CUTTS, Sir John (c.1581-1646), of Horham Hall, Thaxted, Essex and Swavesey and Childerley, Cambs.

One of a long and uninterrupted line of knights bearing the same name, Sir John Cutts is chiefly memorable for depopulating the west Cambridgeshire villages of Great and Little Childerley to make way for a deerpark during the reign of Charles I. RCHM Cambs. i. 46; W.M. Palmer, John Layer (1586-1640) of Shepreth, Cambs. (Camb. Antiq. Soc. liii), 101; Works of Abp. Laud ed. J. Bliss, v. 365. His principal forbear was his paternal great-great grandfather who, as treasurer of the Household to Henry VIII, acquired a considerable, if somewhat scattered, landed estate in Cambridgeshire, north-western Essex and southern Hertfordshire. VCH Cambs. ix. 42-3; VCH Herts. ii. 267; H.W. King, ‘Manor of Horham and Fam. of Cutts’, Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. iv. 30. During the second half of the sixteenth century Cutts’s father, Sir John Cutts the elder, sold off part of his patrimony, including a substantial slice of his Essex territory at Thaxted, Feet of Fines for Essex vi. 1581-1603 ed. F.G. Emmison, 47-8, 58, 62, 80, 102, 145. preferring instead to reside at Childerley. However, following his second marriage, to Margaret Brocket, the coheiress of an important landed figure in southern Hertfordshire, he resettled at his family’s Hertfordshire property of Shenley Hall, where he was based throughout the 1580s. Despite this relocation, the elder Cutts retained his stature in Cambridgeshire, which he represented in Parliament in both 1584 and 1586.

Cutts himself was probably born and raised at Shenley, and in all likelihood was enrolled at the nearby grammar school in Barnet, where his maternal grandfather, Sir John Brocket, was a governor. C.L. Tripp, Queen Elizabeth’s G.S. Barnet, 233. He cannot have remained for long in Hertfordshire, however, as the elder Cutts returned to Childerley in about 1590 following his appointment by the bishop of Ely as keeper of Somersham Palace and park, a property which lay just across the Huntingdonshire border from his Cambridgeshire estate. CSP Dom. 1591-4, p. 200; VCH Hunts. ii. 226. Over the next decade Cutts’s father strengthened both his political and territorial position in his native county, where he was one of the wealthiest landowners. Lansd. 74, f. 205. In 1596 he was appointed a deputy lieutenant on the recommendation of the lord lieutenant, Roger, 2nd Lord North, who described him as ‘my dear good friend’, APC, 1596-7, p. 192; Harl. 6599, f. 6. while in 1598 he spent £6,000 in acquiring the manor of Boxworth, which adjoined his manors of Childerley, Lolworth and Swavesey. C66/1503; C78/348/5. At the same time he virtually severed all ties with Hertfordshire, selling off Shenley in 1600 and disposing of most of his share in his wife’s inheritance following the death of his father-in-law in 1598. VCH Herts. ii. 267; C66/1506; HALS, ms 82937. His marriage was annulled shortly thereafter. Ped. Reg. ed. G. Sherwood, i. 322.

Unusually for a gentleman of his background and wealth, Cutts was educated at neither university nor inn of court. However, at his father’s request he accompanied Sir Robert Cecil† on the latter’s embassy to France in 1598. HMC Hatfield, viii. 15. In the following year he married Anne Kempe, the eldest of the six daughters and coheirs of a substantial Kentish gentleman, Thomas Kempe. The match was undoubtedly arranged by Cutts’s elderly and childless first cousin (twice removed), Sir Henry Cutts of Binbury who, as part of the complex marriage settlement, contracted to entail his own valuable estate in Kent on Cutts and his heirs by Anne Kempe. C78/147/6. For the young Cutts, this arrangement held out the mouth-watering prospect of an inheritance distinct from his own patrimony worth, in the estimation of the diarist John Manningham, £1,300 p.a. Cutts’s immediate need for a suitable property in which to establish his own household was met by his father who, through Thomas Kempe, turned over to him the family’s remaining holdings in north-western Essex, comprising the manors of Horham, Thaxted and Spencer’s Fee. C66/1501, mm. 25-6. This transaction has frequently been mistaken for a sale: P. Morant, Hist. and Antiqs. of Essex (1768), ii. 439; HP Commons 1558-1603, i. 690. However, these properties, consisting of around 440 acres, yielded a relatively small annual income, amounting to around £200. Feet of Fines for Essex vi. 158; Diary of John Manningham, 164. Fortunately for him, Cutts was not required to wait long before entering into his cousin’s inheritance. Sir Henry died in December 1603, C142/281/81. and although his widow retained a life interest in his estate her claims were invalidated sometime before 1607 because she had remarried. C78/147/6. Her husband was Sir Thomas Fludd†, who died that year.

