Anthony Hussey (also written Huse, Hussie, etc.; – 1560) was an English merchant and lawyer who was President Judge of the High Court of Admiralty under King Henry VIII, before becoming Principal Registrar to the Archbishops of Canterbury from early in the term of Thomas Cranmer, through the restored Catholic primacy of Reginald Pole, and into the first months of Matthew Parker's incumbency, taking a formal part in the latter's consecration. The official registers of these leading figures of the English Reformation period were compiled by him. While sustaining this role, with that of Proctor of the Court of the Arches and other related ecclesiastical offices as a Notary public, he acted abroad as agent and factor for Nicholas Wotton (Dean of Canterbury and royal ambassador to the Emperor).
During the reign of Queen Mary I he sat twice in her parliaments, in 1553 and 1558.R.J.W. Swales, 'Hussey, Anthony (1496/97-1560), of London', in S.T. Bindoff (ed.), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1509–1558 (from Boydell and Brewer, 1982), History of Parliament Online . Having promoted the first expedition of the Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands (the "Muscovy Company") during the time of Edward VI, in Mary's Charter of 1554/55 he was named one of the original four Consuls of the company, and in 1556 succeeded Sebastian Cabot as the company's governor. He was also simultaneously Crown Agent and Governor of the English Merchants Adventurers in Antwerp from 1556 to 1558.J.G. Nichols (ed.), Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, chiefly from the Manuscripts of John Foxe, Camden Society LXXVII (1859), p. 216 (Google). His long witness of the Reformation came to completion in his official role in the electing and consecration of Matthew Parker as the first Reformist Archbishop of the Elizabethan religious settlement.Hussey was not in D.N.B. Various references for Hussey are listed in 'Hussey, Anthony' in T.F. Mayer and C.B. Walters, The Correspondence of Reginald Pole. 4: A Biographical Companion: the British Isles, St Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Ashgate Publishing, 2008), p. 291-93 (Google).
Early life Hussey was born in London in either 1496 or 1497, the son of John Hussey of Slinfold in West Sussex. He had a sister named Margaret, probably somewhat younger than him. He was the nephew of Henry Hussey, MP (died 1541/44),'Hussey, Henry (by 1495-1541/44), of Slinfold, Suss.', in S.T. Bindoff (ed.), The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558 (from Boydell and Brewer, 1982), History of Parliament Online. and cousin of Sir Henry Hussey, MP (died 1557) of Slinfold. Confirming this identity,Some internet sources have mistakenly supposed he was Anthony the son of Richard Hussey and Elizabeth Trentham of Shropshire, see 'Hussey of Adbrighton Hussey (etc.)' in G. Grazebrook and J.P. Rylands (eds), The Visitation of Shropshire taken in the year 1623, 2 vols, Harleian Society XXVIII-XXIX (1889), I, pp. 265-68, at p. 267 (Internet Archive). Anthony Hussey, Esquire, is named in the wills of Sir Henry (proved 1557) and of Henry's widow Dame Bridget (1558) (daughter of Sir Thomas Spring of Lavenham, Suffolk), in both cases as overseer, and Anthony's sons Laurence and William Hussey are also mentioned.W.D. Pink, 'Hussey of Slinfold, Sussex', Notes and Queries, 10th Ser. XII (3 July 1909), pp. 3-4 (Internet Archive). By a slip, Pink describes the will of Sir Henry Hussey (1557) as that of Sir John Hussey (p. 3, col. 2). Anthony may have attended Oxford University but, if so, he left no record of having obtained an academic degree there. Nonetheless, in 1525 he obtained the position of Notary public to the Diocese of London.
Marriage
By 1526 Anthony Hussey married Katharine, daughter of John Webbe (died 1523) and his wife Joan Morse, of Dedham, on the northern border of Essex.Will of John Webbe of Dedham (P.C.C. 1523, Bodfelde quire). John Webbe and his father Thomas were wealthy armigerous clothier merchants responsible for important work in the church at Dedham, including the splendid tower, and the substantial altar tomb raised by John for his father, who died in 1506.H.W. King, 'Historical evidence of the date of erection of certain church towers and of church restoration in Essex (etc.)' - continued, Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, New Series Volume I (Colchester 1878), pp. 116-26, at p. 124, note (Google).G.H. Rendall, 'Church of St Mary, Dedham' - continued, The Essex Review XXIX (1920), pp. 1 ff. Dedham's cloth industry, traded into the ports of the Baltic a hundred years previously, had brought prosperity, but this declined after the middle of the fifteenth century.R.H. Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300-1525 (Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 251-52 (Google). Katharine brought to the marriage lands at Abbot's Hall, Dedham (in the Stour valley, which issues at Harwich), and at Stanford-le-Hope (in southern Essex, beside Tilbury on the Thames). It was a lifelong marriage, by which they had three sons and a daughter. In July 1524 Edward Morce obtained licence to found a chantry at the altar of St Mary of Piety in Dedham church, for the good estate of the King and Queen Katherine, and for Thomas, Cardinal of York, and for the soul of John Webbe of Dedham, and to endow it with lands to the annual value of nine pounds.'546. Grants in July 1524', in J.S. Brewer (ed.), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Vol. IV Part I (Longman & Co./Trübner & Co., London 1870), p. 230 (Google).
