Family and Education

b. by 1530, yr. s. of John Hussey, Lord Hussey, of Sleaford, Lincs. by 2nd w. Anne, da. of George Grey, 2nd Earl of Kent; half-bro. of William Hussey II. educ. M. Temple.2

Offices Held

Biography

The Thomas Hussey who sat for Peterborough in the last Marian Parliament could have been one of three younger kinsmen of the deceased Lord Hussey, his younger son, his nephew or his grandson; but of these only the first could have appeared in three Elizabethan Parliaments, since the second, Thomas Hussey I of Halton Holegate, Lincolnshire, died in 1558 and the third was in prison in 1571-2 for his complicity in the northern rebellion. The inference that the Elizabethan Member began his parliamentary career in 1558 is strengthened by two circumstances: the first is that at Peterborough, as in his later seats, he would have enjoyed the patronage of the high steward, Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford, who was later to become his brother-in-law, and the second that he would have had as his fellow-Member another Middle Templar, Giles Isham. His father’s connexion with Peterborough, where Lord Hussey had been the last high bailiff of the abbot’s liberty, and his own probable link with the first bishop John Chambers, at whose funeral in 1556 a Thomas Hussey carried the banner, are further pointers in the same direction.3

Little is known of the early career of Thomas Hussey of the Middle Temple. He was so styled when he engaged in a chancery action, brought before Richard Rich as chancellor (1547-51), over the will of his uncle Sir Robert Hussey, and he still kept chambers there in 1562 although he never achieved professional distinction; he shared chambers in 1562 with a Tresham, a connexion which favours his identification with the banner-bearer of 1556. In 1550 his eldest half-brother William was restored in blood, but Hussey himself and his other brothers and sisters were not so redeemed until 1563. One of the sisters, Bridget, then Countess of Rutland and later Countess of Bedford, was first married to Richard Morison. Her brother Thomas was the only other member of the Hussey family mentioned in Morison’s will of September 1550 and it was probably he who in 1552 sent news to Morison, then abroad as ambassador to the Emperor, a service which in turn lends some support to his identification with the Thomas Hussey who had in 1547 been a member of Queen Catherine Parr’s household: he could have been introduced to her service through another brother-in-law Robert Throckmorton. In April 1553 Hussey and Stephen Hales^† acted as feoffees to use for Morison and in the following year one of his name (and he is the only such known to have studied at an inn of court) received a crown annuity of 20 marks for his maintenance in the study of the law.4

Nothing is known of Hussey’s role in the Commons under Mary but in the following reign his parliamentary activities were to reflect his legal training and his Protestantism. He died between the first and second sessions of the Parliament of 1572.

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Alan Davidson

Notes

• 1. Did not serve for the full duration of the Parliament.
• 2. Date of birth estimated from chancery suit. Lincs. Peds. (Harl. Soc. lii), 527-8.
• 3. CSP Dom. 1547-80, pp. 368, 409, 473; Northants. Rec. Soc. xii. p. xlix; PCC 25 Ketchyn; Machyn’s Diary (Cam. Soc. xlii), 348.
• 4. ECP, ix. 231; M.T. Recs. i. 138; CP, vii. 17n; PCC 28 Wrastley; CSP For. 1547-53, pp. 209, 216; E179/69/47; CSP Dom. 1601-3, Add. 1547-65, pp. 445-6; CPR, 1553-4, p. 242.