“Milo de Brai, father of Hugh Trussel, married c. 1070, Litheuil, Viscountess of Troyes; and c. 1064 founded Longport Abbey, Normandy. (Orderic Vital.) Guido Trussel was a distinguished Crusader 1096. (Ibid.) He was Lord of Montcheri and Seneschal of France.” - The Norman People. Osbert Trussel in 1165 was Lord of Billesley in Warwickshire, which he held of the Earl of Warwick. “From this Osbert is it that the several families of Trussed, viz. of Cublesdon and Acton-Trussell in Staffordshire; of Flore and Gayton in Northamptonshire: of Aylmesthorpe in Leicestershire; and of this and other places in Warwickshire are descended.” - Dugdale. His son William married Agnes, one of the three co-heiresses of Robert Fitz Otes of Locksley, whose inheritance was distributed to them in 1178. To him succeeded Richard, who was in arms against King John in the retinue of his suzerain the Earl; and another Richard, slain at Evesham on the Baron’s side. Billesley and his other lands thus became forfeited; but “William his brother went away with the estate,” and married the heiress of Cublesdon in Staffordshire, Rose Pantulf. Eyton makes her the wife of his elder brother. From him descended another William, pardoned in 1313 as an adherent of the Earl of Lancaster’s, who again found a wealthy wife, Maud de Mainwaring, dowered with the barony of Warmincham and other estates in Cheshire, and was the grandfather of a soldier of great renown in the French wars. This last Sir William received an annuity from the Black Prince for his gallantry at Poitiers; and after attending Edward III. in his campaigns to the end of his life, was retained by indenture to serve Richard II. in all his wars with forty men at arms, and appointed in 1378 Governor of Calais. He died the year following, leaving no son. His only daughter Katherine, who had married her kinsman Sir Alured Trussell, was already dead; and his granddaughter Elizabeth, afterwards the wife of Sir Baldwin de Freville, succeeded him, but died childless.

Sir Alured was the grandson, and, on the death of his elder brother, the representative of a man of some celebrity and rare ability, Sir William Trussell of Flore in Northamptonshire, descended from a younger son of the William Trussell that married Rose Pantulf. He it was that, “vice omnium de Terra Angliæ et totius Parliamenti procurator,” solemnly pronounced the deposition of Edward II. by the House of Commons. The captive King stood before him, humbly clad in the “plain black gown”of a penitent, to receive his sentence in the following words: “I, William Trussell, proctor of the Earls, Barons and others, having for this full and sufficient power, do render and give back to you, Edward, once King of England, the homage and fealty of the persons named in my procuracy; and acquit and discharge them thereof in the best manner that law and custom will give. And I now make protestation in their name that they will no longer be in your fealty and allegiance, nor claim to hold anything of you as King, but will account you hereafter as a private person, without any manner of royal dignity.” As Sir William concluded, the Steward of the Household, Sir Thomas Blount, broke his staff of office, as is customary at the funeral of a King; and the reign of Edward III. was assumed to have commenced.

But Trussell, as Dugdale tells us, “did abominate that cruell murther” which followed; and though his lands were seized upon as a rebel’s, he quickly obtained his pardon on making his submission, and was no sooner pardoned than employed by the new King. He was appointed his secretary, sent on an Embassy to Spain, and named Eschætor General S. of the Trent. Then followed, indeed, a period of trouble and disgrace under the hostile influence of Mortimer, during which he fled from the kingdom, as he had been forced to do once before by his old opponents the Despencers. But he did not long continue out of favour. In 1340 we find him Admiral of the Fleet from the mouth of the Thames westwards; two years later, on the occasion of a great expedition to France, in command of the whole fleet from the Thames to Berwick-upon-Tweed, and (according to Burke) summoned to parliament among the barons of the realm. To this, however, Banks takes exception, as in 1342 “the great council to be holden at Westminster is not called a parliament;”and further, “as his name is not again recited in any writs of summons, so that it cannot be inferred that any heritable barony was acquired.” Banks mentions an earlier writ of summons received in 1293 by Sir William Trussell, the husband of the Mainwaring heiress. But in this case, again, it was not repeated. None was evidently transmitted to his successors.

Sir Alured was, notwithstanding, “one of the most eminent men in Warwickshire,” serving several times as knight of the shire, and once as Sheriff. True, he had early lost his heiress-wife and his heiress-daughter, Elizabeth de Freville, and at the death of the latter the great Trussell estates in Cheshire and Staffordshire reverted to her great-aunt, Margaret, the wife of Sir Fulk de Pembruge. But Sir Alured, “by Fine levied 6 Ric. II. between him as Plaintiff and Sir Fulk and Margaret his wife Deforciant” obtained Billesley, with Morton-Bagot and Milveston, for himself and his heirs-male: and with these a second marriage had already provided him. He had at least seven generations of descendants; the last mentioned by Dugdale - perhaps the last of the family - sold Billesley in the early part of the seventeenth century.

The “fair Inheritance of the Trussels” did not long continue with the Pembruges. Margaret had no children; and when she died in 1402 it passed to her kinsman Sir William, son and heir of Laurence Trussell, who derived from Warin, the third son of the first Sir William that was summoned to parliament, by Maud de Mainwaring. This line, again, expired in 1499 with John Trussell, a child of two years old, whose sister and heiress, Elizabeth, married Edward de Vere, fifteenth Earl of Oxford, and Lord Chancellor of England.

An ancient Norman family, located, in the reign of Henry I., in Warwickshire. The baronage mentions, as of this family, Richard Trussel, who fell at the battle of Evesham, temp. Henry III. The O. French troussel signifies, says Cotgrave, "a fardle, bundle, or bunch," and this name may possibly have originated with a hunchback.

There is a parish called Trusley co. Derby. But see Tress.

Trussel: The name does not occur in England till the twelfth century.

Trussell: Trussell is the name of a distinguished Northamptonshire family of the 14th and 15th centuries, now rarely represented in the county, that bailed originally from Billesley, Warwickshire, in the 12th century (Wh.).