Rev. Matthias Rutton

Anglican clergyman, inheritor of an annuity on his life secured by 'slave-property' in Nevis. John Toke of Todington [sic] was among a group of individuals purchasing, for a total of £15,000, annuities from John Mills secured on the latter's estates and enslaved people on Nevis in 1774, when for £500 he purchased an annuity of £50 p.a., for the lives of Sarah Rutton spinster of Ashford (aged 59) and Matthias Rutton of the same place (aged 24). In the will of Sarah Rutton (q.v.) she said that John Toke held half the annuity in trust for her, and she left it to her nephew Matthias; in the will of her brother Isaac Rutton (q.v.) he described his entitlement to the other half, which he also left to Mattihas Rutton (who was his son).

1. Will of Matthias Rutton clerk of Selling Kent [made in 1811] proved 09/07/1818. He left in trust his personalty 'particularly the arrears of my annuity on the island of Nevis granted to my father and aunt in the year of the Lord 1774 by John Mills and Shetland Swanston to the amount of fifty pounds per. ann., nine years of which are at this present moment in arrears, that is to say the parties now concerned owed me £450 on the second day of September 1811 some part of which I was in hopes would have been paid off by Messrs A & James Weston 39 Fenchurch Street are [sic] the present period being the agents...'

Common Records 1775-1776, British Library, EAP794/1/1/15, https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP794-1-1-15 pp. 65-94.

1. PROB 11/1606/144.