Like his father-in-law, Cutts received a knighthood at the Coronation in 1603. His acquisition of his family’s Essex properties had marked the first stage in the transition from father to son, a process taken one step further in 1604, when Cutts rather than the elder Sir John, now in his late fifties, was elected junior knight of the shire for Cambridgeshire. His return to Westminster marked the commencement of a lengthy parliamentary career distinguished only by the fact that, like his father before him, he never addressed the House. During this, his first Parliament, his name features only once in the Journal, on 25 Feb. 1607, when he was appointed to the committee for the bill to incorporate the churchwardens of St. Saviour’s Southwark, a measure in which he had no traceable interest. CJ, i. 340b. However, as a Cambridgeshire knight of the shire he was entitled to attend several legislative committees, including those concerned with fen drainage. Ibid. 277a, 298b. Moreover, he undoubtedly kept a watchful eye on a bill introduced by Robert, 3rd Lord Rich (Robert Rich†), which received two readings in the Lords in February 1606. This measure concerned properties in Essex purchased from Henry, 1st Lord Hunsdon in the reign of Edward VI by Rich’s grandfather. Rich desired statutory confirmation of his title in order to extinguish the claims of Sir Thomas Berkeley* and his wife. At the committee stage, however, it was noticed that the Cutts family, having acquired its Cambridgeshire manor from Hunsdon, also had an interest in the bill. It was suggested that the committee should hear counsel on behalf of all the interested parties, including the elder Cutts, but in the event the illness of the committee’s chairman, lord treasurer Dorset (Thomas Sackville*), put paid to the bill, which never reached the Commons. LJ, ii. 373a, 376a, 385a; SP14/18/83. For the bill itself, see HLRO, main pprs. suppl. 12 Feb. 1606. For the purchase of Swavesey from Hunsdon, see VCH Cambs. ix. 382.

Towards the end of 1607 Thomas Kempe died, Index to PCC Admons. iv. 1596-1608 ed. M. Fitch (Brit. Rec. Soc. lxxi), 75. whereupon Cutts became entitled to a quarter share in his estate. This he chose to alienate to his wife’s brother-in-law, Sir Dudley Digges*. E. Hasted, Kent, vii. 273-4, 349. The following year Cutts sold to Theophilus Howard, Lord Howard de Walden*, his interest in the keepership of Somersham Park, Huntingdonshire, which office Cutts’s father had acquired in 1604 with the eventual intention of passing it on to his son. CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 103; LR9/16/760. In 1609 Cutts sold his Essex estate lock, stock and barrel, C2/Chas.I/S99/11 (a mis-filed Jacobean lawsuit). though it is far from clear what prompted him to do so. He subsequently assumed control of Hobledod’s, a small manor in Swavesey which his father purchased for him in 1610, C2/Jas.I/C10/14; Add. 5846, f. 74. and following the death of his mother in November 1610 he also took possession of Boxworth manor. MIs and Coats of Arms from Cambs. 110. By the time he stood for election to the second Jacobean Parliament he was therefore a Cambridgeshire landowner in his own right.

