Christopher Hatton 1605-1670

Christopher HATTON, 1st Baron Hatton 1605-70

Biographical Note

Son of Sir Christopher Hatton (d.1619). Entered Gray’s Inn in 1620; MA Jesus College, Cambridge 1622. MP for Peterborough in 1625 and for Clitheroe in 1626. Knight of the Bath 1626. Member of the Long Parliament in 1640 for Higham Ferrers. Created Baron Hatton of Kirby in 1643 and was made comptroller of the royal household. He lived in France during the interregnum, though took care to distance himself from the Royalist exiles in a futile attempt to save his estates. After the Restoration he was made privy councillor and governor of Guernsey. He was a founder member of the Royal Society in 1663. He married Elizabeth (c.1610-1672), daughter of Sir Charles Montagu of Boughton.

Books

112 manuscripts from his celebrated collections were bought by the Bodleian Library after his death. Numerous monastic cartularies owned by him are now among the Cotton manuscripts in the British Library.

Characteristic Markings

Books with his armorial stamp survive.

Sources

• British Armorial Bindings.
• Foot, M. The Henry Davis gift vol 2, 1983, no.97.
• Maggs (catalogues of the London booksellers Maggs Bros) 1075 (1987)/33, 39.
• Philip, I. The Bodleian Library in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Oxford, 1983, 56-8.
• Pinto, D. The music of the Hattons, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle 23 (1990), 79-108.
• Pinto, D. Placing Hatton’s great set, Chelys 32 (2004), 1-20.
• Stater, Victor. "Hatton, Christopher, first Baron Hatton (bap. 1605, d. 1670), politician." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
• Wainwright, J. P. Musical patronage in seventeenth-century England, 1997.