HUSSEY, Thomas II (d.1503), of Shapwick and Witchampton, Dorset and Salisbury, Wilts.

Thomas was probably the youngest of the three sons of Thomas Hussey I. The eldest, John, born in about 1428, was destined to inherit the principal family estates, while another son, Master Elias Hussey, presumably studied at one of the universities before entering the Church. But Elias is not mentioned in Biog. Reg. Univ. Cambridge or Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf., both ed. Emden. Yet of the three it was Thomas junior who achieved the most in the public sphere. To judge from his usual description as a ‘gentleman’ and his eventual appointment to the Dorset bench as a member of the quorum, this third son followed his father into the legal profession, and late in his career he was a member of Strand Inn. He had probably completed his training by the time of his first appearance in the records, which was as party to a final concord of 1453. It is significant that he was then named in association with Gilbert Kymer, the dean of Salisbury cathedral, a man with whom he was to become closely linked. According to Dorset’s historian Hutchins, Hussey’s wife Elizabeth was a ‘daughter and heiress of Kymer of Wiltshire’. Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 375; J. Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 162. Even so, Elizabeth’s precise relationship to Gilbert, the former chancellor of Oxford university whose skill in medicine had led to his employment as personal physician to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, remains uncertain. It might be speculated that she was his own daughter: the gossipy Thomas Gascoigne alleged that the dean had been married in his youth, but had left his wife so as to gain promotion to higher orders. However, all that can be said is that in his will in 1462 Kymer left a bequest to Thomas and Elizabeth Hussey of the not particularly munificent sum of £5, although, significantly, they were named among a group of the dean’s relations, and our MP figured as one of his executors. Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf. ii. 1068-9; PCC 1 Godyn; T. Gascoigne, Loci e Libro Veritatum ed. Wright, 43.

Meanwhile, in 1455 Hussey had been engaged in transactions regarding land at Winterbourne Tomson in Dorset, on behalf of his father. The latter’s private concerns led to the younger man’s association with leading members of the county gentry, such as William Carent*, Robert Tourges* (whose daughter married our MP’s brother John), and the ubiquitous and influential lawyer John Newburgh II*. Dorset Feet of Fines, 381. The younger Thomas Hussey was to represent Poole in the Parliament of 1460, when his father’s friend Newburgh sat for the county, and it is worthy of remark that several of Newburgh’s feoffees and associates were returned to the same Parliament for other Dorset boroughs. It had been on Newburgh’s behalf that Hussey had been acting in the final concord of 1453, and the two men were to be brought closer together after Dean Kymer’s death, as co-executors of his will. Yet whether or not Newburgh played a part in Hussey’s election for Poole, the MP was by no means a stranger to the borough. His father held property there jure uxoris, as part of the substantial holdings acquired through his marriage to Marion Tourney, our MP’s mother, so it is quite likely that the younger man was personally acquainted with the burgesses. Either he or his father had brought suits in the court of common pleas two years earlier with regard to a forcible entry into buildings in the port. CP40/788, rot. 41; 789, rot. 39d. The plaintiff was not called ‘esquire’ so may have been the younger man. While the second session of the Parliament was in progress, in Hilary term 1461, a Thomas Hussey was a plaintiff in the same court, bringing pleas regarding the family estate at Milborne St. Andrew, and in particular suing Nicholas Latimer* over their respective rights of jurisdiction there (for the Hussey manor of Milborne was encircled by the Latimer estate at Dewlish). CP40/800, rots. 84, 102d, 148d. Hussey’s presence at Westminster was clearly an advantage in the prosecution of this lawsuit, which opportunistically took advantage of Latimer’s absence in the north of England in the army of Margaret of Anjou. It may well be the case that the Husseys themselves favoured the Yorkists, who when the Parliament had been summoned had been in control of the government following their victory at Northampton.

