Lieutenant-General John Cutts, 1st Baron Cutts, PC (Ire) (1661 – 25 January 1707), was a British soldier and author. Early life Cutts was born about 1661 at Woodhall, Arkesden, Essex, the second son of Richard Cutte or Cuttes and Joan Everard (daughter of Sir Richard Everard). The family were descended from Sir John Cutts, who had been Treasurer of the Household to Henry VIII. After a short university career at Catharine Hall, Cambridge, he inherited the family estates, but showed a distinct preference for the life of court and camp. Career The double ambition for military and literary fame inspired his first work, which appeared in 1685 under the name La Muse de cavalier, or An Apology for such Gentlemen as make Poetry their Diversion not their Business. The next year saw Cutts serving as a volunteer under the Duke of Lorraine in Hungary, and it is said that he was the first to plant the imperial standard on the walls at the storming of Buda (July 1686). In 1687 he published a book of Poetical Exercises. The following year he was serving as lieutenant-colonel in Holland. General Hugh Mackay described Cutts about this time as "pretty tall, lusty and well shaped, an agreeable companion with abundance of wit, affable and familiar, but too much seized with vanity and self-conceit". Lieutenant-Colonel Cutts was one of William III's companions in the English Revolution of 1688, and in 1690 he went in command of a regiment of foot in Ireland, where he served with distinction. He served with distinction at the Battle of the Boyne (July 1690), and at the siege of Limerick (1690) (where he was wounded), and King William created him Baron Cutts, of Gowran, in the Peerage of Ireland, on 12 December 1690. In 1691 he succeeded to the command of the brigade of the prince of Hesse (wounded at Aughrim in July 1691), and on the surrender of Limerick was appointed commandant of the town. In the following year he served again in Flanders as a brigadier. His brigade of Mackay's division had been almost destroyed at Steinkirk in August 1692. At this battle Cutts himself was wounded. For some time after this, Lord Cutts was lieutenant-governor of the Isle of Wight (in office: 1694-1707), but he returned to active service in 1694, holding a command in the disastrous Brest expedition of June 1694. He was one of