Family and Education

1st s. of Arthur Rush of Sudbourne by Mary, da. of Sir Anthony Wingfield^†. m. Eleanor, da. of Nicholas Cutler^† of Eye, 2s. 1da. suc.fa. 1537.

Offices Held

Biography

Rush’s estate of Sudbourne was within a mile or two of Orford, and his family had been connected with the Wingfields, who had the main influence there, for three generations. His grandfather (Sir) Thomas Rush^† who had himself been a burgess of Orford, had represented Ipswich with Henry Wingfield, and had served with Sir Anthony Wingfield as a commissioner for the dissolution of the monasteries. His son and heir Arthur (father of Anthony) had married the daughter of Sir Anthony Wingfield. Sir Thomas and Arthur died within a month of each other in the summer of 1537, leaving Anthony to become the ward of Thomas Wriothesley^†. Nothing further has been ascertained about Rush beyond the mention of an incident considered by the Privy Council in December 1574 when a London merchant complained of his ‘disordered dealings about certain goods laden in a ship of Emden called the Popinjay, which perished at Orford’.

The sparseness of information, and the absence of life dates, leaves open the possibility that the MP was the third son of (Sir) Thomas Rush, and thus uncle and namesake of the above, or even that he was the son of Anthony Rush and Eleanor Cutler. In either case the same link with the Wingfields would account for the Orford returns to Parliament.

Vis. Suff. ed. Metcalfe, 23-4, 63; HMC Var. iv. 274, 275; APC, viii. 321, 326; mss at Orford.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: N. M. Fuidge

Notes