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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.