HUTCHINSON, Daniel (?1605-75), of Wine Tavern Street, St John’s Parish, Dublin.

Daniel Hutchinson was probably the son of Edward Hutchinson, who was a resident of Alford in Lincolnshire in the early years of the seventeenth century. His later friendship with two other natives of Lincolnshire, John Weaver* and Richard Tighe*, supports this identification. Hutchinson did not remain in eastern England for long, however, as he was apprenticed as a chandler (possibly in London) and then settled in Dublin, where he was elected freeman of the corporation in 1634.33Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin III, 290. Nothing is known of Hutchinson’s activities later in the 1630s, but by 1641 he was a prosperous merchant, who had invested his profits in lands in cos. Kildare and Meath, as well as running a money-lending concern. According to a later deposition, his lands were plundered by the Irish rebels in the winter of 1641-2, and he also lost a cargo, seized by ‘pirates’ operating out of Wexford.34TCD, MS 810, f. 238; 1641 Depositions website; Down Survey website. Thereafter, Hutchinson became involved in provisioning the Protestant forces, and was appointed assistant to the commissary of the victuals, Sir Philip Percivalle*, around 1643. Hutchinson’s accounts suggest that his office was far from lucrative: in the mid-1640s he was forced to use his own credit to ensure a steady supply of oats, fish and salt for the Dublin garrison.35Add. 46932, f. 92v. On his move to London, Percivalle left Hutchinson in charge of supplying the troops in Dublin, and the two corresponded regularly until Percivalle’s death in 1647.36Add. 46928, ff. 128, 129; Add. 46929, ff. 59, 187; Add. 46930, f. 57; Add. 46931A, f. 217. Their business relationship soon turned to friendship, as Hutchinson advised Percivalle on his personal finances, and kept him in contact with his friends and relatives in the Ussher and Davies families.37HMC Egmont, i. 288-9, 292-3, 296, 310, 424.

With the surrender of Dublin to Parliament in June 1647, Hutchinson became a supporter of the new governor, Colonel Michael Jones, who continued to rely on him for arranging provisions for the garrison at least until the summer of 1649.38Tanner Lttrs. 311-2. As a result, he was able to take full advantage of the vast funds made available for the Irish war from the summer of 1649. In July, for example, Jones ordered that Hutchinson was to be given £4,000, in two instalments, for provisioning the ships guarding Dublin Bay; and in September he was granted a further £1,000 for the use of the city of Dublin.39CSP Ire. 1670, pp. 359-60; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 173; Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin III, 489. In April 1650 Hutchinson was allowed £1,000 on account for military provisions, with a further £4,000 reserved for future use, and in the same month he was ordered to disburse £1,000 more to Sir Theophilus Jones’s* regiment.40CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 90, 572, 574; SP46/95, f. 266. During 1651 he was paid further sums for supplying the forces in Ulster and Dublin, and was allowed to charge interest on the money still owed to him by the government.41CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 466, 537, 540, 567; 1651-2, pp. 36, 583-4. In April 1652 Hutchinson was paid £1,410 for supplying clothing to the Irish army, and within a year he had joined another Dublin alderman, John Preston, in contracts to provide a further 10,000 suits of clothes, worth over £8,000.42CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 596; 1652-3, p. 157; SP28/88, f. 327. These ad hoc arrangements gradually drew Hutchinson into the Irish administration. From July 1650 until June 1651 he was signing army pay warrants for the Leinster forces, with the Cromwellian governor of Dublin, Colonel John Hewson*.43SP28/69, f. 496; SP28/70, f. 321; SP28/75, f. 85; SP28/78, f. 154. On 11 October 1651 he was appointed treasurer of Dublin precinct, and from then on handled all the money provided for provisions, clothing, ammunition and other necessities for the Irish capital.44Eg. 1762, f. 202; SP28/83, ff. 5-36; Bodl. Rawl. A.208, pp. 375, 423-4. An account from 1656 records that by that time Hutchinson had received over £46,000 from the treasurers-at-war, with an additional £12,000 in rents from forfeited properties within the precinct.45SP63/281, unfol. Whether any of this money found its way into Hutchinson’s pocket is uncertain, but he was clearly a man of means by the end of 1649 (when he lent £1,000 to the earl of Kildare), and in later years he was in the enviable position of commissioning contracts from himself, while taking a fee from each transaction.46Irish Statute Staple Bks. 112; SP28/89, f. 41; SP28/90, f. 83; SP28/91, ff. 7, 9, 13, 348; SP28/97, f. 27.

