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Cutler, Sir  John  (1607/8-1693), merchant and financier, was the son of Thomas Cutler, a member of the Grocers' Company. Early in his career he abandoned commerce for finance and specialized in lending money to impoverished landowners on the security of their estates. In this way he made a fortune and amassed considerable landed property during the interregnum, while discreetly avoiding any serious involvement in politics. In 1657 he acquired the Harewood estate in Yorkshire from one of his largest creditors, the second Lord Strafford, and for a while resided there, at Gawthorpe Hall, in miserly seclusion. But a narrow escape, when he was nearly seized by the highwayman John Nevison, induced him to leave the hall and take a cottage in Gawthorpe village, where, attended by his servant, a man of similar habits to his own, he was secure from the fear of being attacked.

At the Restoration, Cutler advanced £5000 to the new regime and also promoted the subscriptions raised by the City of London, thereby earning himself a baronetcy and a lucrative share in the office of receiver-general of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. His election as treasurer of St Paul's in 1663 characteristically combined personal gain with public philanthropy: according to his friend Samuel Pepys:

it seems he did give £1500 upon condition that he might be treasurer for the work, which, they say, will be worth three times as much money, and talk as if his being chosen to the office will make people backward to give. (Pepys, 4.430)
The following year he founded a lectureship at Gresham College with a salary of £50 a year, settling it on Robert Hooke for life, under the auspices of the Royal Society, to which he was promptly elected as an honorary fellow.

An influential member of the Grocers' Company for many years, Cutler offered in 1668 to pay for the rebuilding of the company's parlour and dining-room, destroyed in the great fire. He seems indeed to have borne the lion's share of the expense, and after the completion of the work in 1669 it was resolved that his statue and picture should be placed in the upper and lower rooms of his buildings, 'to remain as a lasting monument of his unexampled kindness'. He again contributed liberally to the restoration of the company's hall in 1681, and an inscription was placed there recounting his various benefactions. For the Royal College of Physicians he provided an anatomical lecture theatre, entirely at his own expense. Opened in 1679, this was named the Cutlerian Theatre. In a niche on the outside of the building was a full-length statue of Cutler, set up in obedience to a vote of the college. However, after his death his executors made a demand on the college of £7000, comprising the money actually spent, which had been set down as a loan in Cutler's books, together with interest. Eventually they were prevailed on to accept a settlement of £2000. The college then obliterated the inscription, Omnis Cutleri cedat labor Amphitheatro, which in gratitude it had placed beneath the figure. Indeed, Cutler's avarice, notorious to his contemporaries, was immortalized by Pope  (Works of Alexander Pope, 3.54-6). One of Cutler's last public benefactions was to rebuild in 1682 the north gallery in his own parish church of St Margaret, Westminster, for the benefit of the poor. He also gave an annual sum of £37 to the parish for poor relief. As a landlord, however, he may not entirely have deserved Pope's censure. Another acquaintance, the antiquary Ralph Thoresby, recalled that on his Yorkshire estates Cutler had indulged his tenants during poor harvests, so much so that rents were £5000 in arrears at his death.

Hitherto almost apolitical, Cutler stood for parliament for the first time in September 1679, on the court interest. He was rejected by his neighbours in the Westminster constituency, but was returned, probably on the recommendation of his son-in-law Sir William Portman, at Taunton. In June 1680 he served as foreman of the grand jury that acquitted Lord Castlemaine from involvement in the Popish Plot, but otherwise seems to have played little part in the Exclusion Parliaments; he gave up his seat in October 1680 when he admitted that his own re-election at Taunton had been invalid. Nevertheless, he seems to have prospered in the tory reaction after 1681, and at the beginning of James II's reign was at the peak of his fortunes: he was chosen master warden of his company for the second time in 1685, and the following year purchased the impressive Cambridgeshire estate of Wimpole. But when the king sought to pursue a policy of indulgence to Catholics and dissenters Cutler havered, and in consequence lost the various offices he held in local government. He responded in silence to the revolution of 1688, though he was elected to the Convention Parliament, for a pocket borough, Bodmin, controlled by his second son-in-law, Lord Radnor. Though he is not known to have committed himself on any party issue, he did make one notable speech, arguing for parsimony in public affairs by reducing the salaries paid to customs commissioners.

Cutler's first wife, whom he married on 11 August 1642, was Elizabeth (d. 1650), the daughter and coheir of Sir Thomas Foote, bt, lord mayor of London in 1650. Their only child was a daughter, named Elizabeth, who became the wife of Sir William Portman bt, KB, of Orchard Portman, Somerset, taking with her a fortune of £30,000. She predeceased her father, leaving no children. He married, second, on 27 July 1669, Alicia (d. 1685), the daughter of Sir Thomas Tipping, of Wheatfield, Oxfordshire. Their only daughter, also named Elizabeth, married Charles Bodvile Robartes, second earl of Radnor, and died, without children, on 13 January 1697. She had married without her father's consent, but two days before his death he sent for her and her husband and 'told them he freely forgave them and had settled his estate to their satisfaction'. Cutler died, after a long illness, at his home in Tothill Street, Westminster, on 15 April 1693, aged eighty-five, and was buried in St Margaret's, Westminster, on 28 April. His fortune was popularly reckoned at about £600,000 in cash, together with some £6000 a year in landed property. The land went to his surviving daughter, with a remainder to a nephew, Edmund Boulter; the money, after various charitable bequests, including a substantial endowment to the Royal Naval Hospital, Greenwich, and sums given to poor relatives, was divided between Boulter and the Radnors.

D. W. Hayton 

Sources  E. Cruickshanks, 'Cutler, Sir John', HoP, Commons + J. B. Heath, Some account of the Worshipful Company of Grocers of the city of London, 3rd edn (privately printed, London, 1869), 298-307 + GEC, Baronetage + T. Pennant, Some account of London, 2nd edn (1791), 418-19 + Munk, Roll + The works of Alexander Pope, ed. W. Elwin and W. J. Courthope, 10 vols. (1871-89), vol. 3, pp. 154-6 + Pepys, Diary, 4.430 + D. Lysons, The environs of London, 3 (1795), 454 + N. Luttrell, A brief historical relation of state affairs from September 1678 to April 1714, 3 (1857), 76-87 + The diary of Ralph Thoresby, ed. J. Hunter, 1 (1830), 233-4 + DNB + will, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/413, sig. 42 + sentence, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/416, sig. 172
Likenesses  bust, c.1670, Grocers' Hall, London; destroyed 1965 · oils, c.1670, Grocers' Hall, London; destroyed, 1965 · A. Quellin, marble statue, 1681-2, Grocers' Hall, London · A. Quellin, statue, c.1683, Guildhall Museum, London [see illus.] · stipple, pubd 1815 (after oil painting), NPG
Wealth at death  £600,000 in cash; plus approx. £6000 p.a. landed property (estates in Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire, etc.): Luttrell, Brief historical relation, vol. 3, p. 81

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