Cutts’s partner during the 1614 election campaign was his neighbour Sir Thomas Chicheley* who, probably at his suggestion, had married one of his wife’s younger sisters. The two men were opposed by Sir John Cotton of Landwade, who had twice represented the county under Elizabeth, and their near neighbour Sir John Cage of Long Stowe. Cage may have borne a grudge against Cutts, as the latter’s father was one of the sewer commissioners who had recently attempted to fine him £1,440 for refusing, as sheriff, to levy an illegal rate on the county’s towns to pay for a new drain. Eg. 2651, f. 76. However, as Cotton was also one of the offending commissioners this explanation is not entirely convincing. Whatever the truth may have been, the fierce competition between the two sides certainly indicates that the contest was conducted with a degree of bitterness. Cotton and Cage spread the rumour that if Cutts was elected the fenmen of the Isle of Ely would lose a third of their land to fen drainers, a ploy which evidently succeeded in drawing some voters away from their rivals. At the same time, a circular was distributed among the unenfranchised copyholders urging them to vote for Cutts and Chicheley. Cotton and Cage were outraged, and on the eve of the election, which was to be held in Cambridge, they persuaded the sheriff to issue a Proclamation ordering the large number of non-freeholders in the town to avoid the hustings. This message was reinforced by Cutts and Chicheley themselves, who sent word to each of the local inns and taverns calling upon those who were not legally entitled to vote to return home. However, if Cotton and Cage anticipated that the sheriff’s action would weaken their opponents’ support they were mistaken, for on the following morning they were defeated by at least 500 votes. Suspecting that Cutts and Chicheley had won only because a large number of copyholders had ignored the instructions of the sheriff, Cotton and Cage demanded a poll. However, they waited two hours after the election before doing so, by which time many voters had returned home, and therefore their request was turned down. Undeterred, the two defeated candidates subsequently petitioned the House to refer the matter to the privileges committee, to which Cutts himself was appointed on 8 April. After careful consideration, on 19 Apr. and 14 May, the committee upheld the sheriff’s return, mainly, it would seem, because it was believed that Cotton and Cage had endeavoured to achieve an unfair advantage by waiting until many voters had returned home before demanding a count. However, individual committee members such as Edward Duncombe and Thomas Martin concluded that Cutts and Chicheley were also guilty of sharp practice; they refused to believe that the letters addressed to the copyholders were merely the independent work of over-zealous supporters. Martin further alleged collusion between the sheriff and the two victorious candidates, dismissing the former’s proclamation as a mere smokescreen. Cutts and Chicheley received only slender support for their conduct, principally from their kinsman, Sir Dudley Digges. Procs. 1614 (Commons), 38, 103-8, 239-41; Downing Coll. Lib. Camb. Bowtell ms 11, Metcalfe’s Thesaurus, f. 210.

Apart from being nominated to the privileges committee, Cutts took no recorded part in the 1614 assembly. During the king’s visit to Cambridge in March 1615, he was awarded an honorary MA by the university, at which time he also entered into his patrimony. He soon began to transform the medieval manor farm at Childerley, adding two wings and rebuilding the hall range that lay between them. VCH Cambs. ix. 383. He also continued the process of disposing of his family’s remaining holdings in Hertfordshire, selling off his copyhold interest in the manor of Sandridge in October 1616, while at the same time strengthening his position in western Cambridgeshire, where he obtained from the bishop of Ely a lease of Coventry’s manor in Dry Drayton, a parish which bordered both Lolworth and Childerley. HALS, Garrard ms 27005; VCH Cambs. ix. 76. His influence in the county was briefly threatened in December 1616, when, for reasons that remain unclear, he and three others were struck off the commission of the peace, to which he had been added in 1614. He was restored in the following February. In 1619 he spearheaded the opposition to the drainage schemes which had been implemented by his fellow sewer commissioner and neighbour, Sir Miles Sandys, 1st bt.*, bringing his concerns to the attention of the Privy Council and co-ordinating his efforts with those of the university. CUL, UA T.XII.1, nos.17, 22. He subsequently served as sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, during which time he engaged in litigation with his Swavesey tenants over grazing rights, employing as his counsel the Huntingdonshire lawyer Thomas Hetley*. C2/Jas.I/C10/61; C3/324/78. As a result of his aggressive insistence on his manorial privileges, the court subsequently permitted him to enclose 70 acres of common. REQ 2/408/5; LJ, vi. 391b.

