CUTTS, Sir John (c.1581-1646), of Childerley, Cambs.

Sir John Cutts (or Cutte) who sat in the Short Parliament was sixth in an unbroken succession of knights of that name. The second in the line, his great-great-grandfather, Sir John Cutte, had first brought the family to prominence, having been under-treasurer of the exchequer during the early sixteenth century. Over the generations the Cuttses had accumulated substantial estates scattered across Essex, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire.43VCH Cambs. ix. 42-3; VCH Herts. ii. 267; King, ‘Horham’, 30. By the early 1620s the future MP had succeeded to those lands (his father having died in 1615) and he was establishing himself as an active participant in the routine tasks of county government.44APC 1618-19, pp. 293, 350; 1619-21, p. 196; 1629-30, pp. 383-4, 407; List of Sheriffs, 14; CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 388. One measure of his local standing was that the Cambridgeshire electorate regularly returned him to Parliament at every election between 1604 and 1626. Although some of these elections, such as those in 1614 and 1624, gave rise to bitterly disputed returns, this gave the impression that one of the county seats was always his to claim. By the late 1620s he was serving as custos rotulorum, having been installed in the position following the dismissal of Sir Edward Peyton*.45E. Peyton, The Divine Catastrophe of the Kingly Family of the House of Stuarts (1652), 119. Cutts’s close friend John Layer, who had been appointed as a justice of the peace on his recommendation, then compiled a treatise on the commissions of the peace, intended to dedicate to Cutts.46Palmer, John Layer, 9, 22-3, 30-1, 34, 53-4. Cutts took the lead in imposing the necessary emergency measures when plague broke out at Cambridge in August 1630.47CUL, Univ. Archives, CUR 54, ff. 103, 107, 111-130, 199. He was on good terms with the Cambridge corporation and in 1633 they spent £4 entertaining him during the annual Stourbridge fair in the town.48Downing College, Cambridge, Bowtell MS 5, f. 138.

Following his first wife’s death in 1632, Cutts commissioned Nicholas Stone to erect an impressive monument to her in the church at Swavesey, five miles north of Childerley.49CUL, EDR. H3. Swavesey, no. 31; ‘The note-book and account book of Nicholas Stone’, ed. W.L. Spiers, Walpole Soc. vii. 135-6; H.C. Andrews, ‘A lost monument by Nicholas Stone’, Walpole Soc. viii. 127-30, plate lxvii; MIs Cambs. 164-6, 240. He married Anne Weld in London just before Christmas 1632 and, on the advice of the 1st earl of Holland (Henry Rich†), the king granted them exemption from the recent proclamation ordering the gentry to return to their country seats.50CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 529. Any affection Cutts may have had for his new brother-in-law, Humphrey Weld†, was soon strained by Weld’s conversion to Catholicism.

Evidently prosperous at this time, Cutts invested in Sir Cornelius Vermuyden’s scheme to drain Hatfield Chase in Yorkshire, although he sold off his share of 350 acres for £1,930 in 1631 after rivals claimed title to these lands.51CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 8; 1635-6, pp. 366-7, 385. Some of his lands lay in the Great Level and so were drained as part of the project promoted by the 4th earl of Bedford (Sir Francis Russell†). Cutts was one of the sewers commissioners present at the meeting at King’s Lynn in January 1631 at it was agreed that 95,000 acres within the Great Level should be allocated to Bedford.52S. Wells, A Coll. of the Laws which form the constitution of the Bedford Level Corp. (1828), 184, 237. In 1636 Cutts was promoting a scheme to manufacture bricks in Cambridge.53Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, pp. 242-243. During the mid-1620s he had obtained permission to enclose 70 acres of land at Swavesey, while at Childerley a large part of the estate was enclosed to form a deer park.54LJ vi. 391b-392a; RCHM Cambs. i. 44, 46-8; VCH Cambs. ii. 26; H.P. Stokes, ‘Cambs. “forests”’, Procs. Camb. Antiq. Soc. xxiii. 80; A. Taylor, Archaeology of Cambs. I: South West Cambs. (Cambridge, 1997), 28-9.

