John Edwin Cussans


John Edwin Cussans was an English antiquary.

Life

Cussans was born in Plymouth 30 October 1837, the fifth child of Thomas Cussans, who had been a lieutenant in the Madras Horse Artillery, by his wife Matilda Ann. After education at North Hill School, Plymouth, he entered a commercial house, and he visited America and Russia on business.
After his marriage in 1863 he took up writing, working on heraldic and genealogical studies, living in north London. The preface of his History of Hertfordshire was dated from 4 Wyndham Crescent, Junction Road, London, on Christmas Day 1880. Cussans subsequently moved to 46 St. John's Park, Upper Holloway, where he died on 11 September 1899. From 1881 to 1897 Cussans had been secretary of the Anglo-Californian Bank in Austin Friars. He married, on 10 March 1863, Emma Prior, second surviving daughter of John Ward of Hackney, by whom he left eight children.

Works

His first work, The Grammar of Heraldry, with the Armorial Bearings of all the Landed Gentry in England prior to the Sixteenth Century, was followed in 1869 by Handbook of Heraldry... with Instructions for tracing Pedigrees and deciphering Manuscripts. He worked for fifteen years on his county history, A History of Hertfordshire, containing an account of the Descents of the various Manors, Pedigrees of Families, Antiquities, Local Customs, &c.. It supplemented the existing histories of Henry Chauncy and Robert Clutterbuck.