1,000l. bail, and on the 29th he appeared in court and renewed the bail (Observator, vol. iii. No. 18; Luttrell, v. 425, 429).
The trial took place on 4 Nov. 1704 at the Guildhall. Tutchin pleaded not guilty, but the jury, after a quarter of an hour's retirement, found him guilty. The sentence was to be as the judges of the court of queen's bench thought fit (Tryal and Examination of Mr. John Tutchin for writing a certain Libel, called the Observator, fol.). Technical pleas against the conviction were raised by Tutchin's counsel, and on 28 Nov., after several adjournments, the verdict was set aside, and ‘it was never afterwards thought fit to try him again’ (Howell, State Trials, xiv. 1095–1199; Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 483, 487, 489, 490, 492). Next month Tutchin attended before a committee of the House of Lords appointed to discover how the French fleet had been furnished with naval stores and provisions from England, and gave evidence (ib. v. 494–5). In April 1705 he appeared in the court of queen's bench upon his recognisances, and again in June, when he was discharged (ib. v. 544, 561).
During 1705 Tutchin was often attacked in conjunction with Defoe. He wrote a ballad satirising the members who voted for the Tack, and was answered in ‘The Tackers vindicated … with a word to Mr. John Tutchin about his scandalous ballad, that goes to the tune of “One Hundred and thirty-four.”’ Tutchin was also attacked in a lampoon aimed at Defoe, ‘Daniel the Prophet no Conjuror,’ 1705. Afterwards Tutchin wrote against Defoe's ‘Consolidator’ (Wilson, Life and Times of Defoe, ii. 302–4, 344); but as they were working for the same ends, Defoe was anxious to avoid a conflict, and says he often invoked Tutchin to peace (ib. ii. 416). ‘England's Happiness considered, in some Expedients. By John Tutchin, gent.,’ appeared in 1705. Defoe challenged Tutchin to a contest in translating languages (Review, ii. 149, 150). In August Tutchin was in the west, on purpose, Hearne says (Collections, ed. Doble, i. 40), to rake up scandal against staunch members of the church of England, ‘which being hinted to the judges in one place (as they were on their circuit), he was forced to fly immediately.’ Early in 1706 Sharpe, curate of Stepney, published ‘An Appeal of the Clergy of the Church of England to my Lords the Bishops. … With some Reflections upon the Presbyterian Eloquence of John Tutchin and Daniel Defoe. … To which is annexed as a postscript, The case of the Curate of Stepney fairly and truly stated, and cleared from the vile Aspersions of John Tutchin.’ Here Sharpe speaks of Tutchin's ‘Stepney academical learning.’
Tutchin died on 23 Sept. 1707 in the queen's bench prison at the Mint, according to Hearne (Collections, ii. 53); according to others his death was the result of the personal vengeance of some of his enemies (Noble, Continuation of Granger, 1806, ii. 312). Pope's well-known lines (Dunciad, ii. 146) couple him with Defoe:
Earless on high, stood unabashed Defoe,
And Tutchin, flagrant from the scourge below.
Tutchin was much given to exposing scandals and to boasting of his own virtue and public spirit, and it is clear, from his relations with Defoe, that he quarrelled with political allies as well as with opponents. Dunton, however, spoke enthusiastically of the ‘loyal and ingenious Tutchin,’ ‘a gentleman of invincible courage and bravery,’ ‘a loyal, witty, honest, brave man’ (Life and Errors, pp. 356, 426–8, 727; cf. Lee's Life of Defoe, p. 146). Edward Ward [q. v.] prefixed to his ‘Secret History of the Calves' Head Club’ a dedication to Tutchin ‘Observator and censor morum general.’ There is an engraving of Tutchin by Vandergucht, and another in Caulfield's ‘Portraits,’ i. 154, and his head appears in two contemporary caricatures, ‘The Funeral of the Low Church’ and ‘Faction Display'd’ (Cat. of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, ii. 285, 311).
On 30 Sept. 1686 John Tutchin of St. Mildred's, Bread Street, gent., aged 25, and Mrs. Elizabeth Hicks of Newington Green, aged 22, were licensed to marry at St. John's Coleman Street. She was the daughter of the presbyterian minister, John Hickes or Hicks [q. v.], and was sufficiently educated to keep a girls' school after Tutchin's death, first at Newington Green, and afterwards, in 1710, near the Nag's Head, Highgate, ‘with good accommodation for lodgers’ (cf. Flying Post, 12 to 14 Feb. 1712).
Besides the pieces mentioned above, Tutchin is said to be the author of ‘The Merciful Assize,’ Taunton, 1701; ‘The Review of the Rehearsal’ (Hearne, Collections, i. 35); ‘The Tribe of Levi,’ 1691; and ‘The Apostates, or the noble Cause of Liberty deserted,’ 1702 (Whole Life of Mr. W. Fuller). He also issued proposals for printing ‘A View of the present State of the Clothing Trade in England,’ but apparently the necessary subscriptions were not received.
[The principal sources from which information about Tutchin can be gleaned have been cited in the text. See also Mr. Humphreys's paper on the Monmouth Rebellion in the Proc. of the
