John Hutchinson, an English Puritan revolutionist, born in Nottinghamshire about 1616, died in Sandown castle, Kent, Sept. 11, 1664. He was a man of family and of good education, and was married at Richmond, July 3,1638, to Lucy, daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, governor of the tower of London, with whom he subsequently settled on his estate at Owthorpe. After the commencement of the civil war he declared for the parliament and was appointed governor of Nottingham castle, which he held until the close of the war. He afterward represented Nottingham in parliament, and, as a member of the high court of judiciary appointed for the trial of the king, concurred in the sentence pronounced on him. The subsequent course of Cromwell, however, met with the disapproval of Hutchinson. At the restoration he was comprehended in the general act of amnesty, but was subsequently arrested on a suspicion of treasonable conspiracy, and after a detention of ten months in the tower was removed to Sandown castle, where he died of an aguish fever brought on by confinement in a damp cell. His wife survived him many years, and left a memoir of him, which is valuable as a record of events.

It was first published from the original manuscript in 1806 (4to, London), and several other editions have since appeared.

John Hutchinson #1

John Hutchinson, an English philosopher, born at Spennithorne, Yorkshire, in 1674, died Aug. 28, 1737. After receiving a careful private education, he served as steward in several noble families. As riding purveyor of the duke of Somerset, master of the horse, he made a large collection of fossils. In 1724 appeared the first part of his "Moses's Prin-cipia," in which he disputed the Newtonian theory of gravitation. In the second part (1727) he continued his criticisms of Newton, and maintained, on Biblical authority the doctrine of a plenum in opposition to that of a vacuum. From this time one or more of his uncouthly written volumes, containing a sort of cabalistic interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures, appeared annually. His leading idea is that the Scriptures contain the elements of all rational philosophy as well as of general religion. The Hebrew language has not only its literal but its typical sense, every root of it being significant. His philosophical and theological works were published in London in 13 vols. (1749-'65).