Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/370

 have both foes arrayed against him at the same time. In 750 he had to meet with an enemy among his own subjects, and fought with Æthelhun, ‘the proud ealdorman,’ and defeated him. Determined to shake off the supremacy of the Mercian king, he made war on Æthelbald in 752 and put him to flight at Burford in Oxfordshire, a victory largely due to the valour of the former rebel Æthelhun, who bore in the battle the royal standard, the golden dragon of Wessex. The rout of Æthelbald at Burford freed the West-Saxons from the dominion of Mercia, and forms an important epoch in their history. The next year Cuthred defeated the Welsh with great slaughter. He died in 754, according to the chronology of the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’ and was succeeded by Sigeberht.

 CUTLER, JOHN (1608?–1693), a wealthy merchant of London, whose avarice, handed down by tradition and anecdote to Pope, has become immortal, was the son of Thomas Cutler, a member of the Grocers' Company, and was born in or about 1608. Though little scrupulous in his business dealings, he appears to have been ‘one of those contradictory but by no means rare characters who with habits of petty personal parsimony combine large benevolence and public spirit.’ In 1657, when Lord Strafford was obliged to part with his estate and manor of Harewood and Gawthorpe in Yorkshire, Cutler, along with Sir John Lewys, bart., became a joint purchaser, and soon afterwards the sole possessor. He chose to reside for a while at Gawthorpe Hall, where, tradition says, he lived in miserly seclusion. He would seem, however, to have had his difficulties, for on the few occasions of his venturing abroad he was laid in wait for, and once nearly seized by the well-known freebooter John Nevison. His narrow escape, and the fact of his enormous wealth having attracted Nevison to the neighbourhood, induced him to quit the hall and take a cottage in the village, where, attended by his servant, a man of similar habits to his own, he lived secure from the dread of attack. At the approach of the Restoration Cutler took an active part in promoting the subscriptions raised by the city of London for the use of Charles II. His services were duly appreciated by the king, who created him a knight on 17 June 1660, and a baronet on the following 9 Nov. His election to the treasurership of St. Paul's in April 1663 proved very unpopular, for, as his acquaintance and admirer Pepys tells us, ‘it seems he did give 1,500l. 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.’ In June 1664, having founded a lectureship on mechanics at Gresham College with a salary of 50l. a year, he settled it upon Dr. Robert Hooke for life, the president, council, and fellows of the Royal Society being entrusted to appoint both the subject and the number of lectures. The society thereupon elected him an honorary fellow on 9 Nov. An influential member of the Grocers' Company for many years, Cutler on 6 Feb. 1668 intimated to the court through Mr. Warden Edwards his intention of rebuilding at his own expense the parlour and dining-room, which had been destroyed in the great fire. As the company was at this time suffering the greatest inconvenience, arising from its inability to discharge the debts contracted under its seal for the service of the government and the city in 1640, 1641, and 1643, he suggested at the same time, as a measure of precaution, that the ground should be conveyed to him under a peppercorn rent for securing it when built on against extent or seizure. This proposal met with the company's approbation, and an indenture of sale and demise of the grounds and buildings about the hall was made to Cutler and sixteen other members who had contributed and subscribed 20l. and upwards, according to the direction of the committee, for five hundred years at a peppercorn rent. Upon the completion of the work a cordial vote of thanks to Cutler was passed in January 1669, when 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.’ The restoration of the hall, towards which Cutler again contributed liberally, was not finished until Michaelmas 1681. Seven years later an inscription recounting Cutler's benefactions was placed in the hall, wherein it is stated that having been fined for sheriff and alderman some forty years previously, he was chosen master warden of the company in 1652–3, and again in 1685–6; was assistant and locum tenens to the master warden (Sir Thomas Chicheley) in 1686–7; and in 1688, at a period when all the members shrank from the charge, as one involving risk and responsibility besides a great loss of time, he consented to be elected master warden for the fourth time. To the College of Physicians he also proved a liberal friend. On 13 May 1674 it was announced at a 