Family and Education

b. 20 Oct. 1597, 2nd but 1st surv. s. of Sir Timothy Hutton of Marske and Elizabeth, da. of Sir George Bowes† of Streatlam, co. Dur.1 educ. Trin., Camb. 1614;2 m. 22 Apr. 1617, Barbara (bur. 31 Mar. 1696), da. of Sir Conyers Darcy of Hornby Castle, Yorks., 3s. (2 d.v.p.), 6da. (at least 1 d.v.p.). suc. fa. 1629.3 d. c.Feb. 1666. sig. Matth[ew] Hutton.

Offices Held

J.p. Yorks. (N. Riding) 1628-43, 1660-d.;4 commr. sewers, N. Riding 1632;5 capt. militia ft., c.1633;6 commr. subsidy 1641-2, 1663, Poll Tax 1641, 1662-3, Irish aid 1642, array, Yorks. 1642;7 dep. bailiff, honour of Richmond and bowbearer, Arkengarthdale, Yorks. 1641, 1660-?d.;8 dep. lt. N. Riding 1660-d.;9 ?sub-commr. excise, Yorks. 1661-2;10 commr. corporations, N. Riding 1662, aid 1665.11

Biography

Hutton’s great-grandfather was a Lancashire husbandman; the family’s fortunes were founded by the latter’s second son, Matthew Hutton, who rose through the Elizabethan ecclesiastical hierarchy from the mastership of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge to the archbishopric of York. When registering his pedigree in 1584 Matthew claimed no kinship with the Huttons of Penrith, Cumberland, but he may have been related to the John Hutton† who appointed him to his first living at Boxworth, Cambridgeshire in 1563.12 With the archbishop’s assistance, Hutton’s father assembled a substantial estate, purchasing the manor of Marrick in the Swaledale at his marriage in 1592, the nearby manor of Marske in 1596, and a lease of the former Greyfriars estate at Richmond from Sir Cuthbert Pepper† in 1606. His father also secured him leases of the rectories of Aldborough (the parliamentary constituency) and Kilham in the East Riding. Finally, at the archbishop’s death in 1606, he inherited the manor of Wharram Percy in the North Riding, and other lands in Durham. By the 1620s he reckoned his annual income to be almost £1,100, though a relative estimated it to be nearer £1,500.13

Matthew Hutton spent much of his childhood at York and Bishopthorpe Palace with his grandfather, who clearly doted on him, boasting in October 1600 that ‘this day in the Minster Garth of his own accord [Matthew] did ask how his grandsire did’. He spent two years at Cambridge, where his accounts record his participation in the student masque attended by King James in 1615, and a keen interest in tennis. He married a few weeks after finishing his studies, at which time his father entailed Marske upon him.14 He apparently had no early parliamentary ambitions, as his father, a member of the Richmond corporation for 30 years, could almost certainly have secured his return for the borough in 1621 in place of his cousin William Bowes.

Hutton was ultimately returned to Parliament in 1626 to remedy a crisis in the family finances precipitated by his father’s unwise decision to stand surety for two associates. The first was a guarantee for mortgage arrears owed by (Sir) Timothy Whittingham*, son of another clergyman, which Hutton’s father attempted to renege upon in 1624, provoking a lawsuit.15 The other was a plan to pay off the debts of Matthew’s uncles Thomas and (Sir) Talbot Bowes*, who defaulted on their loans in the summer of 1623. One of the Bowes’s creditors, George Marbury, had seized their manor of Barforth, co. Durham, and Hutton and his father initially stood surety for debts charged against this estate. However, Thomas Bowes suggested a more ambitious plan whereby the Huttons would purchase Barforth for £2,340, of which £1,100 would be paid directly to his creditors. Hutton was initially ‘unwilling to intermeddle, partly for that he knew his said father and himself to be unfit to make such a purchase, partly for that he feared the same was subject and liable to former charges and encumbrances’.16 A deed of sale was drafted in January 1626, but before it was sealed the Huttons resolved to secure a private Act transferring the title to Barforth, and including it in their family entail in place of Wharram Percy, Hutton’s wife’s jointure estate, which was to be sold to raise the cash to fund the deal. Hutton opted to steer the bill through Parliament in person, and was thus elected at Richmond in January 1626 in place of his uncle Sir Talbot Bowes.17

