Anne Hussey

Anne Hussey is a kinswoman of Margaret Pole and a former fellow servant of Princess Mary Tudor. Her loyalty is expressed through the ordinary language of service: even as the court insists that Mary be denied her status, Hussey continues to call her a princess. That habitual courtesy becomes a quiet act of defiance, and eventually part of the case against her.

Service to Princess Mary

Hussey had served Princess Mary alongside Margaret Pole. At Beaulieu, where Pole’s household continues to honor Mary’s status despite the king’s demands, the princess is still addressed as Her Grace. The household’s practice exists amid broader local support: country people bring food and Christmas gifts, and nearby churches pray for Mary and her mother. Within this setting, Hussey is particularly bold about using Mary’s true title. When someone remarks on her persistence, she says she is forty-three and too old to change her ways.

Her defiance is presented not as a new political gesture but as an established habit of service. The distinction does not protect her: in a climate where forms of address can be treated as evidence of disobedience, what Hussey regards as familiar and proper becomes politically legible as resistance.

Candor at Court

Hussey also speaks with irreverence about the royal family’s divisions. After the birth of Anne Boleyn’s child, she remarks that it is fortunate Mary Tudor Brandon was not present to see it, since she would never have curtseyed to a Boleyn baby. The comment recalls the absent king’s sister as someone who would not have performed the deference the new royal circumstances demanded. It is a sharp, domestic remark, but its bluntness belongs to the same pattern as Hussey’s refusal to stop calling Mary a princess: she does not readily adapt her speech to the court’s revised account of legitimacy and rank.

Arrest and Release

As the oath campaign spreads through churches and courtrooms, Hussey is arrested. The authorities charge her with sending letters and small gifts to Princess Mary at Hatfield Palace. She confesses that she had also called Mary Princess Mary, explaining that she did so from habit rather than intent. She is made to beg forgiveness and spends long months in the Tower of London before being released.

The charges join private loyalty to public language: correspondence and gifts maintain a connection with Mary, while the familiar title refuses the official renaming imposed on her. Hussey’s imprisonment shows the personal cost of sustaining that connection. Her eventual release ends her confinement, but the account preserves the contrast between her explanation of an old habit and the authorities’ decision to treat it as an offense.