John Hutchinson

Who was John Hutchinson?

John Hutchinson was an English theological writer.

He was born at Spennithorne, Yorkshire, and 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 1700 he became acquainted with Dr. John Woodward, physician to the duke and author of a work entitled The Natural History of the Earth, to whom he 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 Natural 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.