HUSSEY, Thomas II (d. 1657/8), of Laverstock, Hants, Chilton Foliot, Wilts., and Hungerford Park, Berks.

Pinpointing this MP’s origins among several men of this name in Hampshire and Dorset in the early seventeenth century is problematic. He might have had some connection to Christopher Hussey, alderman of Winchester, who was a regular member of the commission for gaol delivery in the 1620s and 1630s, and an assessment commissioner in 1642.27C181/3, ff. 19-242; C181/4, ff. 22v, 67, 139v, 179; C181/5, f. 26; SR. He was not – testamentary evidence confirms – one of the Thomas Husseys of the senior line at Edmundsham in Dorset, nor was he of the line at Winterbourne Thomson in the same county, of whom one died the year before the MP; to both of these families have been assigned namesakes who matriculated at Oxford in 1616 and 1617.28Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 424; Vis. of Hants (Harl. Soc. lxiv), 143; PROB11/105/4; PROB11/261/222; Al. Ox. However, he might have been descended from a younger son of the senior line, as was civil lawyer Sampson Hussey†, cousin of Thomas Hussey† of Edmundsham (d. 1604), both of whom sat in Elizabethan Parliaments.29HP Commons 1558-1603. On the other hand, it seems beyond doubt that the future MP was the Mr Thomas Hussey who married at Whitchurch on 25 July 1621 Mistress Margaret Springham from Kingsclere, eight and a half miles to the north-east.30Hants Par. Regs.: Marriages, viii. 159. She was the widow of Richard Springham, who in his will proved on 1 January that year had made generous provision for her on the basis of his property in Hampshire and London.31PROB11/137/2. Springham, apparently a wealthy man, had connections in the London mercantile community, and possibly Hussey shared them: there were numerous Husseys, including exact namesakes, among the metropolitan elite in the early seventeenth century.32SP16/335, f. 104v; PROB11/142/314; PROB11/246/259.

For 12 years following his marriage nothing is known of Thomas Hussey of Kingsclere, but he emerged in the record in 1633 as a man of substance, and soon thereafter as a man with a network of well-placed friends in south central England and growing estates in north Hampshire, north east Wiltshire and Berkshire. That year he bought the manor of Edgington or Eddington in Hungerford, some 20 miles from Kingsclere over the Berkshire border, was nominated as a sewers commissioner for Hampshire and Berkshire (July) and was the beneficiary of a six-year contract to supply wheat and poultry to the king’s household (Nov.).33VCH Berks. iv. 189; C181/4, f. 148; HMC Var. Coll. i. 99. Possibly this betokens some connection to the lord chamberlain, Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke.

In 1634, if not earlier, he also began to acquire land at Chilton Foliot, Wiltshire.34Museum Eng. Rural Life, Reading, BER36/5/12. It was probably the future MP who in December 1635 was the ‘intrusted friend Mr Thomas Hussey’ employed by Francis Goddard of Standen, a neighbour and the sheriff of Wiltshire, to deliver Ship Money and report on its collection to the privy council; ‘Mr Hussey (to whom the sheriff wisheth me to give credit)’ had duly done so by 3 January 1636.35SP16/304, f. 158; SP16/310, f. 14; SP16/311, f. 40; Wilts. RO, 212B/2049; PROB11/227/235 (Francis Goddard). Evidently in possession of considerable social and financial credit, he may have been the Thomas Hussey granted the office of prothonotary in chancery the following month.36Coventry Docquets, 196; Worden, Rump Parl. 109. He certainly continued to deal in property in the next few years, selling land in north Wiltshire with his long-term associate, Thomas Hawles of the cathedral close, Salisbury, and acquiring three advowsons in Hampshire, Berkshire and Sussex (where there were also Husseys).37Coventry Docquets, 720; Wilts. RO, 1461/720. In the course of 1639 he presented to all three rectories Francis Mundy, an Oxford MA and recent bachelor of civil law, later described as his brother-in-law.38Al. Ox.; Clergy of the C. of E. database; VCH Berks. iv. 124; PROB11/273/585.