Another factor deciding the Husseys’ political alignment in the civil wars may have been their poor relations with the powerful Wiltshire family of Hungerford. Back in March 1460 Thomas Hussey (presumably the father rather than the son) had been sent a writ of sub poena in £200 to answer a suit brought in Chancery by Robert, Lord Hungerford and Moleyns. C253/37/82. The background to their quarrel is obscure, but Lord Robert’s stance as a committed Lancastrian (who was to be attainted in 1461 in Edward IV’s first Parliament), led to the advance of our MP’s fortunes. Early in 1464, with the Hungerfords’ finances in dire straits, he was able to persuade Lord Robert’s mother Margaret, Lady Hungerford and Botreaux, to sell him the Wiltshire manor of Maddington. Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 650. It was valued at £10 p.a. at his death: CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 701. Hungerford was executed not long afterwards, and in April 1466 inquiries about his landed holdings were heard in Dorset and Somerset. Although Hussey was not himself commissioned to conduct these inquiries, it was he who delivered the results into Chancery on 17 May following, when he also handed over the inquisitions relating to the estates of Henry Beaufort, late duke of Somerset. CIMisc. viii. 325 (wrongly dated 1464), 328, 357. He had been appointed to his first royal commission in the previous year, in company with his elder brother, John, this being to inquire about the Dorset lands of Sir Thomas Fynderne, another man attainted for treason against Edward IV. CPR, 1461-7, p. 489.

In his later years Thomas Hussey I became increasingly dependent on his sons, Master Elias and Thomas junior, who assisted him in bringing pleas in the Westminster courts. CP40/825, rot. 181. In 1464 he placed lands in Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire in the hands of feoffees, including both of these sons, instructing them to do his will, and in the following year both men joined their father in transactions with regard to lands in Milbourne St. Andrew, which were settled on Thomas senior and his heirs. Through his first wife, the heiress of the Tourney and Champayn estates, Thomas Hussey I had acquired a number of manors in Dorset, which he held by the courtesy after her death. By the time of his own death, on Christmas day 1468, he had already bestowed three of the manors on his eldest son John, who then took over the bulk of the family estates. Dorset Feet of Fines, 403; C140/30/52. There is nothing in the inquisition post mortem held for our MP 35 years later to indicate that he himself inherited anything of much substance from his parents, although it looks as if the manor of Milborne St. Andrew may have been settled on him and his wife either by his father or elder brother. What is certain is that this elder brother John never took the place in county society expected of the head of a gentry family. After his only royal commission of 1465 he took no part in the administration of the localities, and 12 years after his father’s death he was declared to be an ‘idiot’. CPR, 1476-85, p. 238. This feebleness of mind explains why Thomas took over his brother’s role.

Thomas served as a reeve in Salisbury in 1461-2, but it was not until 1469 that he took on a more active part in civic government as was warranted by his property and occasional residence there. His stepmother had been possessed of substantial holdings in the city as left to her by her former husband William Alexander*, and Thomas Hussey senior had purchased more, which he passed on to our MP. By 1469 the latter was holding property in Minster Street, together with many buildings in right of his wife. These included a capital messuage situated on the trench or foss in the parish of St. Thomas the Martyr, a garden containing a dovecote, five tenements in New Street, and a further six messuages, altogether valued at £12 p.a. at his death. CCR, 1468-76, no. 439; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 701. In January that year he acted as a juror at sessions of oyer and terminer held in the city when (Sir) Thomas Hungerford* (son and heir of the executed Lord) and Henry Courtenay, the heir to the earldom of Devon, were tried and executed for treason. KB9/320/16. He also took up a place on the city’s councils. Yet although now called ‘of Salisbury, gentleman, or esquire’, he nevertheless maintained his interests in east Dorset. In Hilary term 1470 it was alleged in the court of common pleas that some 15 months earlier he and other malefactors had attacked one Walter Winslow on the highway near Wareham and imprisoned and maltreated him, stealing his goods and a purse containing £2. On being brought into court to answer Winslow, two of Hussey’s alleged accomplices (a weaver from Salisbury and a yeoman from the Hussey family estate at Shapwick), contended that their accuser had been leader of a gang which had lurked on the road intending to rob the King’s subjects, and had attacked Robert Cove’s wife; after she raised the hue and cry, they arrested Winslow, delivering him to the constable at Sturminster Marshal as a felon. CP40/834, rot. 302. Hussey’s role in the affair may therefore have been one of a magistrate.

