Family and Education

b. by 1518, ?illegit. s. of Thomas Salusbury of Flint. ?m. Jane, da. of Robert Massey of Coddington, Cheshire.1

Offices Held

Commr. i.p.m., Cheshire and Flints. 1539, Flints. 1554, relief 1550, goods of churches and fraternities 1553; escheator 1547-8; mayor, Flint 1553; j.p. Flints. 1555.2

Biography

Thomas Salusbury cannot be placed with confidence in the prolific family of that name. All that is known for certain is that he was a nephew of John Vain Salusbury of Denbigh and thus a grandson of that uncle’s father Thomas Salusbury of Denbigh. His father could have been the Thomas Salusbury of Flint who died in December 1530 leaving as heir an 11 year-old daughter Agnes, for this Thomas had a bastard son and namesake whose illegitimacy could have arisen from the father’s divorce from Margaret Pennant alias Salusbury in or after 1529. It appears that the inheritance, consisting of manors and lands in and around Flint and at Hawarden, Flintshire, first passed to another daughter Margaret, who in May 1555 undertook to convey it to Agnes; in the following month it was valued preparatory to its delivery. If Agnes’s illegitimate brother was the Thomas Salusbury who three months later sold lands in the Wirral and at Hawarden to Sir John Salusbury he had evidently been well provided for, and on this foundation he could have built the career at Flint and in the shire which probably included election for the Flint Boroughs to the Parliament of 1545.3

The Thomas Salusbury then elected can hardly have been other than Robert Massey’s brother-in-law of that name, for Massey was to follow him at Flint in 1547 and later. It was with John Massey and George Salusbury (probably his colleague in 1545) that Salusbury was to be accused a few years later by William Aldersey of stealing from a barn at Coleshill £30 worth of tithe corn belonging to Aldersey as rector of Holywell; Salusbury was himself lessee of the commote of Coleshill, in which lay the town of Flint, and the corn may have been destined for the flour mill at Flint which at about this time Edward Stanley II charged Salusbury with erecting in breach of his own monopoly of grinding corn in the town.4

The last reference found to Salusbury is his mention in his uncle John Vain Salusbury’s will of January 1561.5

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: P. S. Edwards

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from first reference. NRA 14045, p. 2; Vis. Cheshire (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. lviii), 176.
• 2. LP Hen. VIII, xiv; CPR, 1553, pp. 363, 419; 1553-4 p. 303; C1/1433/47; 219/20/190; SP11/5/6.
• 3. Dwnn, Vis. Wales, ii. 331; C1/1473/7; LP Hen. VIII, xv; PCC 8 Loftes; NRA 14045, pp. 2, 25, 79.
• 4. St.Ch.3/6/64; Augmentations (Univ. Wales Bd. of Celtic Studies, Hist. and Law ser. xiii), 100; SC6/Hen. VIII, 5136, m. 2; C1/1069/1-2.
• 5. PCC 8 Loftes.