Richard Pepys*, and it may be that Pepys, an ambitious and well-established lawyer, assisted in his upbringing.17Al. Cant. Richard’s elder brother, John, was still alive in November 1637, when he was admitted to the Middle Temple sponsored by Pepys, but, at some date unknown, John died, leaving Richard to inherit what remained of the family estates.18M. Temple Mins. 860. Richard’s marriage to Sir Richard Everard’s daughter was probably intended to re-establish the family’s standing within Essex after the long periods of minority.

Although he came of age in the early 1640s and was a local landowner in his own right, Cutts did not become involved in local administration in Essex until he was appointed as a militia commissioner in December 1648. From 1650 onwards he was included on the assessment commissions and on the commission of the peace.19A. and O; Essex QSOB ed. Allen, 1, 7, 13, 35. This marked the beginning of a ten-year period in which he made a solid, if unspectacular, contribution to county administration within Essex. There were also his estates to manage, which had probably been neglected during his minority, and there are reasons for thinking that Wood Hall at Arkesden was rebuilt by him in 1652.20RCHME Essex i. 3.

Cutts and his father-in-law were among the 12 men elected for the Essex county seats in 1654. Nothing is known of his activity during the five months this Parliament was in session, implying that he chose to keep a low profile while at Westminster. This may explain why he was among the four Essex MPs then who were not re-elected when the next Parliament was called in 1656. Thereafter he remained an energetic justice of the peace and continued to be named to the Essex assessment commissions.21Essex QSOB ed. Allen, 78, 82, 87, 101, 106, 122, 133, 137, 139, 143,146, 153; A. and O.

The Restoration brought an abrupt end to Cutts’s public career, for in 1660 he was one of those removed from the Essex commission of the peace.22Essex QSOB ed. Allen, 168. Thereafter the only local commission on which he was included was that for the River Stour in 1664.23C181/7, p. 277. He seems to have spent the final years of his life living quietly as a country gentleman on his estates, overshadowed by the great men of his county. Never an obvious choice for public office, his role in the 1650s must therefore be explained, in part, by an enthusiasm to serve the republic. It was only in the next generation that the family attained real public prominence.

Shortly before his death, Cutts’s distant cousin, Sir John Cutts, 1st bt. (son of Sir John Cutts*), in the absence of an heir of his own, made arrangements to leave to him the Childerley estates.24King, ‘Horham’, 37. This was perhaps timely, as the impression given by the former MP in his October 1669 will is that the Arkesden estates were heavily encumbered with debt.25PROB11/331/327. Cutts’s own death intervened and it was his eldest son, Richard junior, who inherited these Cambridgeshire lands the following year. His younger son, John†, who eventually succeeded to these lands, served with distinction as a lieutenant-colonel in Ireland under William III, was raised to the Irish peerage as Baron Cutts of Gowran in 1691, and sat as MP for Cambridgeshire between 1693 and 1702 and for Newport on the Isle of Wight between 1702 and 1707. The male line of the family died with him in 1707.26HP Commons 1690-1715.