Tusser, Thomas

(?1524-1580)

   Born in Rivenhall, Essex, he was a chorister, firstly in the collegiate chapel of the castle of Wallingford, Berkshire, then at St. Paul's Cathedral. His education continued at Eton College, at King's College, and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, then for ten years he was musician in the service of William, 1st Baron Paget of Beaudesart (1505-1563), Secretary of State and Lord Privy Seal at Exeter Place, London. He married and settled as a farmer at Cattiwade, Suffolk, near the river Stour, where he wrote a Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie (1557). Although this poem of 48 chapters, in rhyming couplets, is about the country year, it contains many proverbs, advice to husbands and wives, and is full of humor and wise maxims on conduct in general. He had to seek refuge in Trinity Hall from the Great Plague of 1572-1573, and died at Chesterton, Cambridgeshire. Some of his other poems: "A Sonnet to the Lady Paget," "Certain table lessons," "Of the omnipotence of God, and debility of man," "Posies for thine own bed chamber," "The Authors Life," "The Winds," "Upon the Author's First Seven Years' Service."

   Sources: City of Westminster Manors and Estates: Bishop of Exeter's Inn (Essex House). (http://www.middlesexpast.net/wexeter.html). Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Elizabethan Lyrics. Norman Ault, ed. William Sloane Associates, 1949. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry by Thomas Tusser (Oxford Paperbacks) Oxford University Press, 1984. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The New Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse. Emrys Jones, ed. Oxford University Press, 1991. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).