88 
“One would imagine it must be difficult for any man, at this 
distance of time, to say quite certainly whether the John Hutton 
‘required by Henry VIII.’s minister (Cromwell) to report’ as 
referred to above, was John de Hoton, of Penrith, unless he had 
documentary proof of it. But, as to the probability of it, there 
cannot be very much question. The father of the John Hoton of 
Penrith, who was of Henry VIII.’s time, was named William ; and 
the son and heir of John was Anthony. According to Stow, 
King Henry VIIL, in 1495, sent certain persons to Calais to 
entice over to this country ‘Sir Robert Clifford, who, with others, 
was plotting for Perkin Warbeck, believing him to be the son 
of King Edward IV.’ The ‘Privy Purse’ expenses of King 
Henry VII. show that on the zoth January, 1495, William Hoton 
and Harry Wodeford received £26 13s. 4d. as a reward for 
successfully negotiating with Sir Robert Clifford*, who came over 
and was pardoned. 
“The ‘household expenses’ of Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, 
(quoted in Whittakers History of Craven), show that in 1525, 
Anthony Hoton, and five other Westmorland (and Cumberland) 
gentlemen, were attendants on the Earl at the Court (seemingly at 
Greenwich, at the time referred to).t That would be, very probably, 
a group of youthful gentlemen. We may presume that it would 
be a man with an older and cooler head and heart, that would be 
asked by Cromwell, a few years later, to report upon a suitable 
fourth wife for the eighth King Henry. Anthony, of Penrith, 
would be as fitted by his age for the position with the Earl of 
Cumberland, as John, his father, would be, by his age, for the 
more delicate and difficult task of the minister Cromwell. And it 
therefore seems very “probable,” at least, that we thus see three 
successive generations of the Penrith Huttons (William, John, 
and Anthony) engaged, in one way or auother, for or about the 
Court. (1381). 
“W, HutTTon-BRAYSHAY.” 
* A descendant of a distant branch of the Westmorland Cliffords. 
+ This would probably be on the occasion of Elenry Clifford, son and heir 
of the Shepherd Lord, being created Earl of Cumberland by Henry VIIL., 
Hes whom Henry Clifford had, as boy and man, been a close companion and 
‘avourite, 