Cutts was re-elected as junior knight of the shire in December 1620, this time without encountering opposition. Unlike the senior knight, Sir Edward Peyton, who took an active role in the Commons, his name appears only fleetingly in the parliamentary records. He was nominated to one joint conference with the Lords, concerning the informers bill (1 Dec.), and to three legislative committees - on the import of corn (8 Mar.), local lawsuits (20 Mar.) and a proposal to lessen the statutory maximum rate of interest charged by lenders (7 May). CJ, i. 545a, 563b, 611a, 654b. Five weeks into the Parliament news reached Cutts of the death of the chairman of the Cambridgeshire bench, Sir John Cotton. Sir Edward Peyton expected to be appointed as Cotton’s successor, having briefly held the chairmanship in 1617-18, but Cutts had anticipated Cotton’s demise and successfully lobbied the royal favourite, the marquess of Buckingham, much to Peyton’s fury. Secret Hist. of Jas. I ed. W. Scott, ii. 441. Cutts was appointed on the same day that Cotton expired, 5 Mar.: C142/385/33.

Shortly after the dissolution, in February 1622, Cutts was summoned before the Privy Council to explain his failure to contribute to the Palatine Benevolence, and was evidently persuaded to make a donation. SP14/127/82. In the following November the king, a keen hunter, ordered him to help prevent poaching of the royal game in Cambridgeshire; he was later instructed to preserve the game around nearby Royston from the unwelcome attention of university students. CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 107.

In January 1624 Cutts sought re-election to Parliament, this time in partnership with the impecunious Toby Palavicino, whose father Sir Horatio had acquired a large Cambridgeshire estate under Elizabeth. However, he was opposed by Sir Edward Peyton, who had evidently not forgiven him for snatching the chairmanship of the bench, and Sir Simeon Steward. Accounts of the election held at Cambridge Castle on 22 Jan. are confused and contradictory, but it would seem that the under-sheriff, Edward Ingrey, conspired with Peyton and Steward to cheat Cutts and Palavicino of victory. According to some eye-witnesses, Cutts received several hundred more votes at the cry than Peyton. Ingrey, however, refused to allow a poll despite repeated demands by Cutts, and was eventually spirited away by some of Peyton’s men to a local tavern, where he made out his return in favour of Peyton and Steward in the former’s chamber. This, at least, was the version of events accepted by the privileges’ committee after it investigated the matter on 4 Mar. following a complaint by Cutts and Palavicino. HMC Rutland, i. 470; ‘Holland 1624’, ff. 27-30; ‘Earle 1624’, f. 50r-v. Following its recommendation, the House quashed the under-sheriff’s return, ordered a fresh election and summoned Ingrey to answer charges of misconduct. CJ, i. 678a. Only later, when Ingrey alleged that he had been manhandled by Cutts’s supporters, a complaint supported by the testimony of independent witnesses, did the House begin to suspect that Cutts was not entirely innocent. Ibid. 687a-b; ‘Nicholas 1624’, pp. 130-1.

Cutts prepared for Cambridgeshire’s second parliamentary election in as many months without Palavicino, whose principal interest in seeking a seat had been to secure statutory authority to break the entail on his estates in order to be able to settle his debts. The inevitable expense involved in a second election may have proved too daunting for Palavicino, who withdrew his candidacy, perhaps in return for a promise of support from Sir Edward Peyton, whose name later headed the list of committee members appointed to consider his bill. L. Stone, Sir Horatio Palavicino, 310-13; CJ, i. 705a. Deserted by Palavicino, Cutts was propelled into the arms of his erstwhile opponent Sir John Cage, who seems to have used his strong bargaining position to demand the right to contest the senior seat. In mid-March more than 1,000 of their supporters descended on Cambridge. However, while Cutts went on to defeat Sir Simeon Steward, Cage was beaten by Peyton, an outcome which Cage blamed on Cutts’s followers, whom he accused of withholding their support. A similar sense of betrayal may have been shared by Steward, whose relations with Peyton were likewise soured by the election result. Later events were to suggest that the anger felt by both men was justified, and that Cutts and Peyton had privately reached an accommodation at the expense of their respective allies. Left without effective remedy, Cage refused to pay his share of the cost of fighting the election. In consequence, although Cutts settled his half of the bill, amounting to £77, both men were later sued in Chancery for the outstanding balance by the innkeeper of the Rose and Crown, who had made the arrangements needed to feed and accommodate their small army of supporters throughout Cambridge. C2/Chas.I/W88/1. For the dispute between Peyton and Steward, see C2/Chas.I/P56/18.

