HUTCHINSON, Sir Thomas (1589-1643), of Owthorpe and Nottingham, Notts.

The Hutchinsons had been resident in Nottinghamshire since early Tudor times, and by the Jacobean period they had ‘successively matched into all the most eminent and noble families in the country’.36Vis. Notts. (Harl. Soc. iv), 115-16; Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 15. It was Sir Thomas who established the family’s main residence at Owthorpe, near Nottingham, and he would be the first of his line to be knighted or to sit in Parliament. His daughter-in-law Lucy Hutchinson, the wife of the future regicide Colonel John Hutchinson*, praised him for his ‘moderate and wise spirit’ and ‘sweet and affable’ nature.37Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 17. However, as a youth he was evidently hot-tempered and capable of making enemies – not least his own guardian Sir German Pole (father of German Pole*). By the time Hutchinson came of age, Pole had conceived such a dislike of his ward that he waylaid him in London and, in the ensuing fracas, cut off several of Hutchinson’s fingers. Hutchinson gave as good as he got, however, biting off ‘a good part’ of Pole’s nose ‘and carrying it away in his pocket’ as a trophy. Lucy Hutchinson claimed that her father-in-law’s ‘honourable carriage’ in this incident ‘procured him a great deal of glory’.38Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 16; Chamberlain Letters ed. N. E. McClure (1939), i. 432. In later life, Hutchinson seems to have calmed down, for having been

tossed up and down in his youth and interrupted in his studies, he grew into such an excessive humour of books that he wholly addicted himself to them and, deeply engaging in school divinity, spent even his hours of meat and sleep among his books, with such earnestness that ... he himself attained a high reputation of learning thereby and indeed a great improvement in wisdom and piety ... and having furnished himself with the choicest library in that part of England, it drew to him all the learned and religious men thereabouts.39Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 16.

Yet though Hutchinson was ‘inclined to favour the oppressed saints and honest people of those times’, he remained conformable to the liturgy of the Church of England.40Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 17. Indeed, in 1629, the religious controversialist Thomas Paybody dedicated a work justifying kneeling to receive communion – a practice opposed by some puritans – to Hutchinson and his friend, the godly Lincolnshire knight Sir Thomas Grantham†.41T. Paybody, A Iust Apologie for the Gesture of Kneeling (1629), epistle dedicatory; Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 23; J. T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry (1984), 28-9. During the mid-1630s, Hutchinson was among the more diligent of the Nottinghamshire commissioners for collecting contributions towards the re-edification of St Paul’s Cathedral – a project cherished by the king and Archbishop William Laud, but denounced by the puritan physician John Bastwick as ‘making a seat for a priest’s arse’.42LMA, CLC/313/I/B/004/MS25474/001, p. 32; CLC/313/I/B/004/MS25474/002, p. 54; CLC/313/I/B/004/MS25474/003, p. 33; K. Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (1992), 322-6. And it also worth noting that in 1634, Hutchinson was a party with Robert Butler – man-of-business to the future royalist grandee William Cavendish†, 1st earl of Newcastle – to the purchase by the Laudian archbishop of York (Richard Neile) and his son, the future royalist Sir Paul Neile*, of Codnor Park, Derbyshire.43Infra, ‘Sir Paul Neile’; Coventry Docquets, 657.

Hutchinson was returned for Nottinghamshire in the elections to the second Caroline Parliament in 1626. According to Lucy Hutchinson, his popularity with the voters was testament to his zeal in defending the county’s interests, ‘even to the envy of those prouder great ones that despis’d the common interest’.44Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 16. The following year, he was appointed to the Nottinghamshire commission for the Forced Loan, but apparently tried to avoid responsibility for collecting the levy by withdrawing from the county to Grantham’s house in Lincolnshire.45C193/12/2, f. 44; Notts. Co. Recs. 111; APC 1627, p. 74; Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 23. He was promptly summoned to appear before the privy council and thereafter paid his share of the loan and assisted in its collection.46SP16/55/1, ff. 1-2; APC 1627, pp. 74, 123. His brush with the privy council in 1627 may have shaken his confidence or damaged his reputation with the electorate, for in the 1628 elections he lost his place to the active loan commissioner Sir Gervase Clifton. If Lucy Hutchinson can be believed, Hutchinson and Grantham were imprisoned by the crown after the king ‘had broken up a Parliament to the disgust of the people’ – which is apparently a reference to the dissolution of the 1628-9 Parliament.47Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 23. But although it is possible that Grantham was imprisoned for his part in the 1628-9 Parliament – as he had been in 1627 as a loan refuser – it seems very doubtful that Hutchinson, who was not elected in 1628, shared his fate.

