CUTTING, John (b.c.1552), of Orford, Suff.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1584

Family and Education

b. c.1552, prob. s. of John (d.1561/2) and Alice Cutting of ‘Pesinhale’ [?Peasenhall], Suff. m. Maria.

Offices Held

Town clerk, Orford 1577-1606, mayor 1605-6.

Biography

Cutting’s father had two sons named John, both of whom were minors at the time of his death. The elder inherited a small tenement and the remainder to the main estate in Ufford, Fresinfield and Brampfield; the younger was to be sent to school for six years and was left £60 and an annuity of £5 for four years. Which of the two John Cuttings was Orford’s first town clerk in the new charter of 1579 is not known, but clearly the town clerk and the MP were one and the same. When he was returned to the House of Commons in 1584 he appointed a deputy to act for him as clerk, but during his year as mayor, when he again exercised the clerk’s post by deputy, he went absent for two months, and was dismissed from both his offices on the advice of the recorder, (Sir) Edward Coke. He may have been on one of the journeys to France which, according to a previous mayor, he was in the habit of making. Nothing more has been ascertained about him.

PCC 8 Chayre; Orford corp. mss; HMC Var. iv. 257, 267; R. A. Roberts, ‘The borough business of a Suffolk town’, Trans. R. Hist. Soc. (ser. 4), xiv.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: J.H.

Notes