Anthony Hussey, Esquire, ( – 1560) (also written Huse, Hussie, etc.) was an English merchant and lawyer who was President Judge of the High Court of Admiralty under Henry VIII, before becoming Principal Registrar to the Archbishops of Canterbury from early in the term of Archbishop Cranmer, through the restored Catholic primacy of Cardinal Pole, and into the first months of Archbishop 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 he sat twice in her parliaments, in 1553 and 1558. 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. 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.
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), and cousin of Sir Henry Hussey, MP (died 1557) of Slinfold. Confirming this identity, 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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, making her will in 1564. 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.