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. Many printed books survive, widely dispersed, with his armorial stamp. The original brass stamp survives in the British Museum.
Sources
- British Armorial Bindings.
- Christopher Hatton's armorial stamp in the British Museum.
- 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.
- Stacey, N. Antiquarian patronage in the 17th century: Sir Christopher Hatton’s library at Kirby Hall, English Heritage Historical Review 9 (2014), 66-81.
- 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.