Lucy Hutchinson

Lucy Hutchinson was a poet, writer and translator born in London to Sir Allen Apsley, the Lieutenant of the Tower of London and Lady Lucy St John, the youngest of six daughters who administered to Sir Walter Raleigh whilst he was imprisoned in the Tower. Lucy was married in July 1638 to Colonel John Hutchinson who after victories during the English Civil War was arrested with the Restoration and imprisoned in Sandown Castle despite Lucy's pleas for his release to the House of Lords. Her biography of her husband ‘Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson’ was originally intended for the family but later published and remains a valuable historical account of the Puritans as well as her husband’s dramatic life. Her epic poem ‘Order and Disorder’ was centred around the Book of Genesis and probably the first work of its kind written by a woman and often referred to with John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ for its subject and scale. Lucy wrote many moving poems including a dedication to her husband that served as an inscription on his monument at the family church in Owthorpe near Nottingham. She too was buried there in 1681 but with no monument. Her legacy remains to this day as a pioneering English intellectual who paved the way for many creative women.