ANSLAY, BRIAN (fl. 1521), yeoman of the wine cellar to Henry VIII, translated the 'Tresor de la Cité des Dames' of Christine de Pise, under the title of the 'Boke of the Cyte of Ladies,' 1521. In a preliminary copy of verses the printer, Henry Pepwell, states that the translation was published at the instance of the Earl of Kent. The book consists of a number of short stories about famous women, much of the material being drawn from Boccaccio. There are some notices of Anslay in 'Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII' (art. 4231, 23, et seq.). A ‘Bryan Anslye, Esquier, late of Lee, in the county of Kent … served Qveene Elizabeth as one of ye band of Gentlemen Pencioners to her Matie the space of XXXtye yeares;’ and, dying 10 July 1604, was buried in the church of Lee, Kent, where a memorial slab, still legible, gives an account of him and his family. He was probably the son of Anslay the translator.
[Ellis's Historical Sketches, ii. 20; Athenæum for 2 Sept. 1876, where the inscription on the younger Anslay is printed in full, by Mr. J. W. Hales, who has reprinted it in his Essays and Notes on Shakespeare, p. 271.]
ANSON, GEORGE, Lord Anson (1697–1762), admiral of the fleet, was the second son of William Anson, of Shugborough, in the parish of Colwich, in Staffordshire, and was born there on 23 April 1697; his mother Isabella, daughter of Charles Carrier, of Wirkworth, in Derbyshire, was sister of Janet, the wife of Thomas Parker, afterwards Lord Parker and Earl of Macclesfield, and in 1718 created lord chancellor. On 2 Feb. 1711-12, Anson entered on board the Ruby, commanded by Captain Peter Chamberlen, as a volunteer, and on 27 March followed Captain Chamberlen to the Monmouth, where he remained till 27 June 1713, when he was discharged, as the ship was about to pay off. All attempts to trace his service during the next three years have been unsuccessful: but in May 1716 he was serving as midshipman or supernumerary in the fleet bound for the Baltic under Sir John Norris, who wrote from the Nore on 17 May that a lieutenant of the Hampshire had requested to be put on half-pay, and that he intended 'to commission Mr. George Anson, who is cousin to my Lord Parker.' In 1716 the most brilliant merit conceivable was all the more brilliant in the nephew of the lord chief justice.
He continued in the Hampshire till she paid off in December 1717, and in March 1718 was appointed second lieutenant of the Montagu, and was in her in the action off Cape Passaro on 31 July 1718. On 2 Oct. 1719, he was transferred to the Barfleur, Sir George Byug's flagship; and in June 1722 was made a commander, and appointed to the Weasel sloop, which was employed in the North Sea against the Dutch smugglers. In February 1723-4, he was advanced to the rank of captain, appointed to the Scarborough frigate, and sent out to South Carolina, with instructions to protect the coast and the commerce against pirates and Spanish cruisers, which were already practising the system of annoyance which ultimately led to the war of 1739. They did not at that time, however, menace the Carolina coast; and the general nature of Anson's service was to cruise to and from the Bahamas. On one occasion he had intelligence of a Spanish boat which had been molesting some of the English traders, but proceeding to look for her, he touched at Providence, where he learned that she had been already taken 'by a sloop bound for Jamaica, who carried her there, where the people were condemned for pirating and hanged' (Anson to Burchett, 16 Jan. 1724-5). A few months later he received orders to act against the Spaniards wherever he met them, but the little war of 1726 passed over without any incident in Anson's career. In July 1728, on the death of Captain Morris of the Garland, he moved into that ship, and sent home the Scarborough, which was badly in want of refitting: but he himself was kept out two years longer, and did not return to England till July 1730. His long service on the coast of Carolina, however useful, was in no way brilliant; but he would seem to have been popular with the colonists, who still preserve his memory embalmed in the name of Anson county; and a Carolina lady, writing to her sister in London, could say nothing worse of him than that it was 'averred' he loved his bottle, and was far from being a woman-hater; whilst, on the other hand, he was handsome, good-natured, polite, well bred, generous, and humane; passionately fond of music, and 'so old-fashioned as to make some profession of religion' (Barrow's Life, 14).
In 1731 he commanded the Diamond frigate
