HUTCHINSON, John (1616-1664), a Puritan soldier, son of Sir Thomas Hutchinson, was born at Nottingham in September 1616. After completing his education at Cambridge University he entered Lincoln’s Inn, but soon became tired both of the study of law and the amusements of London, and was meditating travel on the Continent when he accidentally made the acquaintance of Lucy, daughter of Sir Allan Apsley, whom he married in 1638. After his marriage he returned to Owthorpe, where the study of divinity and politics gradually led to a change of his sentiments in regard to the dispute between the parliament and the king At first he did not find a clear call to join the Parliamentary army, but the efforts of the Royalists to seize him as a disaffected person soon dissipated his neutrality, and, becoming governor of Nottingham, he with great firmness and courage held the town and castle against internal treachery and external attacks till the triumph of the parliamentary cause. Having bet n chosen to represent Nottingham in the new parliament, he became a member of the high court of justice for the trial of the king, and gave his vote for his execution, but, disapproving of the subsequent political conduct of Cromwell, he took no further part in politics during the lifetime of the Protector. After the Restoration he became member for the county of Nottingham, and he was included in the Act of Amnesty passed in favour of certain of the regicides. Subsequently, however, he was arrested upon suspicion of being concerned in a treasonable conspiracy; and after an imprisonment of ten months in the Tower of London, and of one month in Sandown Castle, Kent, he died 11th September 1664. The life of Colonel Hutchinson is now only of interest from the manner in which it is narrated in the ...Memoirs written by his wife, and first published in 1806, a w ork not only valuable for the picture which it gives of the time in which he lived, but for the simple beauty of its style, and the naïveté with Which the writer records her sentiments and opinions, and details the incidents of her private life.
HUTCHINSON, John (1674-1737), the author of Moses's Principia and other works in which the so-called Hutchinsonian system is expounded, was born at Spenni-thorne, Yorkshire, in 1674, and after receiving an adequate elementary education there, served as steward in several families of position, latterly in that of the duke of Somerset, who ultimately obtained for him the post of riding purveyor to the master of the horse, a sinecure worth about .£200 a year. In this employment he became acquainted with Dr Woodward, physician to the duke, and author of a work entitled The Natural History of the Earth, to whom ha entrusted a large number of fossils of his own collecting, along with a mass of manuscript notes, for arrangement and publication. A misunderstanding as to the manner in which these should be dealt with was the immediate occasion of the publication by Hutchinson in 1724 of Moses's Principia, part i., in which Woodward’s Natural History was bitterly ridiculed, his conduct with regard to the mineralogical specimens not obscurely characterized, and a refutation of the Newtonian doctrine of gravitation seriously attempted. It was followed by part ii. in 1727, and by various other works published at frequent intervals. Hutchinson died in 1737. A complete edition of all the publications of this author, along with his posthumous pieces, edited by Robert Spearman and Julius Bate, appeared in 1748 (12 vols.); an Abstract of these followed in 1753; and a Supplement, with Life by Spearman prefixed, in 1765.
Although the crude ideas of Hutchinson at the time of their first promulgation were successful, by their seeming devoutness, in commending themselves to some of the pious but dim-sighted and over-timid souls of that period, who had taken alarm at the atheistic conclusions they believed to be deducible from the Newtonian doctrines, they are now too uninfluential, as well as too glaringly inconsistent with the universally recognized principles of physics and philology, to call for any detailed analysis. Their nature may be almost sufficiently gathered from the titles of some of the works in which they are set forth, such as Moses's Ρriηdpiα, Parti.; of the Invisible Parts of Matter, of Motion, of Visible Forms, and of their Dissolution and Reformation; Moses's Principia, Part II.; of the Circulation of the Heavens; of the Cause of the Motion and Course of the Earth, Moon, <kc.; of the Religion, Philosophy, and Emblems of the Heathens before Moses writ., and of the Jews after; in Confirmation of the Natural History of the Bible; Moses's Sine Principio, represented by Names, JVords, Types, Emblems; with an introduction to show the Nature of the Fall, of Paradise, and of the Body and Soul; The Confusion of Tongues and Trinity of the Gentiles (being an account of the origin of Idolatry); Power Essential and Mechanical, or what power belongs to God and what to his creatures, in which the design of Sir I. Newton and Dr Samuel Clarke is laid open; Glory or Gravity, wherein the Objects and Articles of the Christian Faith are exhibited; The Religion of Satan, or Antichrist Delineated. Bishop Horne of Norwich, it may be mentioned, was during some of his earlier years an avowed Hutchinsonian; and Jones of Nayland continued to be so to the end of his life.
HUTCHINSON, Thomas (1711-1780), governor of the province of Massachusetts, son of a wealthy merchant of Boston, was born there September 9, 1711. The son, being unsuccessful in commerce, studied law, and adopted it as his profession. He was representative of Boston in the general court for ten years, and was three times chosen speaker. From 1749 to 1766 he was a counsellor, in 1752 he was appointed judge of probate, from 1758 to 1771 he was lieutenant-governor, and in 1760 he became chief justice. In 1748 he carried a measure to substitute gold and silver for the paper currency, which had depreciated one-eighth in value. During the Stamp Act riots of 1765 his house was sacked by the mob; and by his subsequent support of the general policy of the British Government he incurred increasing unpopularity. In 1767 he laid claim to a seat in the council on the ground of being lieutenant-governor, but on account of his political views his claims were set aside. On his appointment to the governorship of Massachusetts in 1769, he used every method to support the measures which the mother country sought to enforce against the colonists; and in December 1773, on account of his refusal to permit the reshipment of teas on which a duty had been laid by the Government, several of the inhabitants of Boston emptied the tea into the bay. In January 1774 Hutchinson asked leave to resign his office, and in June he sailed to England, where he spent the remainder of his life. As the result of official inquiry into his conduct while governor of Massachusetts, he was rewarded with a pension. He died at Brompton in June 1780.
Hutchinson was the author of the following works:— A Brief Statement of the Claim of the Colonies, 1764; Collection of Original Papers relative to the History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1769; History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay from 1628 to 1750, 2 vols., London, 1765—67; History of Massachusetts from 1749 to 1774, published posthumously in 1828.
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