It was this latter action which, in part, led in 1639 to Cutts clashing with his local bishop, Matthew Wren of Ely, in a case which Archbishop Laud thought sufficiently important to report to the king.55LPL, MS 943, pp. 615-16; The Works of the Most Reverand Father in God, William Laud ed. J. Bliss (Oxford, 1847-60), v. 364-5. In enclosing his deer park Cutts had swept away what little remained of the ancient villages of Great and Little Childerley. A brewhouse and stables now stood on the site of the old church.56RCHM Cambs. i. 44, 46-8; VCH Cambs. ii. 26; LPL, MS 943, p. 615; Laud, Works, v. 365. Rather than rebuild it, Cutts’s father had preferred to construct a large private chapel (decorated with an impressive heraldic window transported from Horham) within the park.57MIs Cambs. 223; Palmer, John Layer, 101-2; RCHM Cambs. i. 44-6. The position of rector still existed – Cutts had granted it in 1637 to Edward Rainbow, dean of Magdalene, Cambridge and chaplain to the earl of Suffolk – but it was now no more than a sinecure.58IND1/17002, f. 55. Wren’s complaint was that Cutts attended only services in the chapel and that these were conducted by a private chaplain without a licence. Cutts’s defence was that the chaplain was acting as curate to Rainbow. Both Wren and Laud thought the case all the more scandalous because it took place ‘almost in the view of the university of Cambridge’.59LPL, MS 943, pp. 615-16; Laud, Works, v. 364-5. However, this case says more about Wren’s desire to stamp out all minor infringements of his episcopal rights than of Cutts’s attitude towards the bishop. The previous year, when the episcopal visitation to Swavesey had sparked off a dispute as to who was responsible for the maintenance to a boundary fence in the local churchyard, Cutts had offered to have one of his own servants do the repairs.60‘Episcopal vis. returns, Cambs. 1638-62’ ed. W.M. Palmer, Trans. Cambs. and Hunts. Arch. Soc. iv. 334.

Cutts was again elected for the county in March 1640, this time in conjunction with his cousin Sir Dudley North*, with whom he was on good terms. Since 1629 Cutts had been a trustee of the Norths’ estates in an assignment to protect the interests of Lady North.61Cambs. RO, L.60.24; R.56.5.77. Cutts made no obvious impression on this, his last Parliament, being named to only two committees – those on an apparel bill and on Bate’s Case (both 21 Apr.).62CJ ii. 8a-b. (All that can be said of his attitude toward the burning issue of the Scottish occupation of northern counties is that he had helped enforce the mustering of the Cambridgeshire militia in the build-up to the invasion the previous year.63CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 388.) Later that summer Cutts entertained the corporation of Cambridge, sending them venison and footing the wine bill for one of their feasts.64Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, p. 319. Pressure was put on Cutts in October 1640 to stand for Cambridgeshire again but he ‘declined it utterly’, making way for his nephew, Thomas Chicheley*. There were those who thought that, had Cutts again stood with North, they would easily have defeated Chicheley.65Bodl. Tanner 65, f. 164.

Cutts was one of the men on whom Parliament relied upon over the next few years to implement its wishes within Cambridgeshire. Already a deputy lieutenant, in 1641 he was appointed as a commissioner to disarm Catholic recusants (30 Aug.) and he was ordered to search for a suspected arms cache at Whaddon (14 Feb. 1642).66LJ iv. 385a; PJ i. 375. That February he was among the deputy lieutenants who wrote to their new lord lieutenant, Lord North (Cutts’s uncle), reporting demands at the Cambridge quarter sessions that the organisation of the Cambridgeshire militia be overhauled. As Cutts and his colleagues put it, ‘the imminent dangers we may expect from these miserable times, and the great care we hear every county takes to prepare themselves for their own defence, invites us to do the same’.67LJ iv. 612a; HMC 5th Rep. 9. North passed the letter on to Parliament, which then promptly referred the matter back to Cutts.68CJ ii. 455b; PJ i. 467-8. In August 1642 he was one of five Cambridgeshire men, including Oliver Cromwell*, instructed by the Commons to make sure that their order for the raising of loans on the basis of the Propositions was fully implemented.69CJ ii. 698b. (At some stage, Cutts himself lent £100.70SP28/128, pt. 1, f. 3v.) Three weeks later, he was in London when the Commons ordered that he and Sir Dudley North* should return home to enforce the Militia Ordinance. Two months later, the Commons directed them to check that the loans on the Proposition were still being properly collected. Having by this time expelled Chicheley, it was almost as if the House regarded Cutts, like North, as still the knight of the shire.71CJ ii. 743b, 824b.

