Thomas Cusack

Sir Thomas Cusack (also spelt Cusacke or Cusake) (1490–1571) was an Anglo-Irish judge and statesman of the sixteenth century, who held the offices of Master of the Rolls in Ireland, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland, and sat in the Irish House of Commons. He was one of the most trusted and dependable Crown servants of his time, although he led a somewhat turbulent private life. He was an ancestor of the Duke of Wellington. He is also memorable as the fourth of the six husbands of Jenet Sarsfield, who was his third wife. Background - the Cusack family He was the eldest son of John Cusack of Cussington, County Meath, and his first wife Alison de Wellesley, youngest daughter of Sir William de Wellesley of Dangan Castle and his wife Ismay Plunket of Killeen Castle, daughter of Sir Thomas Fitz-Christopher Plunket and his second wife Marian Cruise, or Cruys. Both his parents came from long-established families of the Pale; John was a cousin of an earlier Thomas Cusacke of Gerrardstown who was Attorney General for Ireland in 1480 and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland from 1490 to 1494. It is less clear if Thomas Cusack, Recorder of Dublin in 1487/8, belonged to the same family: Cusack was also a common enough name in Dublin. After Alison's death, John remarried Elinor Delahide of Moyglare Hall, County Kildare. The Cusack family of Cushinstown were descended from Walter de Cusack, son of Sir Andrew Cusack of Gerrardstown, a leading judge and soldier in the early fourteenth century. An earlier John Cusack is recorded at Cushinstown in the 1380s: his daughter married Peter Hussey, Baron Galtrim. Nicholas Cusack, Bishop of Kildare 1279-99, was another member of the family.