John Hutchinson (c1643). Oil on canvas. 95 x 78. Subject traditionally thought to be. Colonel John Hutchinson was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons of England from 1648 to 1653 and in 1660. He was one of the Puritan leaders, and fought in the parliamentary army in the English Civil War. As a member of the high court of justice in 1649 he was 13th of 59 Commissioners to sign the death-warrant of King Charles I. Although he avoided the fate of some of the other regicides executed after the Restoration, he was exempted from the general pardon, only to the extent that he could not hold a public office. In 1663, he was accused of involvement in the Farnley Wood Plot, was incarcerated and died in prison. He invested very successfully in buying paintings from the art collection of Charles I after his execution, spending very large amounts relative to his wealth. After a few years he resold them for substantial profits. Hutchinson was the son of Sir Thomas Hutchinson of Owthorpe Hall and Margaret daughter of Sir John Byron of Newstead {she was a descendant of Sir William Sidney }. He was baptised on 18 September 1615. He was educated at Nottingham Grammar School, Lincoln Free School where he considered John Clarke the Master 'a supercilious pedant',and Peterhouse, Cambridge. In 1636 he entered Lincoln's Inn to study law, but devoted himself to music and divinity rather than the study of law. Unike his Royalist father, Sir Thomas Hutchinson, who represented Nottinghamshire in the Long parliament, he took, the parliamentary side. He first distinguished himself by preventing Lord Newark, the lord-lieutenant of the county, from seizing the county powder-magazine for the king's service. He next accepted a commission as lieutenant-colonel in the regiment raised by Colonel Francis Pierrepont, and became one of the parliamentary committee for Nottinghamshire. On 29 June 1643, at the order of the committee and of Sir John Meldrum, Hutchinson undertook the command of Nottingham Castle; he received from Lord Fairfax in the following November a commission to raise a foot regiment, and was finally appointed by Parliament governor of both town and castle. The town was unfortified, the garrison weak and ill-supplied, with the committee torn by political and personal feuds. The neighbouring royalist commanders, Hutchinson's cousin, and William, Marquess of Newcastle, attempted to corrupt Hutchinson. Newcastle's agent offered him E10,000, and promised that he should be made the best lord in Nottinghamshire, but Hutchinson indignantly refused to entertain such proposals. The town was often attacked. Sir Charles Lucas entered it in January 1644 and endeavoured to set it on fire, and in April 1645 a party from Newark captured the fort at Trent-bridges. Hutchinson succeeded in making good these losses, and answered each new summons to surrender with a fresh defiance. The difficulties were increased by continual disputes between Hutchinson and the committee, which were a natural result, in Nottingham as elsewhere, of the divided authority set up by Parliament. But there is evidence that Hutchinson was irritable, quick-tempered, and deficient in self-control. The Committee of Both Kingdoms endeavoured to end the quarrel by a compromise, which Hutchinson found great difficulty in persuading his opponents to accept. On 16 March 1646 Hutchinson was returned to Parliament as member for Nottinghamshire, succeeding to the seat held by his father, who had died on 18 August 1643. His religious views led him to attach himself to the Independent rather than the Presbyterian party. As governor he had protected the separatists to the best of his ability, and now, under his wife's influence, he adopted the main tenet of the baptists. He was commissioner for exclusion from sacrament in 1646 and commissioner for scandalous offences in 1648. On 22 December 1648 Hutchinson signed the protest against the votes of the House of Commons accepting the concessions made by the king at the treaty of Newport, and consented to act as one of the judges at the trial of Charles I. According to his wife, he was nominated to the latter post very much against his will; but, looking upon himself as called hereunto, durst not refuse it, as holding himself obliged by the covenant of God and the public trust of his country reposed in him. After serious consideration and prayer he signed the sentence against the king. From 13 February 1649 to 1651 Hutchinson was a member of the first two Councils of State of the Commonwealth, but he took no very active part in public affairs, and with the expulsion of the Long parliament in 1653 moved back to his family seat at Owthorpe near Nottingham and lived in retirement until 1659 when he was made High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire.