Discourse of Life.’ In the summer of the same year he took part in the Duke of Monmouth's rising, and was tried before Judge Jeffreys at the ‘Bloody Assizes’ held at Dorchester in the autumn. Tutchin and others had raised men at Lymington, and Jeffreys sentenced him to imprisonment for seven years, and yearly to be whipped through all the market towns in Dorset; to pay a fine of a hundred marks, and to find security for good behaviour during life. ‘You are a rebel,’ said Jeffreys, ‘and all your family have been rebels since Adam. They tell me that you are a poet. I'll cap verses with you.’ Eventually Jeffreys was bribed to recommend a pardon. Afterwards, when Jeffreys was in the Tower, Tutchin visited him; Jeffreys pleaded that he had acted only in accordance with his instructions, and Tutchin, who had gone to revile, came away somewhat mollified at the spectacle of the fallen tyrant (Macaulay, History, chaps. v. xiv.).
After the accession of William III, Tutchin published ‘An Heroick Poem upon the late Expedition of his Majesty to rescue England from Popery, Tyranny, and Arbitrary Government,’ 1689, and ‘The British Muse: or Tyranny exposed. A Satire; occasioned by all the fulsome and lying Poems and Elegies that have been written on the Death of the late King James’ (1701). He also printed ‘A Congratulatory Poem to the Rev. John Tillotson upon his Promotion to the Archiepiscopal See of Canterbury,’ 1691; ‘The Earthquake of Jamaica, described in a Pindarick Poem,’ 1692; and ‘A Pindarick Ode in praise of Folly and Knavery,’ 1696. About 1692 a clerkship was found for him in the victualling office, with a salary of about 40l. and fees. In 1695, however, he accused the commissioners of cheating the king of vast sums of money. He did not establish his case, and was dismissed (Mr. William Fuller's Letter to Mr. John Tutchin, 1703; The whole Life of Mr. William Fuller, 1703, p. 70). Tutchin is sometimes called ‘captain,’ and he appears to have been in the army in Ireland at some time during King William's reign (The Examination, Tryal, and Condemnation of Rebellion Ob[servato]r, 1703, p. 15).
On 1 Aug. 1700 there appeared ‘The Foreigners: a Poem,’ which Defoe called ‘a vile abhorred pamphlet in very ill verse,’ attacking the king and the Dutch nation. It is remembered as having provoked Defoe's answer, ‘The True-born Englishman.’ Tutchin was arrested by ‘August 10 … his poem containing reflections upon several great men’ (Luttrell, Brief Relation of State Affairs, iv. 676; Mr. W. Fuller's Letter to Mr. J. Tutchin). Fuller, who attributes all his own crimes to Tutchin's influence, says that it was Tutchin who induced him to publish the ‘Original Letters of King James’ in 1700 (Whole Life of Mr. W. Fuller). Fuller says that Tutchin was the author of ‘The Mouse grown a Rat’ (January 1702), in which parliament was attacked for censuring Fuller (Letter to Tutchin).
On 1 April 1702 Tutchin issued the first number of a periodical, ‘The Observator,’ in a single folio sheet, in imitation of the paper issued by Sir Roger L'Estrange [q. v.] in 1681. He was paid sometimes half a guinea and sometimes twenty shillings for each number (Howell, State Trials, xiv. 1106, 1123). After eight weekly numbers this paper appeared twice a week, and the first three volumes, each of a hundred numbers, were afterwards issued with title-pages and prefaces. Tutchin soon adopted the form of a dialogue between the ‘Observator’ and a countryman, and in this manner attacked the tories, with frequent onslaughts upon the immorality of the day, and players and playhouses in particular. In August 1702 he printed ‘A Vindication of the Observator in answer to a scandalous Libel lately printed, called the Observator observed.’ A tory reply to Tutchin's paper, ‘The Rehearsal,’ by Charles Leslie [q. v.], was commenced on 5 Aug. 1704, the first number being called ‘The Observator,’ and the fifth ‘The Rehearsal of Observator.’ Tutchin's periodical was continued after his death for the benefit of his widow, and lingered on until 1712, when it was killed by the stamp tax.
‘A Dialogue between a Dissenter and the Observator concerning the “Shortest Way with the Dissenters,”’ published by Tutchin early in 1703, was chiefly in defence of Defoe, to whose honesty he testifies (Wilson, Life and Times of Daniel Defoe, ii. 82). In July 1703 he was prosecuted by the attorney-general. Tutchin says that the indictment was for writing against the papists, and that the grand jury ignored the bill (Observator, vol. ii. Nos. 27, 28).
An attack on the administration of the navy led to a resolution of the House of Commons (15 Dec. 1703) that Tutchin should attend a committee to answer what might be objected against him, and that a bill should be brought in to restrain the licentiousness of the press (Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 370). On 3 Jan. 1704 the house ordered Tutchin's arrest. He lay concealed in the country, but in May he surrendered and gave
