Family and Education

1st or o.s. of Thomas Hutton of Dry Drayton by Anne, da. of Robert Freville of Little Sherford. educ. ?Queens’ Camb. 1547; ?G. Inn 1546. m. bef. May 1560, Sybil, da. of (Sir) John Hynde^†, wid. of Sir John Cutts; (2) Elizabeth, da. of William Laurence of St. Ives, Hunts., s.p.s. suc. fa. Feb. 1552.

Offices Held

J.p. Cambs. from c.1559, q. and dep. lt. 1569, capt. of musters, ?rem. May 1588, collector of the loan 1590, commr. subsidy 1593; sheriff, Cambs. and Hunts. 1559-60, 1574-5.

Biography

The only reference found to Hutton before 1559 is a Privy Council order of January 1554 that he should make his ‘undelayed repair to the court’. No reason is given, but his protestant views under Elizabeth suggest that he may have been in trouble for religion: his name does not appear on Marian commissions of the peace. In fact he is an obscure man who achieved county status only through his first marriage. He was presumably related to Matthew Hutton, later archbishop of York, whom he presented to the living of Boxworth in September 1563.

In 1564 he was one of the Cambridgeshire gentlemen consulted by the bishop of Ely on the religion of local justices: Hutton himself was described as good in religion and most meet for service. He was recommended as a suitable keeper of recusants at the bishop of Ely’s palaces at Ely and elsewhere at the time of the Armada. In October 1592 he was one of those appointed to take oaths of supremacy at the Cambridgeshire sessions, and in the following year he was holding the farm of estates belonging to several recusants in the county. One of the opponents of Whitgift’s Articles of 1584, he signed a petition from Cambridgeshire gentlemen asking that godly ministers who refused to subscribe to the Articles should be allowed to continue their work. Hutton also served on a number of commissions. Thrice returned as knight of the shire for Cambridgeshire, he was named to the committee appointed 25 Jan. 1581 concerning the subsidy. Once he quarrelled with higher authority: the lord lieutenant, Lord North, though a fellow-puritan who generally favoured Hutton, blamed him for the bad state of troops, armour and munitions in the county, and in May 1588 recommended (with what effect is not known) the Privy Council to relieve him of responsibility for the musters.1

He died 9 Nov. 1596. His will, made in April of that year and proved less than a month after his death, shows that he had already conveyed much of his property to his second wife, owing to the ‘perverseness, cruel carriage and unkind dealing’ of his ‘unkind kindred’, and to her ‘continual loving kindness’. The will repeated that this remained his intention. There were bequests to his stepson and former ward Sir John Cutts, to Cutts’s son and to his ‘cousin’ William Hynde—presumably knight of the shire for Cambridgeshire 1597—who married the widow. The will was witnessed by a brother-in-law, Robert Lawrence. The name of Hutton’s legal heir, his nephew Roger Hutton, did not appear in the will, which appointed the widow,the residuary legatee, as sole executrix.2

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: N. M. Fuidge

Notes

• 1. Vis. Cambs. (Harl. Soc. xli), 31, 91, 98; Cambridge Antiq. Soc. Quarto Pubs. (ser. 1), xiv. 28; C142/95/16; CPR, 1558-60, p. 431; SP12/59/200; CSP Dom. 1581-90, pp. 482, 494; Surtees Soc. xvii. 5; APC, iv. 387; xx. 187; xxiii. 256; Cam. Misc. ix(3), p. 24; Cath. Rec. Soc. xviii. 13; Second Parte of a Register, ed. Peel, i. 228; CJ, i. 120; Lansd. 8, ff. 77 seq.; 74, ff. 204-5.
• 2. C142/249/50; PCC 80 Drake; CPR, 1558-60, p. 431.