Landed interests in several counties, and a consequent falling through the cracks, may explain Hussey’s apparently modest profile in local administration. Added to the Hampshire commission of the peace in August 1641, he was not visibly active.39C231/5, p. 475. In 1642 he was named as an assessment commissioner and on 23 July was listed among the leading Hampshire residents on whom Parliament called to assist its cause in the county, but he then received no further discernable appointments from either side for the duration of the first civil war.40SR; LJ v. 233b-234a; CJ ii. 686b. The later sequestration of John Hannam, the Wiltshire-born man who was his choice to replace Francis Mundy at Dogmersfield in March 1642, might arouse suspicions of royalist sympathy, but by December 1644 Hussey had done sufficient towards the parliamentary cause to convince Charles I that he should be among those omitted – symbolically at least – from the Hampshire commission of the peace.41Al. Ox.; Walker Revised, 184; Clergy of the C of E database; Docquets Letters Patent, ed. Black, 243. Although Hussey’s friend Hawles of Salisbury and the latter’s brother were the leaders of the neutralist Club men in Hampshire and Dorset in 1645, the future MP does not seem to have been the Mr Hussey directing that movement at Maiden Newton in June.42‘John Hawles’, HP Commons 1660-1690; Add. 18780, f. 41v.

When a vacancy was created by the death of Richard Jervoise*, a by-election in Whitchurch late in 1645 returned Thomas Hussey to Parliament.43CJ iv. 327b. Although he probably owed his seat partly to his own local interest, the character of his subsequent service in the House – infrequent but not insignificant – suggests that he had powerful support. He appeared at Westminster in time to take the covenant on 31 December.44CJ iv. 393a. Less than three weeks later he obtained leave of absence for a month (17 Jan. 1646), and reappeared in the Journal on 18 May only to be given further permission to go into the country.45CJ iv. 410a, 548b. Yet when he re-emerged briefly in the summer, it was to have his assessment discharged and to be nominated to committees dealing with the potentially controversial questions of regulating parliamentary committees (20 June, ostensibly a task for an experienced MP) and of receiving complaints regarding those who had been in arms against Parliament (23 July, ostensibly a task for someone with an administrative or military background).46CAM 56; CJ iv. 583a, 625b.

Hussey then disappeared again from the record for another 12 months. The fact that in September 1646 he was appointed to the Wiltshire commission of the peace (apparently replacing his friend Francis Goddard) indicates that he enjoyed confidence in some quarters, but he proved no more active than in Hampshire – where he was not among justices of the peace of various hues placed in the Presbyterian classes planned at the turn of 1645-6 – and may have forfeited the Wiltshire position temporarily at some point before 1650.47C231/6, p. 56; C193/13/3, f. 69; C193/13/4, f. 109; King, Bor. and Par. Lymington, 262-3. With intriguing timing, he resurfaced at Westminster on 11 August 1647 in the immediate aftermath of the army’s march on London and the defeat of the Presbyterian coup, when he was named to a committee to consider the measures passed after the ‘forcing’ of the House – again a politically-charged responsibility.48CJ iv. 583a, 625b; v. 272a. Yet he did not appear again in the Journal until 9 October, when his absence at a call of the House was excused.49CJ v. 330a. Three weeks later he was named to a committee to expedite the sale of episcopal lands (28 Oct.), but although he was soon to acquire a vested interest in this his name is recorded on only one other occasion prior to Pride’s Purge, when on 11 August 1648 he was a teller in favour of an unsuccessful motion to put pressure on the Lords to facilitate business between the Houses.50CJ v. 344b, 667b.

Although not secluded at the purge on 6 December 1648, Hussey made no recorded appearance in the House until 2 June 1649, when he took the dissent from the vote of 5 December, enabling him to take his seat.51CJ vi. 223a. Thereafter he gradually became more active in the Commons, not least in measures relating to the sale of property of the church and delinquents, and in measures for raising money, from excise, assessments and sequestrations. Those with whom he appears to have worked include the Oxfordshire and Berkshire radical maverick Henry Marten, whose petition he was named to consider in June 1649, and Henry Neville, with whom he was added to the Berkshire sequestrations committee in March 1650, an appointment which he apparently discharged with some vigour and probably personal advantage.52CJ vi. 238b, 241b, 325a, 368a, 377b, 393b, 409b, 459b; vii. 250b, 263a; CCAM 1194; CCC 473, 1535, 3017. He made a number of purchases from former church lands, and settled principally in Berkshire sometime in the early 1650s, with an estate near Hungerford, and with lands in Sonning assigned to him by a local royalist prior to composition.53Berks. RO, D/EX32/12-16; CCC 3017; SP23/93, pp. 472-501.