Katharine Hussey's mother (Joan Webbe) held the small manor of Faites and Wades, in Dedham, Ardleigh and Lawford, between 1529 and 1537, though she lived for many years after,'Dedham: Manors and other estates', in J. Cooper (ed.), A History of the County of Essex, Vol. 10: Lexden Hundred (Part), including Dedham, Earls Colne and Wivenhoe (VCH, London 2001), pp. 165-69 (British History Online). making her will in 1564.Essex Record Office: Register copy of will of Dame Joan Webbe of Dedham. Archdeaconry of Middlesex (Essex and Herts division), Spruce register. Will made 22 March 1564, ref. D/AMR 1/20 (SEAX). This was directly adjacent to Langham, Essex, where the manor of Langham Hall (sometimes called "Dedham Hall"), an hereditament of the Earls of Suffolk, belonged successively to Queen Katherine of Aragon and Queen Jane Seymour, and then to Charles Brandon until 1538. From 1541 to 1557 it was held by Anne of Cleves in acknowledgement of her acquiescence in her separation from the King.'Langham: Manors and other estates', in J. Cooper (ed.), A History of the County of Essex, Vol. 10: Lexden Hundred (Part), including Dedham, Earls Colne and Wivenhoe (VCH, London 2001), pp. 248-51 (British History Online).
Wolsey's monasteries
In the first months of 1524/25 Hussey was with Thomas Cromwell and John Alen as three notaries public assisting John Alen LL.D., (Canon of Lincoln), commissary to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in Wolsey's early suppression of some of the smaller monasteries, including Blackmore Priory, Daventry Priory, Dodnash Priory, Little Horkesley Priory, Littlemore Priory, Snape Priory, Thoby Priory, Tiptree Priory, Wallingford Priory and Wix Priory.'1137. Wolsey's Colleges', in J.S. Brewer (ed.), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Vol. 4: 1524-1530 (London 1875), pp. 501-02 (British History Online). These closures, made under Wolsey's legatine powers, were the source of the income which he amassed to found Cardinal College in Oxford and The King's School, Ipswich. In 1530, at the time of Wolsey's fall, Hussey was one of sixteen men (including eight bishops and seven clergymen, beside himself) indicted for breaching laws against advocating Papal supremacy over the English church, for having abetted Wolsey in his role as Papal legate.King's Bench (Henry VIII), ref KB27 no. 1077 (Michaelmas 1530), dorse: View original at AALT, Image 5748 (2nd entry). These charges were pursued against them until Easter term of 1531, when the General Pardon released them from the proceedings.
He was called as a notary to Bishop John Stokesley's degradation of Richard Bayfield in St Paul's in November 1531.John Foxe, The Actes and Monuments (1563 edition), Book III, p. 541 (Acts and Monuments Online). Hussey's career subsequently followed paths of advancement in both ecclesiastical and mercantile/maritime law. In 1533 he, with certain London merchants, was granted the next right of presentation (advowson) to the benefice of Bradninch in Devon.'417. Grants in April 1533. 24 Henry VIII (no. 15)', in J. Gairdner (ed.), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Vol. 6: 1533 (London 1882), p. 189 (British History Online).
Notary, Proctor, Registrar, Judge After the records of the University of Cambridge had been detained from the university by Thomas Cromwell for a year (as it is said, "to wean them from their former Fondnesse to the Pope"), they were collected from London by the junior Proctor and the Beadle: the Regent House (the university's governing body) then deputed Anthony Hussey and Thomas Argall to receive such records as concerned the university.T. Fuller (M. Prickett and T. Wright, eds), The History of the University of Cambridge since the Conquest to the year 1634 (J. and J.J. Deighton, and T. Stevenson/Cambridge University Press 1840), p. 228, parag. 4 (Google). (Orig. 1655, Section VII, page 118). Early in the archiepiscopate of Thomas Cranmer, Hussey was appointed registrar to the ecclesiastical court of the Archbishop of Canterbury, under the immediate direction of Dr Richard Gwent, the Archbishop's Commissary. Gwent, it appears, was appointed before Cranmer's induction and witnessed his private protestation, probably at Thomas Cromwell's instance.N. P. Wiseman, "Review: Lingard's History of England", The Dublin Review, Vol. XII: February and May 1842 (C. Dolman, London 1842), pp. 295–362, at pp. 337–41 (Google). Hussey's place in Cranmer's official surroundings was similarly purposed. His name is associated with various Lambeth records of 1537,D.M. Owen, A Catalogue of Lambeth Manuscripts 889 to 901 (Lambeth Palace Library, London 1968), pp. 49, 132, 140, 141. when he was apparently acting as First Clerk of the Faculty Office,D.S. Chambers (ed.), Faculty Office Registers 1534-1549 (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1966), p. xxvij. and he was appointed successor to William Pottkyn as Principal Registrar in 1538.P. Ayris, 'Appendix II. Thomas Cranmer's Register', in P. Ayris and D. Selwyn (eds), Thomas Cranmer: Churchman and Scholar (Boydell Press, Woodbridge 1993), at p. 303 (Google).