Notes from the Archives: The Papers of Arthur Hussey
"...he had been a most diligent student of the Wills in the Canterbury Probate Registry and of various MSS. in the Chapter Library." (Obituary, Arch. Cant. Vol. LIV, 1941, p. 75).
In the KAS Library Archive are two large boxes, box 8 and 13, brimming with yellowing, loose leaf notes. These are a small portion of the research notes made by Arthur Hussey of Wingham, a distinguished member of the KAS, who served as Vice President from 1927. He died on January 25th, 1941 at the age of seventy-nine, leaving a substantial legacy of articles published in Archaeologia Cantiana and elsewhere. His particular field of study was the Wills in the Canterbury Probate Registry and the Manuscripts in the Chapter Library. His most important work is regarded as being the East Kent portion of Testamenta Cantiana, published in 1907 in conjunction with Leland L. Duncan. He also compiled and edited Kent Chantries published as part of the Kent Records series in 1936, using the Certificate transcriptions of 1546 and 1548 made by Leland L. Duncan as the starting point.
On his death his Manuscript notes were donated to the KAS. Many of these notes are arranged in the filing cabinets in the Library in Maidstone Museum and are available for consultation. The notes in the Library and the notes in the archive are similar in layout and content. Arthur Hussey studied the history of families, places, and institutions, such as hospitals and churches. His note-taking approach is systematic and easy to follow. He started finding information from the earliest times and usually finishes by the 16th/17th centuries, although sometimes, as with lists of Vicars, he would continue to his own day. He would scour a selection of sources, but the most characteristic part of his notes are the huge numbers of abstracts of wills that he generated on individual families and families from certain locations. The abstracts of wills are always arranged alphabetically and usually accompanied by an index with references. A good example is a very extensive section on the Digges/Dygge family from Kent between the 14th to the 18th centuries with wills from many locations, but principally Canterbury, Newington, Barham and Sittingbourne. There is also a very extensive section of notes for a local history study of Preston, Elmstone and Stourmouth.
Hussey's notes provide an excellent starting point for anyone researching a locality or a family in Kent. Some of his notes, for instance the Abstracts of Herne Wills, are already readily available on the Society's webpage for family historians to peruse. Arthur Hussey was so thorough that he collated an enormous amount of material. It is harder to get to know Hussey the man and historian. The notes do not contain interpretive jottings or correspondence which would allow people to infer what questions he was considering and what conclusions he was making. It is a large, almost indigestibly so, mountain of facts. From time to time the content is enlivened by newspaper articles. There is an excellent section on St. Augustine, Brookland, Romney Marsh, with an article possibly written by Charles Igglesden, F.S.A., describing the Church, as well as an article describing a visit to the Church by the Kent Archaeological Society. The articles are both undated, but must be late 1890s or early 1900s. They are accompanied by faded photographs taken by a C. Stokes in 1897. I have also found myself fascinated by the magpie's nest of ephemera in the box. Hussey clearly never wasted a scrap of paper and wrote on the back of KCC Education leaflets, envelopes, adverts for local companies and inward investment schemes. These pieces of ephemera are in themselves a time capsule of society between ca.1890 to the 1930s and interesting in their own right.
The big surprise in these boxes was the discovery of nine notebooks by Arthur Hussey's colleague in the writing of Testamenta Cantiana, Leland L. Duncan (1862-1923). These notebooks are numbered 7-10 and 11-15 and contain transcripts of Wills from Rochester Diocese, the Southern and Middle sections. The whereabouts of these books have been unknown and their discovery will be welcomed by many interested parties.
Pernille Richards
