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Thomas
Tusser (1524? – 1580) was an English author, poet, musician
and farmer, best known for his instructional poem One
Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, published in 1557,
and for the oft-repeated proverb, "A fool and his money
are soon parted." He was born in Rivenhall, Essex, in
around 1524, the son of William Tusser and Isabella
(daughter of Thomas Smith of Rivenhall.
At a very
early age he became He was placed in service in St Nicholas'
collegiate chapel at Wallingford Castle, Wallingford,
Oxfordshire as a singing-boy. He was "impressed"
in service in the King's Chapel as a singing-boy, the
choristers of which were usually afterwards placed by
the king in one of the royal foundations at Oxford or
Cambridge. But Tusser entered the choir of St. Paul's
Cathedral, and from there went to Eton College. He has
left an account of his privations at Wallingford, and
of the severities of Nicholas Udall (the author of Ralph
Roister Doister) at Eton.
He was elected
to King's College, Cambridge, in 1543, a date which
has fixed the earliest limit of his birth-year, as he
would have been ineligible at nineteen. From King's
College he moved to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Illness
forced to leave off his studies and on leaving Cambridge
went to court in the service of William, 1st Baron Paget
of Beaudesart, as a musician.
After ten years
of life at court, he married and settled as a farmer
at Cattiwade (or Ratwade now Cattawade), nr. Brantham
Suffolk, on the river Stour. There he wrote A 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 publisher Richard Tottel, and was
frequently reprinted. Tottel published an enlarged edition
Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie in 1573. Tusser
includes a homely mix of instructions and observations
about farming and country customs which offer a fascinating
insight into life in Tudor England, and his work records
many terms and proverbs in print for the first time.
He never remained
long in one place. For his wife's health he removed
to Ipswich. After her death he married again, and farmed
for some time at West Dereham. He then became a singing
man in Norwich Cathedral, where he found a good patron
in the dean, John Salisbury. For a while he farmed the
tithes of the parish of Fairstead, 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
at Chesterton, Cambridgeshire, 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." His will included a Virginal an
expensive keyboard instrument.
He died on
3 May 1580 and was buried in the church of St Mildred
in the Poultry, London where a monument is inscribed
to commemorate his "Pointes of Good Husbandrie".
An inscription at Manningtree, Essex, asserts that a
Thomas Tusser was sixty-five years old at his death.
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Here
is the text of the book - "500 good points of Husbandrie".
1573- by month.
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