ABSTRACT
Even by the standards of her patriarchalist age, Lucy Hutchinson’s insistence on her own wifely submissiveness was strenuous. Widow of the regicide Col. John Hutchinson, Mrs Hutchinson is best known, and to generations of readers, for the Memoirs of her husband, a work that has run to four editions, with multiple printings. The more assertive the female writer — and Lucy has been bracketed with Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, in her assertiveness – the more assiduous the apologetics. Her protestations are in fact so singular that they invite further inquiry. Such inquiry must focus on the Restoration, the turning-point of Lucy’s life, and the occasion of her confession of undutifulness. Ironically, modern scholars’ inattention to the colonel’s letter of contrition leaves Lucy’s character in greater jeopardy than her husband’s. C. H. Firth’s refutation of her claim to a direct political agency in the crisis of 1660, had that refutation been generally accepted.
