Thomas Tusser (c. 1524 – 3 May 1580) was an English poet and farmer, best known for his instructional poemFive Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, an expanded version of his original title,A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie, first published in 1557. For Tusser the garden was the domain of the housewife, and the 1562 text expands on this theme. Scholars also consider it a text of interest for its defence ofenclosures. It was among the best-selling poetry books of theElizabethan age.[1]
Tusser was born inRivenhall, Essex, about 1524, the son of William and Isabella Tusser. At a very early age he became achorister in St Nicholas' Collegiate Chapel inWallingford Castle,Wallingford, Oxfordshire. He appears to have been pressed for service in theKing's Chapel, the choristers of which were usually afterwards placed by the King in one of the Royal Foundations atOxford orCambridge but Tusser entered the choir ofSt. Paul's Cathedral, and from there went toEton College. He has left a quaint account of his privations at Wallingford, and of the severities ofNicholas Udall at Eton.[2]
He was elected toKing's College, Cambridge in 1543, a date which sets the earliest limit of his birth-year, as he would have been ineligible at nineteen. From King's College he moved toTrinity Hall, Cambridge.[3] On leaving Cambridge, he went to court in the service ofWilliam Paget, 1st Baron Paget of Beaudesart, as a musician. After ten years of life at court, he married and settled as a farmer at Cattawade,Suffolk, near theRiver Stour.[2]
There he wroteA Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie, a long poem in rhyming couplets recording the country year. This work was first printed in London in 1557 by the publisherRichard Tottel, and was frequently reprinted. Tottel published an enlarged editionFive Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie in 1573. Tusser includes a homely mix of instructions and observations about farming and country customs which offer insight into life inTudor England, and his work records many terms andproverbs in print for the first time. In this work, he also famously presents ten characteristics the perfect cheese must have:
Not likeGehazi, i.e., dead white, like a leper
Not likeLot's wife, all salt
Not likeArgus, full of eyes
Not like Tom Piper, "hoven and puffed"
Not likeCrispin, leathery
Not likeLazarus, poor
Not likeEsau, hairy
Not likeMary Magdalene, full of whey or maudlin
Not like theGentiles, full of maggots
Not like aBishop, made of burnt milk[4]
He never remained long in one place. For the sake of his wife's health he removed toIpswich. After her death he married again and farmed for some time atWest Dereham in Norfolk. He then became a singing man inNorwich Cathedral, where he found a good patron in the Dean,John Salisbury.[2]
Five Hundred Points contains these rhyming couplets:
Swéete April showers,
Doo spring Maie flowers.[5]
as well as
At Christmas play and make good cheere,
for Christmas comes but once a yeere.[6]
and
A foole and his monie be soone at debate,
which after with sorrow repents him too late.[7]
The latter is an early version of theproverbA fool and his money are soon parted.[8]
After another experiment in farming atFairstead, Essex, he moved once again to London, whence he was driven by the plague of 1572–1573 to find refuge at Trinity Hall, being matriculated as a servant of the college in 1573. At the time of his death he was in possession of a small estate atChesterton, near Cambridge, and his will proves that he was not, as has sometimes been stated, in poverty of any kind, but had in some measure the thrift he preached.Thomas Fuller says he "traded at large in oxen, sheep, dairies, grain of all kinds, to no profit"; that he "spread his bread with all sorts of butter, yet none would stick thereon."[9]
Tusser died on 3 May 1580 at the age of about 55. An erroneous inscription atManningtree, Essex, asserts that he was 65 years old.
According toJohn Stow'sSurvey of London, Cheape Ward, Thomas Tusser was buried in the now lost church ofSt Mildred in the Poultry.[10] The inscription on his tomb there was as follows:
"Here Thomas Tusser, clad in earth, doth lie,
That sometime made the pointes of Husbandrie;
By him then learne thou maiest; here learne we must,
When all is done, we sleepe, and turne to dust:
And yet, through Christ, to Heaven we hope to goe;
Who reades his bookes, shall find his faith was so."
Stow's editor[11] adds the following epigram on Tusser from a volume calledThe More the Merrier (1608), by 'H. P.':
Ad Tusserum
"Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive,
Thou, teaching thrift, thyselfe couldst never thrive.
So, like the whetstone, many men are wont
To sharpen others, when themselves are blunt."
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Tusser, Thomas".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 27 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 488.
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