button to main menu  Clarke's Survey of the Lakes, 1787

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Page 24:-
place where Constantine King of the Scots, and Eugenius King of Cumberland, put themselves under the protection of Athelstan King of England, A.D. 927.
  Hutton John
Hutton John is the next remarkable spot in this neighbourhood, and is called, (I do not know upon what authority,) by Mr Grey, Hutton St John. This estate belonged to a family of the name of Hutton for many years, and at last came into the Huddleston family, by a marriage between an only daughter of the Hutton family, and Andrew Huddleston, son of Sir John Huddleston of Millum Castle, in this county. The last possessor of the name of Hutton is worth the mentioning, on account of a very singular fact; for, having suffered forty years imprisonment, when he at length regained his liberty, his tenants refused to acknowledge him as their Lord: after much altercation, the dispute was at last compromised, and in token thereof, the tenants were to send two men on foot, and one man on horseback to the beacon.
This place produced the famous Father John Huddleston, Hodlestone, or Hurlstone, (for in each of these forms his name appears in King Charles's letters,) who made himself so conspicuous for his unshaken loyalty to Charles the II. He was educated in the English college at Douay in Flanders, and took priest's orders in the Popish communion: He then came to England, where he was happily instrumental in preserving the King after his defeat at Worcester. Nor did his services end here; for in disguise he attended his unhappy, banished sovereign, through innumerable hardships and perils, never leaving him till he and the British constitution were restored to their distracted country. In reward for his services, he was at the Restoration appointed First Chaplain and Confessor to the Queen, and, (as afterwards appeared,) Private Confessor to the King: while the parliament, to shew their gratitude to the preserver of their sacred monarch, excepted him by name from every act which they passed for the suppression of Popery. Previous to the death of Charles the II. Father Huddlestone administered to the him the sacraments according to the Romish church, and upon his pronouncing the absolution, the King expressed his gratitude in these very striking terms, "You have saved me twice; first my body, after the fight at Worcester, and now my soul." He then asked the Father if he should declare his religious opinions to the world? to which he replied, He would take upon himself to inform the world of that particular; and this he afterward did, at the command of James the II. He published at the same time some papers of the King's own writing, in defence of the Romish communion, which were found after his death in his strong box; together with a little treatise written by Richard Huddleston *, which is said to have been a principal means of converting the King (during his stay at Boscobel) to the Church of Rome.
On all these accounts, James the II. made him superintendent of the chapel at Somerset-House, and settled a pension upon him sufficient to enable him to pass the remainder of his days in ease and peace. These he enjoyed through all the intermediate changes, till the year 1704, when this reverend old gentleman died at the age of 96, and was buried in the body of the chapel. A strict attention to the duties of religion, honour, and humanity, was the distinguishing feature of his character: he lived in the strictest temperance, and divided greatest part of those fortunes his loyalty had raised, between charitable uses, and the repairing and improvement of the English seminary at Doway. At his death he bequeathed the rest of his property in trust to the Lord Feversham, to be applied to the finishing those undertakings he had already begun.
Though this truly good and exemplary man escaped so many dangers, his family suffered many heavy losses in the Royal Cause; for Cromwell seized their valuable possessions in Oxfordshire, Lancashire, and Westmorland, and sold them for the use of the Commonwealth; nor did Hutton John escape his traiterous malice, for it was laid under a sequestration till the restoration of the King.
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* Of the English Benedictine Congregation, and Uncle to this John Huddleston.
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