HUTCHINSON, JOHN (1616-1664), a Puritan soldier, son of Sir Thomas Hutchinson, was born at 'Nottingham in September 1616. After completing his education at Cambridge University he entered Lincoln's Inn, but soon became tired both of the study of law and the amusements of London, and was meditating travel on the Continent when he accidentally made the acquaintance of Lucy, daughter of Sir Allan Apsley, whom he married in 1638. After his marriage he returned to Owthorpe, where the study of divinity and politics gradually led to a change of his sentiments in regard to the dispute between the parliament and the Icing At first he did not find a clear call to join the Parliamentary army, bat the efforts of the Royalists to seize him as a disaffected person soon dissipated his neutrality, and, becoming governor of Nottingham, he with great firmness and courage held the town and castle against internal treachery and external attacks till the triumph of the parliamentary cause. Having ben n chosen to represent Nottingham in the new parliament, he became a member of the high court of justice for the trial of the king, and gave his vote for his execution, but, disapproving of the subsequent political conduct of Cromwell, he took no further part in politics during the lifetime of the Protector. After the Restoration he became member for the county of Nottingham, and he was included in the Act of Amnesty passed in favour of certain of the regicides. Snbsequently, however, he was arrested upon suspicion of being concerned in a treasonable conspiracy ; and after an imprisonment of ten months in the Tower of London, and of one month in Sandown Castle, Kent, he died 11th September 1664. The life of Colonel Hutchinson is now only of interest from the manner in which it is narrated in the Memoirs written by his wife, and first published in 1806, a work not only valuable for the picture which it gives of the time in which he lived, but for the simple beauty of its style, and the naivete with which the writer records her sentiments and opinions, and details the incidents of her private , life.

HUTCHTNSON„Tous (1674-1737), the author of Moses's Prinripia and other works in which the so-called Hutchinsonian system is expounded, was born at Spennitheme, Yorkshire, in 1674, and after receiving an adequate elementary education there, served as steward in several families of position, latterly in that of the duke of Somerset, who ultimately obtained for him the post of riding purveyor to the master of the horse, a sinecure worth about £200 a year. In this employment he became acquainted with Dr Woodward, physician to the duke, and author of a work entitled The Xatnral History of the Earth, to whom ha entrusted a large number of fossils of his own collecting, along with a mass of manuscript notes, for arrangement and publication. A misunderstanding as to the manner in which these should be dealt with was the immediate occasion of the publication by Hutchinson in 1724 of Moses's Principia, part i., in which Woodward's iVatural History was bitterly ridiculed, his conduct with regard to the mineralogical specimens not obscurely characterized, and a refutation of the Newtonian doctrine of gravitation seriously attempted. It was followed by part ii. in 1727, and by various other works published at frequent intervals. Hutchinson died in 1737. A compete edition of all the publications of this author, along with his posthumous pieces, edited by Robert Spearman and Julius Bate, appeared in 1748 (12 vols.) ; an Abstract of these followed in 1753 ; and a Supplement, with Life by Spearman prefixed, in 1765.

Although the crude ideas of Hutchinson at the time of their first promulgation were successful, by their seeming devoutness, in commending themselves to some of the pious but dim-sighted and over-timid souls of that period, who had taken alarm at the atheistic conclusions they believed to be deducible from the Newtonian doctrines, they are now too uninfluential, as well as too glaringly inconsistent with the universally recognized principles of physics and philology, to call for any detailed analysis. Their nature may be almost sufficiently gathered from the titles of some of the works in which they are set forth, such as Moses's Prineipia, Part I. ; of the Invisible Parts of Matter, of Motion, of Visible Forms, and of their Dissolution and Reformation ; Moses's Principia, Part II. ; of the Circulation of the Heavens; of the Came of the Motion and Course of the Earth, Moon, de.; of the Religion, Philosophy, and Emblems of the Heathens before Moses writ, and of the Jews after ; in Confirmation of the Natural History of the Bible ; Moses's Sine Pri11- cipio, represented by Xames, Words, Types, Emblems ; with an introduetion to show the _Nature of the Fell, of Paradise, and of the Body and Soul ; The Confusion of Tongues and Trinity of the Gentiles (being an account of the origin of Idolatry); Power Essential and Mechanical, or what power belongs to God and what to his creatures, in which the design of Sir I. Hewton and Dr Samuel Clarke is laid open; Glory or Gravity, wherein the Objects and Articles of the Christian Faith are exhibited ; The Religion of Satan, or Antichrist Delineated. Bishop Horne of Norwich, it may be mentioned, was during some of his earlier years an avowed Hutchinsonian ; and Jones of Nayland continued to be so to the end of his life,