HATTON, SIR CHRISTOPHER (1540-1591), lord chan cellor of England and favourite of Queen Elizabeth, was a son of William Hatton (d. 1546) of Holdenby, Northants, and was educated at St. Mary Hall, Oxford. A handsome and accomplished man and a good dancer, he attracted the notice of Queen Elizabeth, became one of her gentlemen pensioners in 1564, and captain of her bodyguard in 1572. He received numerous estates and many positions of trust and profit from the queen, and rumour, probably untrue, asserted that he was Elizabeth's lover. Hatton had been made vice-chamberlain of the royal household and a member of the privy council in 1S78, and had been a mem ber of parliament since 1571. In 1578 he was knighted, and was now regarded as the queen's spokesman in the House of Com mons, being an active agent in the prosecutions of John Stubbs and William Parry. He was one of the negotiators for a marriage between Elizabeth and Francis, duke of Alencon, in 1581; was a member of the court which tried Anthony Babington in 1586; and was one of the commissioners who found Mary queen of Scots guilty. He advised William Davison (q.v.) to forward the warrant for her execution to Fotheringay. In the same year (1587) Hatton was made lord chancellor, although he had no great knowledge of the law. He died in London on Nov. 20, 1591, and was buried in St. Paul's cathedral. Elizabeth showed her af fection for her favourite in an extravagant and ostentatious man ner. She called him her mouton, and forced the bishop of Ely to give him the freehold of Ely Place, Holborn, and his name is per petuated in Hatton Garden. Hatton was a patron of learning, and among his friends was Edmund Spenser. He wrote the fourth act of a tragedy, Tancred and Gismund, and his death occa sioned several panegyrics in both prose and verse.
See Sir N. H. Nicolas, Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton (1847) ; and Correspondence of the Family of Hatton, being chiefly Letters addressed to Christopher, first Viscount Hatton, 1601-1704, edited with introduction by E. M. Thompson (1878) .