Elizabeth Hussey

Elizabeth Hussey (died c. 1606), later Elizabeth Crane and Elizabeth Carleton, was a religious activist with strong Puritan sympathies. She and her second husband, George Carleton, were prosecuted for involvement in the Marprelate controversy. The first of the anonymous Marprelate tracts, Martin's Epistle, was printed at her home in East Molesey, Surrey, in October 1588. Family Elizabeth Hussey, born near the end of the reign of Henry VIII, was the eldest daughter of Sir Robert Hussey (d. 1546) of Linwood, Lincolnshire, and his second wife, Jane Stydolf, the daughter of Thomas Stydolf of Surrey. Her father was a younger brother of John Hussey, 1st Baron Hussey of Sleaford. Her paternal grandparents were William Hussey (d. 1495), Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and Elizabeth Berkeley, the daughter of Thomas Berkeley of Wymondham, Leicestershire. Marriages and issue For many years Hussey was wrongly identified as the wife of the Puritan minister Nicholas Crane, who died in Newgate prison about 1588. However, in 1931 McCorkle established that Hussey's first husband was Anthony Crane (d. 16 August 1583), Elizabeth I's Cofferer and Master of the Household, who had Puritan sympathies. They had one daughter, Mary, who married Gerald Gore. Mary was buried in the parish of St Mary Aldermanbury on 1 March 1606. Her husband survived her, and in 1608 was recorded as 'holding the manor of East Molesey by virtue of letters patents granted to Anthony Crane'. He was buried 27 March 1614. After her first husband's death, Crane married George Carleton, stepfather of Sir Anthony Cope, 1st Baronet. Born in 1529, he was the second son of John Carleton of Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, and Brightwell Baldwin, Oxfordshire, by Joyce Welbeck, the daughter of John Welbeck of Oxon Hoath, Kent. There were no issue of the marriage.