Cutts’s known contribution to the work of the 1624 Parliament was modest, to say the least. Like Peyton he was nominated to the committee for the bill to allow the Catholic peer Viscount Montagu to sell land to raise portions for his daughters (5 Apr.) and was one of only eight Members specifically named to consider the measure to prevent the prosecution of magistrates for frivolous causes (15 April). His former connections with Kent may help to explain why he was chosen to help consider the bill regarding Erith and Plumstead marshes (10 Apr.), but it seems more likely that his interest was aroused because the measure dealt with property owned by the in-laws of his Cambridgeshire enemy Sir Miles Sandys. On 18 Apr. he was nominated to the committee to investigate complaints that many papists occupied teaching positions. His only other appointment was to attend the joint conference with the Lords regarding limitations and pleadings in the Exchequer (30 April). CJ, i. 755a, 762a, 767b, 692b, 695a. As a Cambridgeshire knight of the shire he was entitled to attend the committee for Palavicino’s bill, Ibid. 705a. which he may no longer have viewed entirely sympathetically.

Cutts was subsequently re-elected for Cambridgeshire in 1625 and 1626, as was Sir Edward Peyton. Neither election was contested, and both men took turns to occupy the senior seat. These facts reinforce the suspicion that in March 1624 Cutts had cemented an alliance with his former adversary. Once in the Commons Cutts, as always, remained a shadowy figure. In 1625 his sole committee appointment was to consider the reintroduced bill to drain Erith and Plumstead marshes (28 June). Procs. 1625, p. 257. In 1626 he attracted just three nominations the first of which, on 7 Mar., was to help confer with the Lords regarding national defence. He was subsequently appointed to legislative committees concerning the lands of Giles Sewster (13 Mar.) and muster-masters (28 March). As a Cambridgeshire knight of the shire, Cutts was also entitled to attend the committee for the bill to annul a Chancery decree concerning Cambridgeshire property owned by Sir Thomas Jermyn* (2 March). Ten days before the 1626 Parliament was dissolved Cutts was licensed ‘to go into the country for his health’. Procs. 1626, ii. 175, 216, 271, 386; iii. 368.

For reasons which are unclear, Cutts received a royal pardon in February 1626. C231/4, f. 200. Although active in collecting the Forced Loan, he was one of the six commissioners who, in October 1627, wrote to the Privy Council excusing the county’s failure to send in its contributions more swiftly owing to ‘the busy time of harvest and the slackness of some of the poorer sort’. SP16/81/31. Perhaps by prior agreement, neither Cutts nor Sir Edward Peyton sought re-election in 1628. In November that year Cutts helped conduct a detailed survey of the county’s militia. Harl. 4014, f. 4. Returned to Parliament for Cambridgeshire for the last time in March 1640, Cutts ended his parliamentary career in typically inconspicuous fashion. During the Civil War he was busily employed as a deputy lieutenant in raising troops and finding arms and supplies for Parliament. HMC 7th Rep. 556. In November 1645 he stood against Francis Russell in the Cambridgeshire recruiter election, but was heavily defeated. The Scotish Dove, no. 112 (3-10 Dec. 1645), p. 884. He died in July 1646, and was buried in the family vault at Swavesey in accordance with the wishes expressed in his will of the previous month. PROB 11/197, ff. 41-2v. His eldest son John received a baronetcy from Charles II. None of his immediate descendants sat in the Commons, although a distant cousin, and the eventual heir to his estates, John, 1st Lord Cutts of Gowran, represented Cambridgeshire between 1693 and 1702 and Newport, Isle of Wight between 1702 and 1707.