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  1. #1
    joboy
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    Default Freedom of the Press TUTCHIN

    John Tutchin born Lymington c 1663 was the editor of 'The Observator'.
    He was a nonconformist and virulently anti papist.
    Sadly abused by Judge Jeffries he died 1707.
    There is much history about him but nothing that I have found of his mother,father or siblings ..... I believe he had a sister Martha who married John Overing and they went to America.
    I really would appreciate any information or input regarding this man's family.
    He was certainly a pioneer of 'Freedom of the Press'
    Joe

  2. #2
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    Little seems to be known of his background. The Dictionary of National Biography says he was possibly born on the Isle of Wight. He may have been 'born and Bred’ a gentleman, and a freeman of the City of London'. His father, grandfather and several...uncles were said to be Non-Conforming Ministers. It was also suggested that he was ‘once a Member of the Academy in Garlands Court, in the Parish of Stepney’.

    I imagine that if you find anything else out, you'll make a name for yourself!

  3. #3
    joboy
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    You are correct Peter ....... the Surman Index No 1497 states that Robert TUTCHIN was v.of Newport IOW 1654-1662 and that he died 1671 plus he was father of John (died 1697) Robert (died 1685) and Samuel (died 1674).
    I strongly suspect that the John that I initially referred to was a son of Robert (died 1685) but have found nothing to support this so far.
    I have learned that all of the above were dissenting ministers and were ejected during the protestant revolution.

  4. #4
    Coromandel
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    John Ashton's 'Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne' (on Google Books) refers to a sister, Mrs Elizabeth Tutchin:

    Girls . . . had boarding schools of their own; and the schoolmistresses seem always to have been harassed by malicious reports. For instance: 'Whereas it is reported that Mrs. Overing who keeps a Boarding School at Bethnal Green near Hackney, is leaving off; this is to give Notice that the said Report is false, if not Malicious. And that she continues to take sober young Gentlewomen to board, and teaches them whatsoever is necessary to the Accomplishment of that Sex.' Take another: 'Mrs. Elizabeth Tutchin [footnote ref. 1] continues to keep her School at Highgate, notwithstanding reports to the contrary. Where young Gentlewomen may be soberly Educated, and taught all sorts of Learning fit for Gentlewomen.'

    [footnote 1]
    She was sister of Tutchin, of the Observator.


    Whether this is a spinster sister using the title 'Mrs', or a sister-in-law, is not clear.

    Note the reference to a Mrs Overing too (I found this book when looking for more about the Martha Overing mentioned in your first post). This may be just a coincidence, of course.


    Edit: But perhaps Elizabeth was John's widow not sister? Unless there was more than one schoolmistress of this name:

    'The nonconformist Elizabeth Tutchin, widow of the pamphleteer John Tutchin, moved there [Hornsey] from Newington Green and opened a girls' school after 1710 . . .'

    (Victoria County History of Middlesex, Vol. 6, referring to DNB)

  5. #5
    Coromandel
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    From 'Early Baptists in Hampshire', an article published in The Baptist Quarterly

    https://www.
    biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/bq/01-5_223.pdf

    'At Lymington a licence was taken by Robert Tutchin junior, son of a Presbyterian minister, and described as a Presbyterian. But that same year he was fined two shillings for a disturbance, and Mr. King in his Old Times of Lymington Revisited, comments that he was a Baptist, and father of the man who compiled the Western Martyrology.'

    So far I've had no luck finding an online edition of Old Times of Lymington Revisited though there are plenty of other references to it.

  6. #6
    joboy
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    Some more that has just been unearthed from my extremely untidy 'odds and ends';

    John Tutchin married Elizabeth Hick(e)s 30 Sep 1688.She was the daughter of the presbyterian minister, John HICKES or HICKS, and was sufficiently educated to keep a girls’ school after Tutchin’s death, first at Newington Green, and afterwards in 1710, near the Nag’s Head, Highgate, ‘with good accomodations for lodgers’.

    from The Dictionary of National Biography by Sidney Lee

  7. #7
    joboy
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    just a little more that suggests he had siblings ..... which is what I need to know more about;
    “Four or five days before the execution of the sentence, a brother in law of Mr. Tutchin, a physician, persuaded him to take a dose of physic to make himself sick, by which means the execution might be put off, and perhaps in that time some means might be found for his enlargement: He too, the dose, and in three or four days the small-pox came out very thick upon him, no man ever had them to a higher degree; and in that condition he lay by himself in prison, nobody to look after him but his fellow-prisoners, for there being a pestilential distemper in the prison, of which some scores died every week, the magistrates of the town would not suffer any communication with the prisoners.

    “Mr Tutchin lying in this miserable condition, and his life being despaired of, his friends worked the easier with Jeffreys to get the sentence reversed, which some people would have believed a sign of repentence in Jeffreys, had he not taken the money himself. After Mrs. Tutchin had done this last kind office for her son, she sickened of the small pox and died, his brother and two sisters fell sick of the same distemper; so that when Mr. Tutchin had friends allowed to come to him, like Job’s comforters, they brought him the tidings that his mother was dead, and all the relations he had in the world were a dying, and that they had contracted for a pardon for more money than he was worth, for a life which he never valued. So he was popt into a pardon amongst others; for it was usual in that time for one courtier to get a pardon of the king for half a score, and then by the assistance of Jeffreys to augment the sum to fourscore or so hundred, and so this unfortunate gentleman fortunately got out of his broil.

    “But we must not leave Mr. Tutchin here, though what afterwards we shall say of him, does not relate to what was transacted in the West, yet it may not be amiss to show how the providence of God does often change the face of things, and alter the circumstances and conditions of men, so that those who boast of their power, and exercise their authority with the greatest severity, many times become the scorn and contempt of those they have triumphed over: Who could have thought, when Jeffreys past that sentence on Mr. Tutchin in the West, that ever Mr. Tutchin should see that wicked judge a prisoner, apprehended by the injured people, and committed bya tool of his own party? Yet it so happened.”

    A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdeameanors from the Earliest Period to the Year 1783”
    by T. B. Howell, Esq. 1816 - Vol XIV

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