Hussey’s election to Parliament for Salisbury later in 1470 came at a time of confusion for the civic authorities, and, indeed, throughout England. That autumn the earl of Warwick and duke of Clarence, equipped with a large army funded by Louis XI, landed at Dartmouth and advanced northward, on the way demanding from the citizens of Salisbury the armed contingent which on other occasions they customarily furnished to the Crown. At the same time Edward IV dispatched a message by one of the esquires for the body, Thomas St. Leger†, ordering Salisbury to resist the rebels. In an assembly held by the city council on 21 Sept. it was resolved to send Warwick 40 marks instead of the troops, a sum to which Hussey made a contribution of 10s. Events moved swiftly: King Edward fled overseas and early in October a Parliament was summoned in the name of the restored Henry VI. On 27 Oct. Hussey was appointed to serve alongside Clarence on a commission to inquire into felonies recently committed in Dorset, and ten days later the citizens of Salisbury responded to the precept from the sheriff of Wiltshire by electing him and Roger Huls† as their representatives in the Commons. Salisbury ledger bk. 2, ff. 95v, 98v-99. The uncertainty experienced by the citizens in knowing where to place their loyalty is suggested by the dating of their assemblies of 17 and 29 Oct. as in ‘1470’ rather than by regnal year as was customary. By 2 Nov. they had accepted that Hen. VI was back on the throne: ibid. ff. 97, 98. It may be the case that Hussey was elected because (as his commission implies) he was deemed to be sympathetic to the new government. Parliament met on 26 Nov. While its second session was in progress in February 1471 Hussey was associated with a member of the Upper House, William, Lord Stourton*, and with Clarence’s retainer Sir Roger Tocotes† (perhaps a fellow Member of the Commons), as a feoffee of manorial holdings in Wiltshire. Tropenell Cart. ed. Davies, ii. 294, 297. Paradoxically, these links with Tocotes may have enabled him to pass smoothly back into Edward IV’s service when the King was reconciled with his brother Clarence in the following spring and secured victory at Tewkesbury. Hussey was appointed to the quorum of the Dorset bench just a few months after Edward regained his throne. A pardon, granted him as ‘of Shapwick, the elder’ on 12 Feb. 1472, was perhaps a mere formality. C67/48, m. 16.

Over the previous nine years Hussey had been kept busy with the administration of Gilbert Kymer’s will, dealing with large sums of money and the testator’s many bequests to churches, relations and godsons; and in November 1475 he joined his fellow executors in purchasing a royal licence to found a perpetual chantry in Salisbury cathedral, where the late dean was buried. CPR, 1467-77, pp. 565-6. Yet after representing Salisbury in the Parliament of the Readeption he had disengaged himself from civic affairs, and when he entered the Commons again, in January 1478, it was as a representative for the Dorset borough of Shaftesbury. He is not known to have held property in the town, but probably came to the attention of the burgesses as a j.p. and landowner in the county. The Parliament was summoned for the purpose of arraigning Clarence for treason, a charge in which the judicial murder of Ankaret Twyneho played a significant part. Perhaps Hussey lent his support to Ankaret’s son William Twyneho†, then sitting in the Commons as a shire knight for Dorset, in guiding through the petition to clear his mother’s reputation and bring the duke to justice. PROME, xiv. 361-5. Following Clarence’s execution Hussey was appointed to the commissions charged with valuing his estates.

