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Sir Richard Hutton (1560-1639) was a Yorkshire landowner and judge who defied Charles I over ship money.

Hutton was the younger brother of Sir William Hutton and son of Anthony Hutton. Born and brought up at Hutton Hall in Penrith, Cumbria, he went to Jesus College, Cambridge to study divinity but aged 20 headed to London to pursue a career in law. He was called to the bar in 1586 and was made a serjeant-at-law in 1603 under Elizabeth I. At this time, Hutton bought the estate at Goldsborough, near Knaresborough, North Yorkshire from the Goldsborough family, whose original thatched moated manor house had been destroyed after a quarrel over succession. Sir Richard Hutton bought out the claimants to the estate and built the present Goldsborough Hall to the south east of the village on raised ground close to the church, as a fine example of Jacobean architecture (now privately owned and not open to the public).

Sir Richard married Agnes Briggs of Cawmire, Westmorland in 1591, the daughter and heiress of Thomas Briggs of Cawmire. They had four sons and five daughters. His second son, Sir Richard Hutton, the younger (1617-1645), succeeded him after the death of his eldest son, Christopher, aged 24, who died after a sea voyage.

Hutton kept a diary from 1614 until his death in 1639 which was edited by W R Prest at the University of Adelaide. He was made Recorder of York in 1608, Doncaster in 1609 and Ripon in 1610. He held these offices until 1617 when he was knighted by King James I on a visit to York and made judge of the Court of Common Pleas . Hutton was well thought of under Charles I and became acting Chief Justice of the Common Pleas for a year from December 1625 to November 1626. He was a friend and relative of Matthew Hutton (1529-1606).

Ship Money: All judges were asked to sign a declaration in favour of the disputed tax, ship money, in 1635. Hutton signed it but in 1638 ruled against the King in favour of John Hampden and admitted he was against the tax, saying that such a charge might not be imposed by the king's 'original writ only under the great seal, without parliament,... unless in time of actual war and invasion'. After the judgement, one of the High Church clergy, the Revd Thomas Harrison accused Sir Richard of high treason. Harrison was prosecuted, imprisoned and fined £5,000. There is an account of the trial in Hutton's Diary and he won £10,000 in damages.

Hutton died the following year at the Serjeant's Inn on 26 February 1639 and history records that Charles I called him 'his honest judge'. He was buried, as requested, at St Dunstan-in-the-West, Fleet Street, London. Goldsborough Hall and his estates then passed to his son and heir, Sir Richard Hutton, the younger (knighted in 1625).

The portrait of Sir Richard Hutton (painted in 1618) still hangs in Gray's Inn, London and is reproduced by kind permission of the Treasurer and Masters of the Bench of Gray's Inn.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Richard Hutton", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0