Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, Governor of Nottingham Castle and Town, Representative of the County of Nottingham in the Long Parliament, ... the Second, With Original Anecdotes of M

by Lucy Hutchinson, Julius Hutchinson, Edward Halsall

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Genres: History, Biography, Memoir

562 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1973

About the author

Lucy Hutchinson (1620–1681), republican and puritan, was an English biographer as well as the first translator into English of the complete text of Lucretius's De Rerum Natura during the years of the interregnum (1649-1660).

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

Born in 1620, Lucy Hutchinson was the daughter of the Lieutenant of the Tower of London. She had a good education and may have been the first person to make a complete translation of Lucretius into English. In addition to being cultured and wealthy, Hutchinson and her husband were both Puritans. Her husband, looking properly puritanical with his waves of long brown hair, graces the front cover of this edition. Lucy wrote her memoirs of her husband, who had been one of the signatories of Charles I's death warrant, purely for her family and her biography of him was only to be first published at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Lucy's account is centred on a period of crisis and change in English political life. During the Civil War, Colonel Hutchinson was made governor of Nottingham Castle on behalf of Parliament. Afterwards doubting Cromwell's commitment to Republicanism, the couple drift away from him politically during the Republic. With the restoration of the monarchy with the return of Charles II, Hutchinson was imprisoned and died in captivity.

Her account of the period gives a good feel for the extreme local focus of the participants in the fighting and the ongoing influence of long-standing social networks. Sadly she doesn't refer much to herself directly and of course what we'd like to know about is precisely what she does not talk about - her own role. Finally we have a woman speaking to us from the depths of the seventeenth century only to have her deliberately keeping herself out of the picture and keeping her book tightly focused on her husband instead. He is to be the role model for the family, not her. She is so self-effacing that she only appears in her own text in the third person as "the Colonel's wife".

As a modern reader not only did the prose style take some getting used to but I also found the total absence of chapters or subdivisions in the text bizarrely difficult to deal with. The biography stylistically is no Pilgrims Progress. However reading the biography I did have a strong feeling of experiencing the events as they happened, the twists and turns of the fortunes of war, the disillusionment of the political domination of Cromwell and the terrible blow of the Restoration when faith alone in God's purpose gave them comfort.

It sits alongside the likes of Puritanism and Liberty in giving an insight into the wide range of opinion during a turbulent time.

[17CECO · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book--which will probably add up to a footnote in my dissertation--was a strangely compelling companion for a month of dread.

Perhaps it was Hutchinson's intensely local, granular purview of the civil war: Hutchinson relates a deeply polarized nation and these polarized people and nobles find each other in close quarters, knocking on each others' doors, searching and seizing each others' houses, drawing up petitions against direct superiors. It’s a milieu of paranoia and dangerous signifiers. This polarization was occurring within the parliamentary party as well--in the fissures between Presbyterians, Calvinists, and Independents. The very long section of Nottingham Castle, which is often viewed as a slog, gets to the heart of this. I found myself wanting the endless, factitious petition delivering and coalition building to last forever. Perhaps it was the pre-election dread. But the shit does hit the fan and blood spills. And in LH’s version, the parliamentary in-fighting does not even end during battle with the Royalists.

In a sense, in how she narrates these events LH puts forward a political philosophy and social psychology: through the events she narrates, LH provides a model in which these public officials are at every turn trying to mobilize parts of their constituencies to act. Hutch never gets total obedience and must abide by officers and aldermen who perpetually refuse his orders and work to quite actively undermine him. It argues for ways in which hierarchy was quite shaky during this period but, also, through JH’s success, that government and leadership is a perpetual process of good enough coalitions performing good enough actions. But also one in which many are motivated by personal interest and ideology to seek the position of those above them (though she does not hesitate to name true friends and converts). She is also quite determined in tracking household economies and the ways in which nobles and officials used their position to squeeze each other for everything they were worth. During her civil war, battles were often followed (or interrupted) by plunder. There is no master plan, just constant referendum, negotiation, coalition building, and provisioning.

During it all, LH comes across as tough as shit and smart as hell, playing a delicate game, putting herself as a liminal character to adhere to the norms of her time but writing in her own agency and quick thinking when it means aiding JH’s public affairs. This reveals the small but real ways she had agency and could act using her station, intelligence, and gender to shield JH. This also reveals how officials, officers, and constituents come to her to take JH’s temperature or to pump her for incriminating information. Between the lines, I suspect these men underestimate her intelligence and understanding of the game board.

[Max_Barber]

Only read a couple of extracts: 'All sorts of men through various labours press' and 'Musings in my Evening Walks at Owthorpe'. Both were rather nice though. Puritan literature is generally quite excellent.

[James Horgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a lovely early Nineteenth Century copy (which has now almost fallen apart) of this work including a wonderful family tree and maps of Nottingham. The diary was edited by a distant, and not entirely, Anglican clergyman relative more than two hundred years after Lucy died.

Lucy gives a vivid insight into Puritan life during the Civil War and Commonwealth married to a man she loved deeply and whose character she adored. Colonel Hutchinson gradually moved to an Anabaptist position and seems to have had Quietist tendencies. Unsurprisingly he wasn't popular with Presbyterian townsmen and Lucy was no fan of Cromwell, mainly due to his willingness to take decisive action rather than to leave everything to God (which is, theologically, an unfair dichotomy).

Colonel Hutchinson was a regicide and was imprisoned in a dank castle after the Restoration which rapidly destroyed his health.

If you have a reasonable outline in your head of this period it is an easy read.

[Kathy]

Biography of Colonel Hutchinson by his wife Lucy - Puritan view of Charles I