Powsey Family History

An accumulation of photographs and text gathered about the extended Powsey family. Click on the photos to enlarge.

Thursday, November 8, 2007














The Family Surname of Powsey
Compiled by Sonny Powsey


The History of the Anglo-Saxon surname Powsey reaches back into chronicles of the Saxon Race.

Other names with the same origin are Pewsey, Pewse, Pusie, Pusey, Posey, Pusye, Puseye, Peasey, Pesy, Pezey, Pizey, Pizzey, and Pizzie. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.
Powsey, So called from Old English peose, piosu meaning ‘island’, ‘low-lying land’. The origination is from the pre 7th Century "pisu", meaning pea. An island or low-lying land was where peas were grown. This in itself is unusual in that vegetables generally formed only a small part of the pre-medieval diet.

The Saxon Race originated from the Rhine Valley area of Europe. In early times they settled as far East as the river Elbe, as far south as the Danube and north into Denmark. They were a fair skinned people and first arrived in Briton in the 4th Century first settling in the county now know as Kent and spreading gradually north and westward. They were led by two brothers Hengist and Horsa.

Over the next 5oo years they pushed the Britons back into Cornwall Wales and the north of England. The North folk (Norfolk) and the South Folk (Suffolk) prospered under a number of Saxon Kings the last of which was Harold II who was defeated at Hastings in 1066 by William “the Conqueror” Duke of Normandy.

The Name Powsey is locational from a place originally called Pesei originally in the county of Berkshire but now in Oxfordshire in the Vale of the White Horse. Pesei is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086.

Folklore says the first recipient of the title to the estate, obtained it from the great King Canute (AD 995-1035) in person. The King is said to have had a residence at Cherbury Camp (Charney Basset) in the 11th century. It was to here that a group of opposing Saxons set out from Uffington Castle. William Pewse was a young shepherd boy who saw the men marching across the Downs and warned Canute and his army of the ensuing ambush by blowing his horn. He was rewarded with a commission in the King’s Army and all the land within the sound of his horn. King Canute had the instrument inscribed and otherwise embellished and returned it to William as proof of his gift. The inscription reads:

Kynge Knould gave Wyllyam Pewse thys horne to holde by thy Lande.

In or about the 12th century, probably under Norman influence the village name spelling adopted the (near) modern form of 'Puseye'.

After the Norman Conquest many Saxons fled from Norman oppression to the North of England and back across to northern Europe, those who remained were treated harshly by the Normans.
During the Middle Ages when migration for the purpose of job-seeking was common, people often took their former village name as a means of identification. Spellings varied often even within the same family from father to son. The first documentary recording of the name in English history is from the Domesday Book (1086) and is spelled Pewsey.

The Pusey’s Estate was under an ancient form of land tenure known as Cornage whereby the tenant had to undertake to keep on the alert and to be ready give warning in case of invasion by enemies. The original Pusey Horn, preserved by the family for centuries, is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum London.

The family died out in 1710. Several families changed their name to Pusey in order to inherit the estate. It was one of the last Pusey descendants, John Allen, who instigated the building of the present Pusey House in 1748. It is a beautiful five bay two-and-a-half-storey mansion with two-storey wings. Allen had come into the estate through his mother, who was a Pusey heiress, and he added the name of Pusey to his own. It was he who built the charming little parish church in the classical style which houses a fine marble monument to himself and his wife by the Dutch sculptor Scheemakers.

John Allen Pusey died childless and his sisters, Mrs. Brotherton and Miss Jane Pusey, inherited the estate jointly. The temple at the end of the herbaceous border is a memorial to Mrs. Brotherton and contains a statue of her and busts of the four cardinal virtues. It was erected as a memorial by her sister Jane Pusey who was to die unmarried, the last of the Puseys of Pusey.
Miss Jane Pusey looked around for an heir to her estates and chose the Hon. Philip Bouverie, a younger son of the 1st Viscount Folkestone and brother of the 1st Earl of Radnor.

Philip Bouverie's aunt had been the wife of John Allen Pusey but, as there were no children and as the Puseys seemed to have come to an end, the estate was bequeathed to Philip, who was not in any way related by blood to the Puseys, on the understanding that he would assume their name and arms which he did.

His mother, Lady Folkestone, was a formidable woman and prevented him from marrying when a young man. She lived with him at Pusey where he carried out many experiments in industrial farming including installing the first reaping machine. He was a founder of the Royal Agricultural Society. On his mother's death he married, at the age of fifty-two, a young widow and had in all nine children.

His second son, born on August 22nd 1800, was the Rev. Dr. Edward Bouverie-Pusey D.D., Canon of Christ Church and Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford - a distinguished scholar. But he was to become more than that. His name became synonymous with the Oxford Movement and the extraordinary upheaval in religious thinking which occurred during the 19th century. Of all the Tractarians - Newman, Froude, Keble and the rest, he alone gave his name to a group - the Puseyites - who, though retaining their original enthusiasm for a return to catholic principles strove to prevent others from following his friend and mentor John Henry Newman on the road to Rome.

Edward was educated at Eton and Christ Church. His mother, Lady Lucy Bouverie-Pusey, was a relic of the 18th century - her speech and her habits were a hangover from that time and she was one of the last to use a sedan chair in London. Pusey and its estate had considerable effect upon the young Edward. Geoffrey Faber in his Oxford Apostles wrote of the Georgian house...

…'standing where manor house had followed manor-house for a thousand years, looking over water and trees and the miles of Pusey land to the unchanging outline of the downs, house and church and tiny village keeping company together as they had done for centuries - all this spoke to the boy of a permanent, immutable yet gracious and living order, the soul of which was the living mystery of a religion once and for ever revealed.'

The Land surrounding the Pusey estate today, perhaps even more, exudes this feeling.

In 1822 Edward was elected a Fellow of Oriel and so came into contact with Newman and Keble. He worked with these two on the famous 'Tracts for the Times' and was to become leader of the Oxford Movement. Although it was feared that he might follow Newman to Rome, and although he was accused at one point of heresy, he never wavered in his loyalty to the basic tenets of Anglicanism.

Later he pressed for unity with Rome, but the Vatican itself prevented any move towards this end. Up to his death in 1882 he consistently maintained that the true doctrines of the Church of England were enshrined in the works of the early church fathers and the neglected 17th century Anglican divines.

After his death Pusey House was founded in Oxford to continue his work and to house his library. His portrait and surplice are preserved in Pusey Church.

On the death of Phillip Bouverie-Pusey, the estate was inherited by his eldest son also Phillip and Edward's elder brother. Philip had two children, Sidney Bouverie-Pusey who inherited Pusey and Clara who was married to Captain Francis Fletcher. Sidney died childless and Pusey went to his nephew Philip Francis Fletcher who adopted the name and arms of Bouverie-Pusey.
The estate was sold in 1935 to the the Hornby family who, by a curious and happy coincidence, have as their crest a horn similar to that owned by the Puseys and which is carved on the marble chimneypiece in the entrance hall of the house.

Pusey House is a private house. The gardens are no longer open to the public. It was last offered for sale in 1998

The Pusey Coat of Arms was granted prior to 1710, this being a red field, with three silver bars, and a crest of a wild cat.

Related early settlers in the New World include:

Elizabeth Pusie who settled in Virginia 1656
Caleb Pusey and John Pusey settled in Pennsylvania 1682.

Modern descendants:

Nathan Marsh Pusey Ph.D. President of Harvard University 1953-1956.
Link to Map of Pusey, Farringdon, Oxfordshire England.

Compiled by Neil Sonny Powsey. Nov 2007.




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