HUSSEY, Sir Edward (1585-1648), of Honington, Lincs.

The Husseys had been prominent in Lincolnshire since the mid-fifteenth century and by the early Stuart period ranked among the county’s wealthiest families.31Lincs. Peds. 526-7; Cole, Doddington, 70-3. As a result of a series of fortuitous deaths and alliances among the family during the sixteenth century, a sizeable number of the properties they had accumulated in the county descended to Sir Edward Hussey upon the death of his father, Sir Charles Hussey, in 1609.32Lincs. Peds. 526-9; Cole, Doddington, 86. Sir Charles, who had served as a sheriff and justice for the county, died seized of numerous properties in and around the family’s principal residence at Honington, near Grantham.33C142/311/119. Sir Edward improved the family’s fortunes still further by a judicious marriage in 1609 to a wealthy local heiress.34SP23/184, p. 443; Cole, Doddington, 70, 89. He had enough disposable income to purchase a baronetcy in 1611 at a cost of £1,095.35Cole, Doddington, 89. One of his main sources of income was sheep-farming, and by the early 1640s he had as many as 13,000 sheep upon his estate.36SP23/184, p. 445. He appears to have converted a large part of his estate at Honington from arable to pasture during the 1620s and, as a consequence, was proceeded against by the crown in 1631 as part of a general campaign against enclosures and depopulation. He was fined £80 and obliged to give bond to set up eight farmhouses and barns with 30 acres apiece.37SP16/206/71, f. 164.

Yet although an early victim of the Caroline programme of order and reform in the localities, Hussey appears to have been one of the crown’s most trusted and reliable servants in Lincolnshire. He was appointed a loan commissioner in 1626, a deputy lieutenant in 1629 and a commissioner for knighthood fines the following year and was active in 1633-4 as a commissioner for collecting donations for the repair of St Paul’s cathedral (a project much favoured by the king and Archbishop William Laud).38E178/5404, ff. 5v, 9, 13; Lincs. RO, 2-ANC/8/14; YARB/8/2/3; LMA, CLC/313/I/B/004/MS25474/001, p. 30. Moreover, during his second term as county sheriff in 1636-7, he was assiduous in the collection of Ship Money – earning praise from the privy council for his ‘judgement, diligence and industry’ – despite facing considerable complaint and resistance from the taxpayers.39PC2/48, pp. 185-6; SP16/352/67, f. 212; CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 186, 251, 403, 445, 566; 1637, pp. 13, 56, 104, 111, 154, 155, 168, 530; M.D. Gordon, ‘The collection of Ship Money in the reign of Charles I’, TRHS ser. 3, iv. 159. His successor as sheriff, by contrast, the future parliamentarian Sir Anthony Irby*, fell short of the county’s quota by over £1,500.40Gordon, ‘The collection of ship money’, 159. Irby’s shrievalty was marked by complaints from the taxpayers in Kesteven that he had over-assessed them.41C. Holmes, Seventeenth-Century Lincolnshire, 131-2. Their refusal to pay the new rates was apparently encouraged by Hussey, who was one of Kesteven’s principal landowners. Irby maintained that he had simply reverted to the traditional rate and that Hussey, during his shrievalty, had under-assessed his own region of the county to the prejudice of the king’s service.42CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 267.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Hussey was returned for Lincolnshire, taking the junior place behind the future parliamentarian Sir John Wray, who had represented the county in the Parliaments of 1625 and 1628. Hussey and Wray apparently had little difficulty fending off a challenge for the shire places from the future royalists John Farmerie*, the chancellor of the diocese of Lincoln, and Charles Dallison, the popishly-inclined recorder of Lincoln.43Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’. Hussey probably owed his return largely to his wealth and prominence in the county. However, his support for the Kesteven taxpayers in the 1638 Ship Money rating dispute may also have convinced some voters that he was a fit man to represent their grievances and interests at Westminster. If so, they were to be disappointed, for Hussey seems to have been inactive in the Commons, receiving no committee appointments and making no recorded contribution to debate. His failure to make an impact upon the House’s proceedings was probably linked to fact that his return had been challenged by another godly Lincolnshire knight, Sir Edward Ayscoghe*, who may well have stood with Wray. Why Ayscoghe’s candidacy had failed is not clear. Perhaps his involvement in the drainage of the Ancholme Level had undermined his popularity with the voters.44Infra, ‘Sir Edward Ayscoghe’. On receiving a petition from Ayscoghe against Hussey’s return, the Commons upheld Wray’s election but cast doubt upon that of Hussey by ordering that an indenture drawn up by Ayscoghe’s supporters be delivered to the committee of privileges.45CJ ii. 10b. The dispute had still to be settled when the Short Parliament was dissolved.

