John Cutts, 1st Baron Cutts

Who was John Cutts, 1st Baron Cutts?

Lieutenant-General John Cutts, 1st Baron Cutts PC, British soldier and author, came from an Essex family.

After a short university career at Catharine Hall, Cambridge, he inherited the family estates, but showed a distinct preference for the life of court and camp. The double ambition for military and literary fame inspired his first work, which appeared in 1685 under the name La Muse de cavalier, or An Apology for such Gentlemen as make Poetry their Diversion not their Business. The next year saw Cutts serving as a volunteer under the Duke of Lorraine in Hungary, and it is said that he was the first to plant the imperial standard on the walls at the storming of Buda. In 1687 he published a book of Poetical Exercises, and the following year he was serving as lieutenant-colonel in Holland. General Hugh Mackay described Cutts about this time as pretty tall, lusty and well shaped, an agreeable companion with abundance of wit, affable and familiar, but too much seized with vanity and self-conceit.