(French-Teut.) belonging to Bussy or Boissy (Normandy) = the Little Wood [v. under Buss1 and + the French diminutive suff -y (for -et] William de Bussy.—Hundred Rolls Bussy and Boissy are among the com­monest French place-names.

(French) Thicket, Woody Place [Old French bus (mod. bois), O.H.Ger. busc, a bush, thicket, wood: -y repr. the Latin 'plantation’ suffix -et-urn]

(Bussy, as Leland gives it) from Buci, in Normandy. Robert de Buci held a great barony in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire in 1086 (Domesday): but left no heir save a daughter, married to Ralph Basset, Jus­ticiary of England under Henry I. (Mon. ii. 190). Collateral branches were not, however, wanting; for, in the same reign, William Jordan, and Roger de Buyssy witness Walter Espec’s foundation charter to Kirkham Priory. William was Espec’s brother-in-law, the husband of Hawise, the eldest of the three sisters who became his co-heiresses; and their son, Jordan de Bussi, is mentioned in the time of Stephen, when he held his uncle Walter Espec’s castle of Werke, “and gallantly repulsed the attack of William Fitz Duncan, King of Scots.” Of his descendants I am unable to find any account, except that they held of Mowbray in the thirteenth century.—The Norman People. Dugdale mentions Roesia, daughter of Ralph FitzGilbert, and widow of William de Bussi, who re-married John de Buisli, temp. King John. Another William de Bussy occurs in Yorkshire about the year 1272.—Rotul. Hundred.

The first Jordan de Bussy, called, in the pedigree, the son of Lambert, founded a great Lincolnshire house, that lasted till the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign. There exists no county history to blazon their deeds of arms or count up their forfeitures: we are not informed on which side they fought during the Barons’ War, or whether they wore the colours of York or Lancaster. They intermarried with the Paynells; with the heiress of Nevill of Scotton; and with a co-heir of John de Dive, whose mother was an Amundeville; but of the long line of knights one only stands out with any degree of individuality—Sir John, third of the name. He it was, who in the Parliament called together in Sep­tember 1397—a parliament “packed with royal partizans”—stood up in his place to impeach one of the King’s principal opponents. “Sir John Busshy accused Thomas de Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, of three-fold treason. To wit, I., granting the government of the realm, when he was Chancellor, to Thomas, Duke of Gloucester: II. under pretence of that commission, usurping Royal authority. By which usurpation, III. Sir Simon Burley and Sir James Barnes were traitorously murdered and put to death. Of which things,” said Busshy, “your Commons demand judgement, worthy of so high treason, to be terribly pronounced by you; and because the Archbishop is a man of great consanguinite, affinitie, power, and most politike wit, and cruell nature, require he may be put into safe custodie, until the first execution of his judgement.”

The Archbishop was accordingly banished the realm, but when, two years afterwards, he returned in triumph with the new King, Henry of Lancaster, he had not forgotten his former accuser in the Commons, and Sir John Bussy’s head fell on the block.

It has been said that an English family takes rank according to the number of its members that have been put to death for high treason: and it is not surprising to find Leland, about a century and a half later, speaking with veneration of this Sir John.

“The gentilmen communely caullid Busseyes cam with the Conqueror owt of Normandie.

“Bussey that was so greate in King Richard the 2. Dayes, and was behedid at Brightstow, had his principal Howse and Manor Place at Hougheham a 3. Myles from Granteham.

“Busse’s Wife that was behedid at Brightstow lyith at Howheham, and diverse of the Busses in the same Paroche Chirche.

“Bussey now alive is the V. or VI. in Descent from great Bussey that was behedid, and is the last Heir Male of this Howse.

“This Bussey’s Doughter and Heire is maried on the Sunne and Heire of Brightenel in Northamptonshir.”

The heiress’s husband was the uncle of the first Earl of Cardigan, Sir Edmund Brudenell of Dean, esteemed by Camden “an excellent improver and admirer of renowned antiquity.” Agnes Bussy brought him Thisselton in Rutlandshire, and her paternal seat of Hougham, both of which, according to Collins, “remained in the family, though she died issueless.” By another and more likely account, Hougham passed to her father’s sister Joan, the wife of Thomas Meeres, of Kirton in Holland.

A junior line, the Bussys of Haydor, near Sleaford, had branched off from the main stock three generations before, and died out about the beginning of the seventeenth century. There was also a yeoman family of this name seated at Leverton, near Boston, in the preceding century, “but there is no evidence to shew their connexion with the great house of Hougham and Haydor.”

Kirkham-Buci, in Sussex, belonged to the De Bucis, who held it from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, “and gave their name as a suffix, which has been ignorantly corrupted by sea."—Lower's Sussex. “Dom. Hugh de Buscy” occurs in the Hundred Rolls of 1272 as a landowner in Northumberland, Norfolk, Lincoln, Suffolk and Sussex; and may have been the father of Hugh de Bowcy, Sheriff of Surrey and Sussex in 1340, whose co-heirs were two daughters—Sybil, married to Sir John de Islebon j and Joan, married to Sir William de Fyfhide. “John de Islebon and Sybil renounced, in favour of Sir William and Joan, their claim to the right of ‘the coat of arms, crest, and helmet’ belonging to the late Hugh de Buci—a singular, though not unique, instance of this practice in heraldry during the Middle Ages.”—Ibid. In 1300, Sir Hugh de Busseye, of Lincoln, bore Argent, three bars Sable.