Upon his arrival at Westminster, Hutton, acting on advice from justice Sir Richard Hutton (a Yorkshireman, though no relative) negotiated to buy up recognizances held by Marbury and Reginald Sotherne, another of the Bowes’s creditors, in order to seize the estate himself, and force his uncles’ remaining creditors to deal on his terms. Hutton also commissioned a search for further encumbrances on the Barforth estate, which, to his undoubted horror, revealed further debts of £1,390, more than the estate was worth. He was granted two weeks’ leave of absence from the Commons on 21 February, during which time he presumably confronted his relatives and arranged a fresh settlement. Back at Westminster on 27 Mar., Hutton assured his father that their estate bill was to be tabled presently. He reported the Commons’ investigation of allegations that the duke of Buckingham had hastened King James’s death, and the looming confrontation in the Lords between Buckingham and his enemy Sir John Digby*, earl of Bristol over the conduct of the Spanish Match; ‘it is probable’, he ventured, ‘that one of them will suffer’. He also noted that the Commons had judged Richard Montagu’s controversial book Appello Caesarem ‘contrary to some of the articles maintained by our church’. Hutton’s bill only received its first reading on 5 May, shortly after the Commons finalized their impeachment charges against Buckingham. The committee (11 May) was chaired by Christopher Wandesford, another Bowes relative, and while Hutton, as an interested party, was not included among its number, his support was integral to its progress: he procured his father-in-law’s consent to the deal, and sealed a bond to repay £2,640 of his uncles’ debts on 31 May, the day before the bill was reported.18

The dissolution of Parliament on 15 June dashed Hutton’s hopes of settling with his uncles’ creditors: Marbury quickly procured a fresh extent of Barforth, and despite Hutton’s attempts to broker an agreement, Sotherne had Thomas Bowes arrested for debt in September 1626. This made Hutton reluctant to proceed, but with Barforth the only security for his uncles’ seemingly limitless liabilities, he agreed to deal with his uncles’ creditors once more in November 1627. As the failed estate bill of 1626 still represented ‘the only means we have to obtain our ease and comfort’, he asked his father to lobby for his return at Richmond, with Christopher Wandesford, at the 1628 general election. However, his place was taken by Sir Talbot Bowes, who doubtless wished to use the parliamentary privilege he thereby obtained to secure freedom from arrest. Wandesford was returned for Thirsk, but Hutton failed to secure a seat. His wife and father-in-law drafted a petition to revive the estate bill in January 1629, but neither this nor the bill left any trace on the parliamentary record.19

Hutton’s failure to secure a statutory resolution of the encumbrances on the Barforth estate created enormous problems. He eventually settled with all but one of his uncles’ creditors for £2,050, but the latter held out for either £1,000 in cash, or an option to purchase the estate at 13 years’ rental value, well below the market price. His importunity scared off another potential purchaser in 1630, and while Hutton held on to Barforth, he had to sell much of the estate he inherited from his father in 1629: Marske was assigned to his wife as a jointure, but Marrick was sold in 1631, and his property at Richmond in the following year.20 With the worst of his problems resolved, he had no need for a parliamentary seat in 1640. Named a commissioner of array in June 1642, he was dropped from the revised commission two weeks later, but was an active royalist, subscribing £100 to the Yorkshire Engagement of 1643. He compounded in 1649 for lands worth £111 p.a., which were charged with £2,000 of debt, and another £2,300 of unsecured debt; because of these encumbrances he was fined the remarkably modest sum of £132. This apparent poverty was partly illusory, as the family’s main estates, held by his eldest son John, avoided prolonged sequestration. However, as late as 1659 his debts still totalled £2,200.21

Hutton kept a low profile during the Interregnum; the namesake who joined the abortive royalist rising at Hexham Moor in March 1655 was probably the son of Richard Hutton* of Goldsborough, Yorkshire; while another namesake, a captain in the New Model Army, was one of the ringleaders of a republican plot to attack the York assizes in 1663. Hutton returned to an active role in local government after the Restoration, but attended his last quarter sessions on 3 Oct. 1665. He probably died in February 1666, as a document drafted for him in that month was left unsigned. Any will or administration registered at Richmond Archdeaconry Court has since been lost. None of his descendants sat in the Commons, but his great-grandson Matthew Hutton sat in the Lords as a bishop from 1743-58.22

Ref Volumes: 1604-1629

Author: Simon Healy

Notes

• 1. N. Yorks. RO, MIC 1513/2255-6; Peds. Yorks. Fams. (E. and N. Ridings) comp. J. Foster.
• 2. Al. Cant.
• 3. Peds. Yorks. Fams. (E. and N. Ridings).
• 4. C231/4, f. 250; N. Riding Sess. Recs. ed. J.C. Atkinson, iv. 19, 234; vi. 26, 94.
• 5. C181/4, f. 114.
• 6. Add. 28082, f. 81.
• 7. SR, v. 61, 83, 107, 141, 150, 342, 458; Northants. RO, FH133.
• 8. Slingsby Diary ed. D. Parsons, 72; N. Yorks. RO, MIC 1513/2157; CTB, 1660-7, p. 372.
• 9. SP29/11, f. 201, 29/60, f. 155v; Add. 41254, f. 5.
• 10. CTB, 1660-7, p. 488.
• 11. HMC 8th Rep. (1881) i. 275; SR, v. 543.
• 12. Peds. Yorks. Fams. (E. and N. Ridings); Hutton Corresp. ed. J. Raine (Surtees Soc. xvii), 5, 14-32; Grantees of Arms ed. W.H. Rylands (Harl. Soc. lxvi), 133.
• 13. Hutton Corresp. 143-5, 160, 179-93, 247; VCH Yorks. (N. Riding), i. 22, 102-3; C. Clarkson, Hist. Richmond, 264; J. Raine, ‘Marske in Swaledale’, Yorks. Arch. Jnl. vi. 237-8; C2/Chas.I/H36/18.
• 14. Hutton Corresp. 160, 169-71, 210-16, 307-8; VCH Yorks. (N. Riding) i. 102 (which wrongly dates his marriage to 1615).
• 15. C2/Chas.I/H58/46; 2/Chas.I/H115/114.
• 16. Hutton Corresp. 308-12; C2/Chas.I/W16/20.
• 17. N. Yorks. RO, MIC 1286/8521-4, 8622, 8640; Harl. 6847, ff. 66v-7.
• 18. C2/Chas.I/B125/30; 2/Chas.I/W16/20; Hutton Corresp. 310-11 (should be dated 27 Mar. 1626); N. Yorks. RO, MIC 1286/8635-42, 1513/1710; CJ, i. 823a, 855b, 859a, 963a; Procs. 1626, iii. 341-2.
• 19. C2/Chas.I/B82/8; 2/Chas.I/S96/8; 2/Chas.I/W16/20; Hutton Corresp. 312-17; N. Yorks. RO, MIC 1513/1710.
• 20. C2/Chas.I/W16/60; N. Yorks. RO, MIC 1513/1711, 1720, 1725-9, 1772; CCC, 1121-2; VCH Yorks. (N. Riding), i. 22, 100.
• 21. Northants RO, FH133; CCAM, 895, 902, 908; N. Yorks. RO, MIC 1513/1930-2049, 2169-70; Royalist Comp. Pprs. ed. J.W. Clay (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. xx), 19.
• 22. Nicholas Pprs. ed. G.F. Warner (Cam. Soc. n.s. l), 242-3; CSP Thurloe, iv. 614; C.H. Firth and G. Davies, Regimental Hist. Cromwell’s Army, 239, 246-50, 264, 456-9; R.L. Greaves, Deliver Us from Evil, 179-83; N. Riding Sess. Recs. vi. 94; Durham UL, 942.81B7, f. 78v; Hutton Corresp. 40-4.