Career
Owing to certain provisions of the Catholic Emancipation Acting of that year, his superiors were, at least theoretically, debarred from professing novices and, as they were unwilling to offend the authorities in any way, Peter was not professed. So in 1830 he went to Prior Park, where he taught Classics. Hutton was at this time a deacon, having been so for over five years.
And he disliked the advent of these foreign professors very much.
The bishop then sent him to the Catholic University of Leuven in 1836, where he studied till be was recalled to Prior Park in 1839 by Bishop Baines to replace Father Furlong (who had just joined the Order of Charity) as President of Saint Peter"s College. Hutton was ordained priest 24 September 1839, and appointed president, and professor of Latin and Greek.
In 1841 he decided to give up his professorial career in order to enter the Order of Charity. In July, he was admitted to its novitiate at Loughborough, Leicestershire.
But Bishop Baines strongly objected to this, deposed him from the presidency of Saint Peter"s, and ordered him to return to Prior Park as an ordinary professor
He completed his interrupted novitiate there, and made his vows 31 July 1843. In 1844 he was appointed rector of the new college of the order at Ratcliffe-on-Wreake, Leicestershire. He next did some parochial work at Newport, Monmouthshire, and Whitwick, near Leicester.
He then went to Shepshed, Leicestershire, as rector of the mission and master of the novitiate of Ratcliffe, which had been moved there.
In 1850 it was again transferred to Ratcliffe, and Hutton was then made vice-president of the college, and president in 1851. In addition to this he was appointed rector of the religious community in 1857.
Hutton was a strict disciplinarian, a theologian and classical scholar, a good mathematician, an able preacher. During his administration, the students at Ratcliffe increased in numbers, and the buildings were enlarged.
He left in manuscript translations of the principal Greek and Latin authors read at Ratcliffe, with copious notes, and many references to German critics.
These were preserved at Ratcliffe.
