A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



intervention the order was countermanded. Counted as the deliverer of the 

 town, Colonel Hutchinson was therefore chosen as one of its representatives 

 in the new Parliament. The other member elected was Mr. Arthur Stan- 

 hope, also a ' Parliament man.' l But the elections generally went in favour 

 of the king's party, and when in May, 1660, Charles was welcomed back, the 

 gentry of Nottinghamshire sent an address of ' laudation and congratulation 

 to the king on his restoration.' 2 Of the four Nottinghamshire men who had 

 sat as judges in the High Court of Commission held on Charles I, 3 Ireton 

 was dead ; Whalley had refused to obey the proclamation for surrender, and was 

 excluded from the Act of Indemnity and forced to flee to America for his 

 life ; 4 Millington abjectly ' confessed himself guilty every way,' and his 

 death sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life ; 6 Hutchinson pleaded 

 that his share in the king's execution had been the result of ' the inexperience 

 of his age and the defect of his judgment, and not the malice of his heart,' 

 and by the connivance of his friends was included in the Act of Amnesty or 

 Oblivion. 6 



Although Nottinghamshire, like the rest of England, had accepted 

 Charles so gladly, before three years were over it was engaged with the rest 

 of the north of England with the Yorkshire plot. 7 In October, 1663, Colonel 

 Hutchinson was in consequence apprehended with his papers and writings 

 and conveyed to the Tower ' for treasonable designs and practices.' 8 He 

 stated that he had been at his own house twelve months without stirring 

 except to pay the benevolence ; that he had never heard of the rising in the 

 north till he came to Newark, nor was asked to concur in it ; that he had not 

 heard of a secret council to manage public disturbances ; that he did not 

 keep a horse, saddle, nor arms, except birding pieces allowed his sons by 

 Lord Newcastle ; that none of his children had had any correspondence about 

 any public design. 9 He was, however, confined to the Tower, whence he 

 wrote in March, 1664,10 Secretary Bennett, complaining that he had been close 

 prisoner twenty weeks without accusation, and begging a copy of the 

 warrant of his commitment, which Sir John Robinson refused him. 10 This 

 was allowed him, but he still seems to have suffered much ill usage at the 

 hands of Sir John Robinson. 11 Finally in May, 1664, he was transferred to 

 Sandown Castle, in Kent, where he died of fever four months later. 12 In 

 August, 1663, when ' one hundred of the chief designers ' of the Yorkshire 

 plot had been seized, one Thomas Calton, of Leicester, was examined, and 

 stated that his master, Captain Lockier, had said that ' Thomas Palmer, of 

 Nottingham, would raise a troop of horse, and they would meet at Notting- 

 ham on October 12.' ls After the renewal of the plot in October, 1663, and 

 the seizure of conspirators, Sir Thomas Gower wrote to Secretary Bennett in 

 October, 1664, that a certain schoolmaster of Newcastle, for whom search 



1 Mrs. Hutchinson, op. cit. p. 399. 



* Cal. S.P. Dam. 1660, i, 5. Nalson, Trial of Charles I, p. 21. 



4 Noble, Lives of the Regicides, 328. * Ibid. 82-4. 



6 Mrs. Hutchinson, op. cit. pp. 403-8. 



7 See Sir Thomas Gower's papers concerning the ' intended rising in England.' The design of the con- 

 spirators is here said to be to fall on Whitehall, seize the dukes of York and Albemarle, the head treasurer and 

 the Lord Chancellor, and to take several towns. S.P. Dom. Chas. II, Ixxxi, 77. 



8 Cal. S.P. Dam. 1663-4, P- 3H- 9 Ibid. p. 329. 



Ibid. p. 526. " S.P. Dom. Chas. II, xcv, 103. 



" For account of imprisonment and death, see Mrs. Hutchinson, op. cit. 

 13 Cal. S.P. Dom. 1663-4, P- 663. 



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