Hussey does not appear to have stood for re-election in the autumn of 1640, although his eldest son Thomas was returned to the Long Parliament for Grantham. Described as ‘weak and infirm’ in March 1642, he had recovered sufficiently by the summer to rally to Lincolnshire’s nascent royalist party.46Protestation Returns for Lincs. 1641-2 ed. A. Cole, W. Atkin (CD, Lincs. Fam. Hist. Soc. 1996), returns for Rippingale. On 20 July, he was among 75 gentlemen of the county who sent a declaration to the king, offering to furnish 168 horses ‘fit for war ... for the maintenance and defence of his majesty’s just prerogative [and] the Protestant religion as it is now established’. The majority of the subscribers offered to maintain four horses or less; Hussey promised to maintain six.47Northants. RO, FH133 unfol.; The Resolution of the Gentry of Lincoln in Setting Forth 168 Horse (1642, 669 f.5.66). It was claimed in August that this subscription was merely for the defence of the county and to promote an accommodation, but its partisan nature is clear.48True Intelligence from Lincoln-Shire (1642), 3-7 (E.113.7). According to the Lincolnshire parliamentarians, Hussey was ‘very forward and active’ on the commission of array and contributed both money and horses to the royalist war effort.49SP23/184, pp. 413, 443; LJ v. 375a. Hussey’s decision to side with the king may have owed something to his religious views. There is no evidence that he was sympathetic to the cause of further reformation in religion, and he ignored pleas from the parishioners of Stow, Lincolnshire, where he received £100 a year from the parsonage rents, to make adequate provision for the maintenance of a preaching minister.50CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 241; SP23/184, p. 439; CCC 1022.

Hussey, like his younger brother Charles, spent most of the civil war in the royalist garrison at Newark, about 15 miles north west of Grantham.51SP23/184, pp. 413, 428; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 305-6. Although not in arms against Parliament, he was active in raising money for the king’s forces and in sequestering the estates of local parliamentarians.52SP23/184, pp. 413, 428. In November 1643, it was reported that he and a number of other Lincolnshire royalists had surrendered themselves to the earl of Manchester (the commander of the Eastern Association army) in dismay over recent parliamentarian victories in the region and also at the cessation of arms that the king had agreed with Irish rebels in September.53The Scottish Dove no. 4 (3-10 Nov. 1643), 30 (E.75.21). However, if this report is true, Hussey had returned to the king’s quarters by the end of May 1645, when he and he and other leading members of the Newark garrison petitioned Charles, requesting him to move northwards against the parliamentarians at Grantham.54SP23/194, pp. 413, 443. So notorious was Hussey’s support for the royalist cause that from the treaty of Uxbridge in 1645, through to the treaty of Newport in 1648, he featured consistently on Parliament’s list of grand delinquents who, under the terms of any future settlement, were to be barred from holding government office, denied access to the court, and to have a third of their estate seized towards payment of the kingdom’s debts.55SP23/184, p. 413; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 314; LJ x. 549a.

Although Newark was to remain in royalist hands until the spring of 1646, Hussey decided to make his peace with Parliament in the autumn of 1645. In November, he petitioned to compound, describing himself as ‘an old, weak and sickly man, but affectionately come to submit himself to the justice of Parliament’.56SP23/184, pp. 413, 415, 426, 428, 431, 433. He claimed that by ‘soldiers and plundering’ he had lost at least £6,000 in cattle, sheep, wool and goods during the war (his wife put the figure at £5,782).57SP23/184, pp. 415, 436, 445. But neither his losses, infirmities, nor his ‘affectionate’ submission to the justice of Parliament aroused much sympathy at Goldsmiths’ Hall. The commissioners for compounding set his fine at a third of his estate – as stipulated in the Uxbridge and Newcastle peace propositions – which was reckoned to be £9,000.58SP23/184, p. 415; CCC 1022. The sheer size of this fine, together with the problems caused by Hussey’s advancing years, meant that it was many months before he could raise sufficient money to pay even half the required sum. Indeed, he was still trying to ‘make a bargain for his land’ in the spring and summer of 1647 – most of which he spent in London, looking for a suitable buyer.59Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. iii. 340. According to Sir Thomas Widdrington*, son-in-law of the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*), Hussey and his wife had found a buyer by July 1647, only to run into further difficulties: ‘They had agreed for the sale of some lands, but the purchaser makes some scruples, so the bargain not perfected and no moneys gotten; nor, I doubt, will be this long time’.60Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 377, 378. Nevertheless, Hussey had managed to sell ‘a good part’ of his estate (including most of his wife’s jointure lands) by January 1648, when he was able to pay in £4,500 to Goldsmiths’ Hall.61SP23/184, p. 424; CCC 1023. In February, his fine was reduced, on petition, to £8,750.62SP23/184, p. 421; CCC 1023. On top of his composition fine, Hussey was required to pay £600 (subsequently reduced to £450) by the Committee for Advance of Money* in discharge of an assessment of £3,000 that the committee had levied upon his estate in December 1645.63CCAM 654.

With almost half his composition fine still outstanding, Hussey died on 22 March 1648 and was buried at Honington.64CB. His widow petitioned the Lords in April, claiming that he had secured the remainder of his fine by bond, but had been hoping for an abatement when his case was presented to the Commons. She requested that the £4,500 he had already paid be accepted in full of his fine, pleading that he had only enjoyed an estate for life and had left debts of £6,000.65HMC 7th Rep. 20. The Lords were sympathetic to her request, but the Commons refused to grant it until July 1650.66LJ x. 196a; CCC 1023. Hussey died intestate, the administration of his estate being granted to his widow.67Cole, Doddington, 95. His eldest son, Thomas, represented Grantham in the Long Parliament until his death in 1641; and his third son, Charles, sat for Lincolnshire in the second protectoral Parliament and in the Cavalier Parliament.