There is certainly no indication that Hutchinson was, or was seen as, an opponent of the crown’s policies during the king’s personal rule – indeed quite the opposite. He was active on the Nottinghamshire bench throughout the 1630s; and by 1637, William Cavendish, 1st earl of Newcastle, had appointed him one of his deputy lieutenants for the county.48Notts. RO, C/QSM/1/8, passim; CSP Dom. 1637, p. 250. Nevertheless, Hutchinson’s letters to Sir Gervase Clifton during 1639 were rather less bullish in tone than those of some of Clifton’s other correspondents and suggest that he was anxious for a peaceful settlement between the king and the Scottish Covenanters.49Nottingham Univ. Lib. CL C 235-6. Following the summoning of a new Parliament late in 1639, he decided to stand again for one of the shire places and received the backing of the locally influential Pierrepont family, headed by another future royalist, Robert, 1st earl of Kingston. His main competitors were his nephew Sir John Byron† and Robert Sutton*. By early February 1640, it seemed that the election would pit Byron against Sutton for the senior place, with Hutchinson standing for the second place, possibly as Byron’s running-mate. However, Byron pulled out of the race later that month, prompting Hutchinson to stand for the senior place. On election day, 23 March 1640, the voters returned Hutchinson and Sutton in that order.50Supra, ‘Nottinghamshire’; Nottingham Univ. Lib. CL C 237, 294-5, 620-1, 684, 715. Despite the time, and possibly money, he had put into securing a seat, Hutchinson received no appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate.

In the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, Hutchinson and Sutton were returned again for the shire places.51Supra, ‘Nottinghamshire’. There is no evidence of a contest. Hutchinson was named to 29 committees in this Parliament – all but four of them between November 1640 and 24 July 1641 (when he was granted leave of absence) – and made little impression in debate. Many of his early appointments were to committees for reforming the perceived abuses of the personal rule, particularly in matters relating to church government and worship.52CJ ii. 39b, 44b, 45b, 58a, 74b, 79b, 101a, 114a, 222b. Thus he was named to committees for receiving petitions against the Laudian bishop of Bath and Wells, for settling a preaching ministry, for abolishing superstition and idolatry, for disabling the clergy from holding temporal office and for reforming the church courts.53CJ ii. 50a, 54b, 84b, 99a, 101a, 113b, 128b, 136b. On 21 April 1641, he presented a petition purportedly signed by 1,500 Nottinghamshire gentlemen and freeholders, requesting that the authors of ‘the late innovations’ in religion be punished and that episcopacy be replaced by a form of church government ‘most consonant to God’s word and to the practice of the primitive and the present best reformed churches’ – which an accompanying remonstrance identified as Presbyterianism.54Procs. LP iv. 37, 43, 46-7; A Petition Presented to the Parliament from the Countie of Nottingham (1641), sigs. A2v, 20, 24-5 (E.160.4). This remonstrance also accused the Laudian clergy of attributing an unlimited and tyrannical power to the king, from whence sprang such ‘civil grievances’ as Ship Money, monopolies, the undermining of Parliaments, and ‘the late woeful differences’ between England and Scotland.55A Petition Presented to the Parliament from the Countie of Nottingham, 6. So violent was this petition in its denunciation of episcopacy that it gave rise to a counter-petition, presented to the Commons on 15 December 1641 by Sutton, requesting that

the long established government of the church may still continue and that the abuses and errors of some particular persons may not cause the alteration of the ancient government ... And we likewise humbly crave the Book of Common Prayer, by law established, may continue in force.56D’Ewes (C), 290; [T. Aston*], A Collection of Sundry Petitions (1642), 8-9 (E.150.28).

Hutchinson may well have been extending an olive branch to Sutton and those who thought like him when he moved on 18 December that one of Laud’s clerical protégés, the theologian William Chillingworth, be released from the Tower.57D’Ewes (C), 317. Chillingworth was a close friend of Edward Hyde and Lucius Cary*, 2nd Viscount Falkland – leading figures in the nascent royalist interest at Westminster – and had been committed to the Tower for defending the proposal made by their ally Geoffrey Palmer* in the heat of debate over the Grand Remonstrance that MPs should be allowed to enter a ‘protestation ... wherein any vote was to pass against the conscience of those who were the minor number’.58Infra, ‘Geoffrey Palmer’; D’Ewes (C), 232-4; ‘William Chillingworth’, Oxford DNB.

Despite their differences over the issue of church reform, Hutchinson and Sutton managed to work together for the welfare of Nottinghamshire and the adjacent counties, where units of the royal army had been quartered since the conclusion of the second bishops’ war in the summer of 1640. Like Sutton, Hutchinson seems to have contributed to the House’s work towards disbanding the armies and raising the necessary revenue to supply the soldiers and relieve their reluctant hosts.59CJ ii. 130b, 172b, 196a, 308b; PJ i. 429. In November 1640 and again in March 1641, they stood bond together for £1,000 towards securing loans from the City for the maintenance of the armies in the north and for paying off the Scots.60Procs. LP i. 232, 235; ii. 620. It is not clear whether Hutchinson was present in the House during the king’s attempt to arrest the Five Members early in January 1642, but he was clearly worried by the violent political language that such confrontations provoked.61PJ i. 54-5. He was also sympathetic to the plight of his nephew Byron – the lieutenant of the Tower – after the Commons expressed a lack of confidence in him on 12 January and ordered that the Tower be blockaded by the City militia.62PJ i. 56; ii. 194.

Hutchinson’s last committee appointment in the Commons was on 19 February 1642, and thereafter he seems to have contributed very little to the House’s proceedings.63CJ ii. 441b. In mid-March, he, Sutton and Clifton persuaded Parliament’s newly-appointed lord lieutenant for Nottinghamshire, John Holles, 2nd earl of Clare, not to nominate them to the Commons as his deputies – which suggests that that they did not approve of the Militia Ordinance.64HMC Cowper, ii. 309. Certainly the king’s party regarded Hutchinson as a potential supporter or convert, for in June 1642 he was named to the Nottinghamshire commission of array.65Northants. RO, FH133. However, in September he declared his willingness to live and die with Parliament’s commander-in-chief Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, pledging £100 on the propositions to maintain the earl’s army.66CJ ii. 755b, 772a. Moreover, on 19 December, he and his fellow Nottinghamshire MP Gilbert Millington were part of a parliamentary delegation to advise with Essex about how to prevent the earl of Newcastle’s royalist army over-running Lincolnshire and the northern counties.67CJ ii. 894b.

Hutchinson’s decision to side with Parliament was almost certainly linked to his desire for godly reform of the church. Like his ‘very entire friend’ Sir Simonds D’Ewes*, he supported Parliament’s efforts early in 1643 to abolish episcopacy.68Harl. 164, f. 280; Harl. 165, f. 258. Yet also like D’Ewes, he apparently saw no contradiction between promoting godly reformation and seeking an accommodation with a king who was passionately committed to retaining episcopal church government. Hutchinson was ‘infinitely desirous the difference [between the king and Parliament] might rather have been composed by accommodation than ended by conquest, and therefore [he] did not improve his interest to engage the country in quarrels, which, if he could have prevented, he would not have had it come to a war’.69Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 17, 61-2, 92. In January 1643, he was listed among those at Westminster who consistently voted for peace; and his tellership on 17 March against Speaker William Lenthall making a report concerning the instructions for the parliamentary delegation to negotiate with the king at Oxford was almost certainly part of the tactical struggle between the peace and war interests over the treaty.70An Honest Letter to a Doubtfull Friend (1643), sig. A2v (E.87.4); CJ iii. 7a. Hutchinson’s partner was the pro-peace Sir Alexander Denton and the opposing tellers were the ‘fiery spirit’ Sir Peter Wentworth and John Pym’s Commons’ ally Thomas Hatcher. It was probably Hutchinson’s alignment with the peace interest at Westminster as much as his local reputation as a patriot that deterred the Nottinghamshire royalists from plundering his estate while he lived.71Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 91-2.

Hutchinson’s last recorded act in the Commons was to take the vow and covenant that John Pym and his allies introduced early in June 1643 following the discovery of the Waller plot.72CJ iii. 118b, 120b. He died on 18 August 1643 in London and was buried in St Paul’s, Covent Garden.73Hutchinson Mems. ed. J. Hutchinson, 144. He made a very brief will – which was initially entered for probate at Oxford, the king’s headquarters – leaving all his estate to his wife.74PROB10/640, f. 13; PROB11/192, f. 350v. He was succeeded by his son, the regicide Colonel John Hutchinson.