Newcastle's agent offered him £10,000, and promised that he should be made "the best lord in Nottinghamshire", but Hutchinson indignantly refused to entertain such proposals. The town was often attacked. Sir Charles Lucas entered it in January 1644 and endeavoured to set it on fire, and in April 1645 a party from Newark captured the fort at Trent-bridges. Hutchinson succeeded in making good these losses, and answered each new summons to surrender with fresh defiance. The difficulties were increased by continual disputes between Hutchinson and the committee, which were a natural result, in Nottingham as elsewhere, of the divided authority set up by Parliament. But there is evidence that Hutchinson was irritable, quick-tempered, and deficient in self-control. The Committee of Both Kingdoms endeavoured to end the quarrel by a compromise, which Hutchinson found great difficulty in persuading his opponents to accept. On 16 March 1646, Hutchinson was returned to Parliament as member for Nottinghamshire, succeeding to the seat held by his father, who had died on 18 August 1643. His religious views led him to attach himself to the Independent rather than the Presbyterian party. As governor, he had protected the separatists to the best of his ability, and now, under his wife's influence, he adopted the main tenet of the Baptists. He was commissioner for exclusion from sacrament in 1646 and commissioner for scandalous offences in 1648. On 22 December 1648, Hutchinson signed the protest against the votes of the House of Commons accepting the concessions made by the king at the treaty of Newport, and consented to act as one of the judges at the trial of Charles I. According to his wife, he was nominated to the latter post very much against his will; "but, looking upon himself as called hereunto, durst not refuse it, as holding himself obliged by the covenant of God and the public trust of his country reposed in him". After serious consideration and prayer he signed the sentence against the king. From 13 February 1649 to 1651 Hutchinson was a member of the first two Councils of State of the Commonwealth, but he took no very active part in public affairs, and with the expulsion of the Long Parliament in 1653 moved back to his family seat at Owthorpe near Nottingham and lived in retirement until 1659 when he was made High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire. His neighbours thought of electing him to