Other parliamentary matters in which Hussey became involved included the army and militia, and law reform, on which he was named to a committee to receive propositions in March 1652.54CJ vi. 528b; vii. 107b, 230b. He was sufficiently interested in Anglo-Scottish affairs not only to be named to a committee to consider the union of the two countries in October 1652, but also to be appointed to a committee to meet deputies from Scotland in the following December.55CJ vii. 189a, 229b. Hussey was also active in relation to private petitions concerning Hampshire, Berkshire and Wiltshire colleagues and associates like Robert Wallop*, Daniel Blagrave* and the late Sir Edward Hungerford*.56CJ vii. 5a, 182a, 182b, 190b, 257b, 260b, 280a.

Hussey appears to have remained in House until at least 19 April 1653, shortly before the dissolution of the Rump.57CJ vii. 280a. As implied, his political and religious opinions are hard to pin down. Notwithstanding his association with radicals like Marten and Neville, those with whom he was involved in property transactions and trusts included Presbyterians, neutrals and covert royalists like Francis Goddard, Thomas Hawles, Sir Edward Hungerford’s half-brother and agent Giles Hungerford† and, in 1654 and early 1655, also his clerical brother-in-law Francis Mundy, apparently surviving through the interregnum by keeping his head down, and his Kingsclere neighbour Robert Mason.†58Wilts. RO, 212B/2049; Birmingham Archives, 3878/275; Museum Eng. Rural Life, Reading, BER36/5/16-17; PROB11/272/585. The last, a sequestered royalist, was soon implicated in Penruddock’s rebellion, and only escaped fatal consequences because Hussey secured him a pardon.59‘Sir Robert Mason’, HP Commons 1660-1690.

Hussey was unanimously elected for Andover to the 1654 Parliament, after a by-election on 22 December occasioned by others who were doubly returned choosing other seats.60Hants RO, 37M85/4/M1/1/24b. He made no visible contribution to proceedings, but was re-elected in 1656, this time making slightly more impression on the House.61CJ vii. 434b, 438a. He displayed sympathy for measures aimed at the ‘reformation of manners’, and appointed to a committee to consider the bill for the punishment of ‘immoderate living’ in June 1657.62CJ vii. 559b. His interventions in debates on James Naylor (27 Dec. 1656) may also indicate a degree of sympathy for the notorious Quaker, since he appears to have favoured suspending the sentence passed against him, at least temporarily.63Burton’s Diary, i. 242, 261, 287. Hussey’s attitude towards the Humble Petition and Advice, however, is unclear, not least because he was away from Westminster during some of the debates.64CJ vii. 504a. Hussey twice acted as a teller during the first session, once in an unsuccessful attempt to block a grant of Scottish lands to George Monck*, and again in June 1657, in favour of an unsuccessful motion to excuse Lambarde Godfrey* from serving on a new commission to improve the revenue from customs and excise.65CJ vii. 492a, 576a.

Hussey probably died between the two sessions of the 1656 Parliament. He began to draft his will in July 1654, amended it in February 1655, and added a further codicil on 14 December 1657; it was proved on 25 February 1658. Hussey, who asked to be buried ‘without pomp or extraordinary cost’, left property in Hampshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Shropshire as well as a house in St Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster. He left to his widow Catherine, who was conceivably the mother of most or all of his children, an annuity of £400; to his four daughters, all under 18 in 1654, portions of £3,000 each; and to his two sons Thomas and William, both under 15 in 1654 but admitted to Gray’s Inn two years previously, generous provision for their education and establishment.66PROB11/273/585; G. Inn Admiss. i. 260.; ‘Maximilian Petty’, Oxford DNB. In striking testament to Hussey’s complex and obscure political stance, the executors, who included conservatives Hawles, Robert Mason and Giles Hungerford, chose one Maximilian Petty – presumably the (former) Leveller of that name who had been managing Henry Marten’s estates – to administer those of Thomas Hussey the younger, centred on Moulsford in Berkshire: Thomas junior acknowledged this work in leaving Petty property worth £100 a year in his will made in April and proved in July 1661.67Berks. RO, D/ER/F61; PROB11/304/576, 580. William Hussey succeeded to his brother’s estate, but did not follow his father into Parliament. This service was fufilled by his stepfather Robert Mason, knighted in 1661, who sat for Winchester in the later 1660s, while Giles Hungerford sat twice for Whitchurch.68HP Commons 1660-1690.