19, a probationary fellow at St. John's College, Oxford. He graduated B.A. 1587, M.A. 1591, and proceeded B.D. in 1597, and became 'a frequent Preacher' (Wood). In 1600 he was made vicar of St. Kew in Cornwall, and a few years later (1605-6) engaged in a controversy with those in the same diocese with himself who refused subscription to the Book of Common Prayer. His zealous defence of the prayer-book led to further preferment. He became rector of North Lew, Devonshire, and a prebendary of Exeter, 1616. He was buried at St. Kew on 27 Dec. 1639.
His writings are:
- 'Reasons for refusal of Subscription to the Booke of Common Praier under the hands of certaine Ministers of Devon and Cornwall, word for word as they were exhibited by them to the Rt. Rev. Father in God, William Coton (sic), Doctor in Divinitie, L. Bishop of Exceter, with an Answere at severall times returned them in Publike Conference, and in diverse sermons upon occasion preached in the Cathedral Church of Exceter,' by T. Hutton, B.D., Oxford (J. Barnes), 1605, 4to.
- 'The second and last parts of Reasons,' &c., London (J. Windet), 1606, 4to.
- 'An Appendix, or compendious brief of all other exceptions, taken by others, against the Book of Communion, Homilies, and Ordination,' &c. Published with the second part.
[Wood's Athenæ (Bliss), ii. 646-7; Reg. Univ. Oxf. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), II. ii- 145, iii. 145; Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornub. pp. 261-2, 1239; Robinson's Reg. of Merchant Taylors' School, i. 21.]
HUTTON, WILLIAM (1723–1815), local historian and topographer, second son of William Hutton, woolcomber (b. 25 July 1691, d. 13 Dec. 1758), by his first wife, Anne (d. 9 March 1733, aged 41), daughter of Matthew Ward of Mountsorrel, Leicestershire, was born in Full Street, Derby, on 30 Sept. 1723. He traced his descent from Thomas Hutton (1586-1656), a hatter at Northallerton, Yorkshire. The characteristics of his ancestors, he says, were 'honesty and supineness;' they were nonconformists from the days of Bishop Hooper. His father failed in 1725, and became a journeyman. After his mother's death his father remarried in 1743, and again in 1752.
In 1728 Hutton went to school at Derby to Thomas Meat, who used to 'jowl' his head against the wall, 'but never could jowl into it any learning.' He was employed in a silk-mill at Derby in 1730, when he was so small that he had to stand on pattens to reach the engine. Here he served seven years' apprenticeship. Being the only dissenting apprentice, the foreman offered him a halfpenny a Sunday if he would go to church; he went, and played there at pushpin. In 1735 he worked at the material 'for a petticoat and gown for Queen Caroline.' His apprenticeship expired in 1738, when he began a second apprenticeship to his uncle, George Hutton, a silk-stockinger at Nottingham, who afterwards (1745) kept him on as journeyman. He had learned some music and made a dulcimer, and in 1746 taught himself to bind books. After journeying to London and back on foot to purchase bookbinders' tools (April 1749), he opened a small bookshop in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, at Michaelmas 1749. Every day through the winter he left Nottingham at five o'clock; in the morning on the five hours' walk to Southwell, and tramped back home after four o'clock in the afternoon. He then lived chiefly on a vegetarian diet, and was cheered by the intelligent sympathy of his sister Catherine.
On 25 May 1750 Hutton settled in Birmingham, which he had first visited on a runaway journey in July 1741. The best part of his stock of books was the 'refuse' of the library of Ambrose Rudsdell (d. 3 April 1754), presbyterian minister (1707-1750) at Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, with whom Button's sister Catherine had been domestic servant. He began to write in magazines (chiefly verse), and in 1751 opened the first circulating library in Birmingham. In 1755 he married, and in 1756 went into the paper-trade, opening the first `paper-warehouse' in Birmingham. He was the first to introduce the two-wheeled barrow. A paper-mill which he built at Handsworth Heath in 1759 was less successful than his other businesses, and he relinquished the experiment in 1762, after losing about 1,000l. In 1766 he began to speculate with success in the purchase of farms and other land. He acquired Bennett's Hill, Saltley, Warwickshire, in 1769, and built himself a country-house there. In 1772 he bought a house in High Street, Birmingham, and rebuilt it in 1775. The publication of his 'History of Birmingham' was followed by his election (1782) as fellow of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland. He took an active share in the public business, though not in the politics, of Birmingham, became one of the commissioners of the 'Court of Requests,' a tribunal for the recovery of small debts, and was president of the court (1787). Hence he was led to investigate the origin and nature of this and other local courts, and to publish a 'Dissertation on Juries,' now very rare.
The dinner at Dadley's Hotel, Temple Row, Birmingham, on 14 July 1791, in commemoration of the French revolution, was followed by the local riots directed against Priestley