Cutts played an enthusiastic part in county administration in support of Parliament. In due course he was included on successive Cambridgeshire assessment commissions, the local sequestration commission and the county standing committee.72A. and O.; SP28/222, ff. 170, 331; SP28/207, f. 494; SP28/152, no. 20, ff. 6v, 36v; SP23/80, p. 651. Although too old to serve in the parliamentarian armies, Cutts remained as a deputy lieutenant and so oversaw the military defences in and around Cambridge. In July 1643 he was one of those who wrote to the Essex deputy lieutenants asking that their troops remain at Cambridge, as otherwise the town would be left without adequate protection.73SP28/222, f. 440; HMC 7th Rep. 556. (This makes it unlikely that he was the person who in April 1643 received a licence from the Commons to travel abroad.74CJ iii. 58a.) More private matters arising from the war also required his attention. Most of his Weld in-laws actively supported the king, and Cutts provided security for his mother-in-law, Lady Weld, in early 1644, after she had been fined £1,000 by the Committee for Advance of Money.75CCAM 171. At the same time he had to deal with serious discontent on his estates at Swavesey, where he faced demands from ‘diverse idle, disorderly, and disaffected people’, who were taking ‘the advantage of these distracted times’, to repossess the lands he had enclosed 20 years before. In January 1644 the House of Lords responded favourably to Cutts’s request for assistance, instructing the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†) to issue orders to the local deputy lieutenants and magistrates to uphold Cutts’s rights.76HMC 6th Rep. 3; LJ vi. 391b-392a.

Cutts stood for Parliament one last time in November 1645 when the recruiter election was held to fill the vacancy as MP for Cambridgeshire, which had existed since Chicheley’s expulsion from the Commons in 1642. His opponent was Francis Russell*, a former colonel in the army of the Eastern Association, recently appointed through the influence of the Independents as governor of the Isle of Ely. Cutts may thus have been seen as the Presbyterian candidate. Russell secured the nomination on 28 November after what was reported to be a hard-fought contest.77The Scotish Dove, no. 112 (3-10 Dec. 1645, E.311.19), 884.

Cutts died in July 1646 and, in accordance with his wishes, was buried in the family vault at Swavesey.78Cambs. RO, Swavesey par. reg. transcript; MIs Cambs. 165. Under the terms of his will, which was primarily concerned with making provision for his wife and two young sons, Lord North received his horse and saddle, while three of his former colleagues in the Short Parliament – Sir Dudley North, Sir William Lytton* and Sir Thomas Hatton* – were all left smaller bequests.79PROB11/197/57. Less than a year later Cutts’ name became associated with one of the key incidents in the late 1640s. Following the interception of Charles I and Cornet Joyce on 5 June 1647 en route from Holdenby, the king was detained at Cutts’ house at Childerley pending a decision on his ultimate destination. Sir Thomas Fairfax* and Cromwell visited Charles there on 7 June and then agreed to allow him to proceed to Newmarket the following day.80LJ ix. 248b-249a; Add. 31116, p. 624; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 521; An Extract of Certain Papers of Intelligence, from Cambridge (1647, E.393.15), 1-3; Memoirs of the Two last Years of the Reign of...King Charles I (1702), 24-6, 152-3; H. Montgomery-Massingberd, Burke’s and Savills’ Guide to Country Houses East Anglia (1981), 10; RCHM Cambs. i. 44-5. Cutts’ eldest son, John, received a baronetcy at the Restoration but died in 1670 leaving no immediate heirs. The family estates then passed to his fifth cousin twice removed, Richard Cutts (son of Richard Cutts*), whose brother and eventual heir was John Cutts†, created 1st Baron Cutts in the Irish peerage.81King, ‘Horham’, ped. opp. p. 42.