In the 1480s Hussey made occasional appearances in the law-courts, for instance, to sue the widow of Richard Gilbert† of Salisbury for a debt of £10. CP40/874, rot. 386d. His dealings with John Morton, bishop of Ely, were also the subject of legal record, following his sale to the bishop in June 1480 of the family manor of Milborne St. Andrew, for 220 marks. The suit which Bishop Morton brought against him and his wife in the Michaelmas term for recovery of the manor, 12 messuages and some 650 acres there and at Dewlish (which Sir Nicholas Latimer, tenant in chief of the King, formally relinquished in court), was clearly collusive and intended to reinforce Morton’s title. CCR, 1476-85, no. 774; 1485-1500, no. 354; CP40/874, rot. 430. Why Hussey parted with the estate at this time is a cause for speculation, but a crisis in the affairs of his family probably lay behind the sale, for very soon afterwards the Crown seized various Hussey possessions on account of the idiocy of his brother John. All of John’s lands, goods and chattels were granted to three Dorset men, who were also given charge of John himself, so long as he remained mentally incapacitated. CPR, 1476-85, p. 238. John died in January 1484, leaving as his heir his son, another Thomas Hussey, aged 30. Fortuitously, a few years earlier, before his loss of sanity came to the notice of the authorities, John had settled six of his manors in trust to the use of young Thomas and his wife Christine. C141/3/36. The couple continued in residence at Shapwick. An inq. of 1504, held under a comm. of concealments, wrongly found that John had died in May 1487: CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 961.

Our MP, now usually called ‘senior’ to distinguish him from his nephew, was kept on the Dorset bench through all the changes of monarch of the 1480s. Under Henry VII he took out a pardon, on 22 Jan. 1487, as ‘of Witchampton, and formerly of Shapwick, Thornton and Salisbury’. C67/53, m. 20. Both uncle and nephew were engaged in suits in the common pleas in Trinity term 1488, the older man suing a court-holder of Shaftesbury for a debt of £8 and a tanner of Wimborne Minster for £32. CP40/905, rot. 299. It was probably the nephew who in November 1501, as ‘of Shapwick, esquire’ was bound in the huge sum of 500 marks as guarantor that the serial traitor Sir Nicholas Latimer would be true for life in his allegiance to Hen. VII: CCR, 1500-9, no. 122. In his final years he acted as a feoffee of property in Salisbury, Wilts. Feet of Fines, 727. but of more significance for his private affairs he engaged in close dealings with the Cammell family of east Dorset, being made a trustee of the manor of West Parley for its settlement on Robert Cammell (d.1488) and his wife. His later nomination, along with three other members of his family, as a feoffee of the same manor for Cammell’s son and heir William strongly suggests a marriage alliance between the Husseys and Cammells. Perhaps William’s wife Elizabeth was a daughter of our MP. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 514; iii. 318; CCR, 1500-9, no. 323. It should also be noted that Hussey’s son John purchased a reversionary interest in the Cammells’ manor of Fittleford, and that our MP left William and Elizabeth a bequest in his will.

Hussey died four days after making a brief will on 6 Sept. 1503. He asked to be buried at Sturminster, near the family home at Shapwick, and left the residue of his estate to his eldest son Henry. PCC 30 Blamyr (PROB11/3, f. 253). Yet he had not neglected two of his younger sons: John, who lived at Southampton, and Thomas. In the 1490s he had made settlements ensuring that John would inherit Maddington and a number of his wife’s properties in Salisbury, and in 1497 lands worth ten marks a year were settled in jointure on John’s marriage to Elizabeth, daughter and coheiress of the Hampshire landowner John Holt of Crundale. Young Thomas and his descendants were to have Hussey’s wife’s holdings in Hampshire: three messuages and over 500 acres of land in Shipton Bellinger and land at Romsey, under a settlement of 1500. In all, these two younger sons received lands valued at £32 p.a. A reflection of Hussey’s standing in Salisbury and Dorset is provided by his choice of feoffees, who included Master Henry Sutton, doctor in medicine, John Doget, chancellor of the cathedral, and Sir Roger Newburgh (grandson of his former mentor). No settlements of his Dorset lands are mentioned in the inquisitions post mortem, but it is likely that these had been transferred into Henry’s possession before the MP died. Wilts. Feet of Fines, 738; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 701, 702, 704. Another son, Bartholomew, already a member of M. Temple, is not mentioned: Baker, i. 915.