Falkiner — Parliament of Ireland under Tudor Sovereigns. 535 



SiK Thomas Cusake. 



The two earliest Speakers of the Irish House of Commons whose 

 names have come down to ns were respectively representative of the 

 territorial aristocracy of the Pale and of the mercantile or professional 

 classes of the City of Duhlin. 



Sir Thomas Cusake sprang from a stock which, though not en- 

 nobled, was among the most ancient of the families of the Pale — the 

 Cusacks of Cosyneston, or Cussington, in Meath. It had become 

 connected by marriage with more than one of the oldest houses of 

 that county, and had acquired so much property as justified Sir 

 Anthony St. Leger in describing the Speaker as *'a gentilman of the 

 best possessions of any of his degre in the Englishe Paale." Cusake's 

 mother appears to have been a Wesley, and his daughter married 

 Sir Henry Colley; so that, if the pedigree given by Sir Bernard Burke 

 may be relied on, the Duke of Wellington was directly descended 

 from the first Speaker of the Assembly of which Arthur Wellesley 

 was one of the youngest and latest members. 



I^othing is known of Cusake's early professional career, but there 

 are many evidences of his success in attaining its prizes. In 1535 he 

 first received important preferment, being appointed a Judge of the 

 Common Pleas. But he held this office for a very short time, his 

 patent being revoked on his nomination a year later to the Chancellor- 

 ship of the Exchequer. His tenure of that office in 1536-7 renders 

 it certain that Cusake was a member of the House of Commons in 

 Lord Leonard Grey's Parliament ; and it is highly probable, though 

 the fact cannot be demonstrated, that he had his first experience of 

 the Speakership in that Parliament. Cusake's election to the chair 

 in St. Leger's Parliament took place on June 18, 1541, immediately- 

 after the formal opening of the Session by the Deputy. We have no 

 record of his conduct in the chair. But at the end of his first Session 

 he was despatched to England to report its proceedings to Henry YIII., 

 St. Leger commending him to his sovereign as *' Speaker of your 

 Parliament here, who hathe taken greate paynes in setting forth of 

 your Highnes causis." That he acquitted himself on this mission to 

 the satisfaction of the King and his advisers appears by the encomium 

 passed upon him in Henry's letter to the Deputy, in which the 

 Speaker, who was charged with the bringing over of the Acts approved 

 of by the English Privy Council for submission at the next Session of 

 Parliament, is commended as ''a man of wit, scrvyce and good. 



