Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hutten, Leonard
HUTTEN, LEONARD (1557?–1632), divine and antiquary, born about 1557, was educated on the foundation at Westminster School, whence he was elected to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1574. He graduated B.A. on 12 Nov. 1578, and M.A. on 3 March 1581-2, commenced B.D. on 27 April 1591. and was admitted D.D. on 14 April 1600 (Reg. of Univ. of Oxf. , Oxf. Hist. Soc., vol. ii. pt. iii. p. 76). In January 1587 he was presented by his college to the vicarage of Long Preston, Yorkshire, which he held until December 1588. He was next instituted to the rectory of Rampisham, Dorsetshire, on 10 Oct. 1595, and ceded it in 1601 (Hutchins, Dorsetshire, 2nd edit. ii. 259). On 19 Dec. 1599 he was made a prebendary of Christ Church Cathedral (Le Neve, Fasti, ed. Hardy, ii. 529), and on 6 June 1601 received the vicarage of Floore, Northamptonshire, another college preferment, which he retained with his prebend until his death (Baker, Northamptonshire, i. 157). He was also subdean of Christ Church. He officiated at the opening of the Bodleian Library in 1602, and on 24 Sept. of that year became vicar of Weedon Beck, Northamptonshire, a preferment which he resigned in 1604 (ib. i. 454). He was appointed by the king in 1604 one of the translators of the Bible. Hutten contributed to the collection of verses made by Christ Church when James I visited the college in 1605, and to other of the university collections. During the same year he published a learned work called 'An Answere to a certaine treatise of the Crosse in Baptisme intituled A Short Treatise of the Crosse in Baptisme,' 4to, Oxford, 1605, dedicated to Bancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, whose chaplain he was. On 1 Oct. 1609 he was installed a prebendary in St. Paul's Cathedral (Le Neve, ii. 431). He died on 17 May 1632, aged 75, and was buried in the divinity (or Latin) chapel of Christ Church Cathedral (epitaph in Wood's Colleges and Halls, ed. Gutch, p. 503). By his wife, Anne Hamden, he had a daughter Alice, married to Dr. Richard Corbet [q. v.], afterwards successively bishop of Oxford and Norwich. He left in manuscript an English dissertation on the 'Antiquities of Oxford,' which was printed in 1720 by T. Hearne in his edition of the 'Textus Roffensis ' from a copy belonging to Dr. Robert Plot, and again in 1887 by the Rev. C. Plummer in 'Elizabethan Oxford' (Oxf. Hist. Soc.) The work is in the form of a letter, and, despite Wood's disparaging criticism, is of much interest. Another of Hutton's manuscripts, entitled 'Historia Fundationum Ecclesiæ Christi Oxon.,' an inaccurate copy of which Wood saw in the hands of Dr. John Fell, is now lost. According to some, Hutten was the author of a play entitled 'Bellum Grammaticale,' which was performed at Oxford before Queen Elizabeth in 1592, and printed at London in 1635 and 1726, but Wood on chronological grounds denies this.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), ii. 532-4; Plummer's Preface to Elizabethan Oxford (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), pp. xii-xv; Welch's Alumni Westmon. (1852), pp. 51-2, 67-8; Cal. State Papers, Dom., Addenda, 1566-79, p. 487.]