Hutchinson’s involvement in the Irish financial administration had important political implications. Using his new-found wealth and influence, he was able to strengthen his position within the Dublin corporation. Despite his long association with the city, Hutchinson was not a member of the ruling merchant guild, and he was elected alderman only in October 1648.47Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin III, 466; Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, 82-4. Yet during the next four years he held all the various civic offices, including the clerkship of the Tholsell (which he held with his business partner, John Preston), and he was elected mayor in October 1652.48Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin III, 466, 491, 503, 504; Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin IV, 33. In this period he also lent over £500 to the corporation in return for mortgages of city lands.49Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin III, 502; Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin IV, 2. Hutchinson’s rise to influence was part of a wider bid for power, made by a group of aldermen, including Richard Tighe, Thomas Hooke and John Preston, who took it in turns to serve as mayor between 1651 and 1656, and whose political and financial bonds were strengthened by their involvement with the Independent congregation led by Dr Samuel Winter.50Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, 81. Hutchinson was an elder of Winter’s church, joined Winter on the committee for preaching the gospel, and encouraged the foundation of the Irish Association of congregations.51Cal. Baxter Corresp. i. 201; Seymour, Puritans in Ire. 61; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 181. He was a stern opponent of the radical sects: in the 1650s he acquired a reputation as a persecutor of Quakers, and Zachariah Croft’s attack on the Fifth Monarchists, Bethshemeth Unclouded, was dedicated to him.52CSP Ire. 1670, p. 374; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 181.

The Independent clique in Dublin was supported by the four parliamentary commissioners, and Hutchinson was particularly close to them, working as the commissioners’ unofficial deputy in Dublin when they were in Belfast in the summer of 1651.53Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 11. His appointment as treasurer of Dublin in October of that year was on the suggestion of John Jones I*, and the commissioners later defended the appointment in the face of criticism by the lord deputy, Henry Ireton*.54Inedited Letters ed. Mayer, 189; Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 88-9. After Ireton’s death, Hutchinson continued to be the darling of the commissioners. In December 1651, Jones took out a personal loan for £500 from ‘honest Alderman Hutchinson, who lets no man that is a friend to the Parliament nor the public affairs want anything that he can help them to’; Hutchinson’s financial acumen was praised by Edmund Ludlowe II*; and he was certainly on good terms with John Weaver*, whose son later married his daughter.55Inedited Letters, 198; Ludlow, Mems. i. 495; Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, 84n; HMC Egmont, i. 542.

Such connections no doubt explain the choice of Hutchinson as one of the six MPs in the Nominated Assembly of 1653. He was named to only two committees, both on 20 July: the committee of Irish affairs and the committee for trade and corporations.56CJ vii. 286b, 287a. Despite the brevity of his recorded activity in Parliament, Hutchinson apparently remained in London throughout the summer and autumn, leaving his deputy, John Price, to handle treasury business in Dublin.57SP28/95, f. 38; SP28/96, f. 129. The main reason for this was the need to guide two items of personal importance through the council of state. In October and November Hutchinson finally secured full payment for the clothes contract signed in 1652.58CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 455; SP28/97, f. 107. In the new year he turned his attention to other debts amounting to £2,000, which he pressed to be converted into a land grant. On 16 March 1654 the council referred Hutchinson’s petition to a committee, which reported in May, and eventually passed an ordinance confirming his tenure of Thomas Aylmer’s co. Dublin estates on 2 June (which became an act of Parliament in June 1657).59CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 32, 180, 197; Bodl. Carte 63, ff. 624-5; A. and O. While the council dealt with his case, Hutchinson was busy investing in adventure lands. On 2 May he bought a £300 allotment in Navan, co. Meath, from Richard Cranley of London; and on 1 June he had added a further £400 in the same barony, originally assigned to Richard Benning.60CSP Ire. Adv. pp. 103, 187. Hutchinson’s activities at this time seem to have increased expectations in Ireland. Sir Paul Davies* described Hutchinson, with Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*) and Sir Robert King* as the men ‘on whom I now principally rely’ to regain him the office of clerk of the council in May; in early June he saw Hutchinson and his colleague, Richard Tighe, as the men most likely to help John Percivalle (son of Sir Philip) secure his arrears.61HMC Egmont, i. 540-1. Hutchinson’s influence depended in part on his status as an MP, but more importantly, he kept up his links with the religious Independents, for example visiting John Weaver before his return to Dublin in mid-June 1654.62HMC Egmont, i. 542.

Hutchinson had made significant gains in England during 1653-4, but in Dublin the hegemony of the Independents was being challenged. The parliamentary commissioners had lost their positions with the founding of the protectorate, and Hutchinson seems to have been sacked as treasurer of Dublin at the same time. In the elections for the first protectorate Parliament in August 1654, Hutchinson could still secure his own return as MP for the city of Dublin without any opposition, and he was listed among the voters at the co. Dublin election, but his attempt to influence the Kildare and Wicklow elections was thwarted.63C219/44, unfol. Meeting at St Patrick’s Cathedral, the voters chose the Old Protestant candidates, Anthony Morgan* and William Meredith*, rejecting the English Independents, Oliver St John* and Richard Salwey*, even though (or perhaps, because) they were supported by Hutchinson and Tighe.64HMC Egmont, i. 553. Hutchinson took his seat at Westminster, and was named to three committees, including those to examine Irish elections (5 Oct.) and to consider allowing voting rights to former opponents of Parliament in Ireland (27 Nov.).65CJ vii. 373b, 387a, 390b. These appointments may reflect his grudging acceptance that in future political power in Ireland would have to include more than just a small Independent clique in Dublin.

The dissolution of Parliament in January 1655 marked the beginning of the end of Hutchinson’s political importance. In the later 1650s, his influence rapidly declined, as the acting governor of Ireland, Henry Cromwell*, broadened the government to include Presbyterians and former royalists, and sidelined the Independents. At first, there was still a degree of consensus. In May 1655 Hutchinson headed the Dublin petition calling for free trade and closer union with England along Scottish lines.66SP63/286, ff. 57v-58. Winter’s congregation was vigorous in its support of Henry Cromwell in the summer of 1656.67TSP v. 65. Hutchinson’s ally, Richard Tighe, received general approval as MP for Dublin in the autumn of the same year.68TSP v. 477. But there were already changes. From 1656 Hutchinson’s friends no longer monopolized the Dublin corporation, as Henry Cromwell encouraged the old guard of the merchant guild to take a more active part in the city’s government.69Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, 84. Hutchinson remained involved in Dublin affairs - in March 1656 he was re-appointed assessment commissioner for the city, in June 1659 and January 1660 he was granted further leases of corporation lands in the city, and he was made captain of militia in 1659-60 - but his influence was much less than it had been in the early 1650s.70Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin IV, 164, 176, 559; HMC Ormonde, o.s. ii. 248. Having been a significant creditor on the Dublin Statute Staple earlier in the decade, between 1657 and 1660 the roles were reversed, and he now borrowed money on bonds totalling £13,000.71Irish Statute Staple Bks. 241. This may reflect further investment in land, rather than impending bankruptcy, but the change seems to reflect the distance which had grown between Hutchinson and the financiers of Dublin. It is also indicative that Hutchinson had by this time shifted his interest from the city of Dublin to the surrounding counties, where he now held substantial estates. He had been chosen as an assessment commissioner for cos. Dublin, Carlow and Kildare from 1654, and between 1656 and 1658 he served as sheriff for cos. Dublin and Wicklow, and j.p. for co. Kildare.72An Assessment for Ire.; Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 632; NAI, Ferguson MS 9, p. 274; MS 10, p. 165; Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, 291. But even in the localities, Hutchinson was not involved in politics: when the General Convention was elected in the spring of 1660, he was not returned, although he was named as poll money commissioner for Dublin and cos. Dublin and Kildare in April 1660.73Irish Census, 1659, 620-1.

After the Restoration, Hutchinson played only a minor role in public affairs. Despite his support of the commonwealth a decade before, he seems to have been on reasonably good terms with the royal administration, and was granted a pardon on 10 May 1661.74NAI, Lodge’s MSS 1.A.53.55, f. 62. Later in the 1660s he had dealings with the duke of Ormond as lord lieutenant, lobbying for compensation for money disbursed in the 1640s, and arranging the sale of his lands near Dublin which were to form the extension of Phoenix Park.75HMC 8th Rep. 539; HMC Ormonde, n.s. iii. 294-5; CSP Ire. 1670, pp. 319-20. He may also have called on his official contacts when defending the lands he had acquired under the protectorate against their original owners (including the Sarsfields and the Aylmers), and he was allowed to retain the lands granted to him by the 1654 ordinance.76CSP Ire. 1660-2, pp. 81, 351-2; Bodl. Carte 60, f. 534; CSP Dom. 1671, pp. 109-10. Hutchinson’s enemies were not in the Irish government, but the Dublin corporation. In late 1662 there was a plot to remove the old Independent clique from the corporation, with Hutchinson, Tighe, Hooke, Preston and Hooke all being targeted.77CSP Ire. 1663-5, p. 499. In 1672 Hutchinson’s support of an attempt by the recorder, Sir William Davies, to change the city’s constitution, led to his expulsion from the corporation, although he was restored by the earl of Essex, and appointed to the guild of St George on the king’s orders shortly afterwards.78Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin V, 17; CSP Dom. 1672, p. 153; 1673-5, p. 350. Hutchinson died before December 1675, and was buried in St John’s Church, Dublin.79Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin V, 81, 100; Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 11n. Nothing is known of his descendants.