the first master of the hospital, but on 30 Oct. he conferred the post on John Hutton, M.A., vicar of Littlebury, and on the following day executed the deed of endowment. The exact object of the foundation seems to have been left for the government to determine, and Bacon wrote a paper of advice to the king on the subject (printed in Works, ed. Spedding, vol. iv.) The scheme finally adopted was that there should be, first, a hospital for poverty-stricken ‘gentlemen,’ soldiers who had borne arms by land or sea, merchants who had been ruined by shipwreck or piracy, and servants of the king or queen. The number was limited to eighty; those who had been maimed could enter at forty years of age, others at fifty. Secondly, there was established a school for the education and maintenance of forty boys. In 1872 the school was moved from London to Godalming, the vacant premises being purchased by the Merchant Taylors' Company for their school. The hospital remains in its original home.
Sutton died at Hackney on 12 Dec. 1611, and his bowels were buried in the church of that parish. His embalmed body remained in his house at Hackney till 28 May 1612, when it was removed in solemn procession, with heraldic attendance, to Christ Church, London, where the funeral was solemnised. Thence his body was, on 12 Dec. 1614, carried by the poor brethren of his hospital to the chapel in Charterhouse, and deposited in a vault on the north side. Over his remains a magnificent tomb was erected in 1615 by Nicholas Stone [q. v.]
His wife died in June 1602 at Balsham, and was buried at Stoke Newington, where there is a monument to her and her first husband, John Dudley.
He had a natural son, named Roger Sutton, whose name does not figure in his will. On 8 June 1611–12 Sir John Bennet wrote to Carleton that there was ‘much talk about rich Sutton's bequest of 200,000l. [sic] for charitable uses, which is so great that the lawyers are trying their wits to find some flaw in the conveyance’ (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1611–18, p. 110). In June 1613 the judges by ten to one decided in favour of its validity, but James I then commanded the executors to make Roger Sutton a competent allowance out of his father's estates (ib. p. 188).
Sutton was esteemed the richest commoner in England. His real estate was computed at 5,000l. per annum and his personalty at 60,410l. 9s. 9d. Besides numerous other charitable bequests, he left five hundred marks each to Magdalene and Jesus Colleges, Cambridge. A portrait of him is in the master's room at the Charterhouse school, Godalming. It was engraved by Vertue. There are also several other engraved portraits (cf. Bromley).
[Addit. MSS. 4160 art. 76, 5754 ff. 68, 72, 74; Cal. State Papers, Dom. and Add. passim; Border Papers, vols. i. and ii.; Canon Haig Brown's Charterhouse Past and Present, 1879; Adlard's Sutton—Dudleys, p. 155; Life by Bearcroft; Biogr. Brit.; Brand's Newcastle, ii. 268, 269; Chron. of Charterhouse; Coke's Reports, ix. 1; Collect. Top. et Geneal. viii. 206; Fuller's Worthies (Lincolnshire); Gent. Mag. 1839 i. 340, 1843, i. 43; Herne's Domus Carthusiana, 1677; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. iii. 84, 3rd ser. x. 393, 5th ser. ii. 409, 455, 492, v. 27; Robinson's Hackney, i. 257; Robinson's Stoke Newington, pp. 31, 49, 159, 192; Sadler State Papers, i. 386, 658, ii. 5; Sharpe's Northern Rebellion, p. 109; Smythe's Charterhouse; Cal. State Papers, Dom.; Stow's Annales, 1615, pp. 675, 940; Strype's Annals, iii. 27, fol.; Wilford's Memorials, p. 617.]
SUTTON, THOMAS (1585–1623), divine, was born in 1585 of humble parentage at Sutton Gill in the parish of Bampton, Westmoreland. In 1602 he was made ‘a poor serving child’ of Queen's College, Oxford, whence he matriculated on 15 Oct. He was afterwards tabarder, and graduated B.A. on 20 May 1606. He proceeded M.A. on 6 July 1609, B.D. on 15 May 1616, and D.D. on 12 May 1620. In 1611 he was elected perpetual fellow of the college. Having taken orders he became lecturer of St. Helen's, Abingdon, Berkshire, and minister of Culham, Oxfordshire; and was afterwards lecturer of St. Mary Overy, Southwark. He was ‘much followed and beloved of all for his smooth and edifying way of preaching, and for his exemplary life and conversation.’ In 1623 he went to his native place, and there ‘put his last hand to the finishing of a free school’ which he had founded and endowed with 500l. raised in St. Saviour's, Southwark, and elsewhere. Edmund Gibson [q. v.], bishop of London, who had been educated at Bampton, afterwards rebuilt the school. When returning by sea from Newcastle to London, Sutton was drowned with many others on St. Bartholomew's day, 24 Aug. What was supposed to be his body was buried in ‘the yard belonging to the church’ of Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Robert Drury [q. v.], the jesuit, ‘did much rejoyce’ at the news of his death, as a ‘great judgment’ upon him ‘for his forward preaching against the papists.’ Sutton published in 1616 two sermons preached at Paul's Cross, under the
