Fiue hundred pointes of good husbandrie
110. Of two sortes of people 201
111. Of what force the deuill is if he be resisted 201
112. Eight of Saint Barnards verses in Latine and English 202
113. Of the Authors departing from the Court 204
114. The Authors life of his own penning 205
115. Of Fortune 216
A hundreth good pointes of husbandrie 219
Epistle to Lord Paget (1557) 220
_Concordia parvæ res crescunt_ 221
Augusts husbandrie 222
Septembers husbandrie 223
Octobers husbandrie 223
Nouembers husbandrie 224
Decembers husbandrie 225
On Christmas 225
Januaries husbandrie 226
Februarys husbandrie 228
Marches husbandrie 229
A digression to huswifrie 229
Aprils husbandrie 229
Mays husbandrie 230
Junes husbandrie 231
Julys husbandrie 232
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 235
GLOSSARY 319
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR.
Thomas Tusser, the Author of the "Five Hundred Points of Good
Husbandry," was born at Rivenhall,[1] near Kelvedon and Witham, in
the County of Essex, about the year 1525. The exact date of his birth
is uncertain, Warton[2] placing it in 1523, and Dr. Mavor in 1515, in
which he is supported by the inscription on the mural tablet erected to
the memory of Tusser in the church of Manningtree, where he is stated
to have been sixty-five years of age at the time of his death, which
took place in 1580.
Tusser, however, appears to have been elected to King's College,
Cambridge, in 1543, and as he would have become ineligible at nineteen,
his birth cannot have taken place earlier than 1523, and, most
probably, did not take place before 1524 or 1525.
It appears from the pedigree recorded by his nephew, John Tusser, the
son of his eldest brother Clement, at the Herald's Visitation of Essex
in 1570, which is the only record we have of the family, that "William
Tusser, the father, had five sons, Clement, Andrew, John, THOMAS,
and William, and four daughters; the marriages of the daughters are
set down, but no wives assigned to the sons, except to Clement, who
married Ursula Petts, and had issue John (who entered the pedigree),
Edward, and Jane, all three unmarried in 1570. The mother of THOMAS was
[Isabella], a daughter of Thomas Smith, of Rivenhall, in Essex, Esq.,
whose elder brother, Hugh, was ancestor of Smith, Lord Carrington (not
the present lord), sister of Sir Clement Smith, who married a sister of
the Protector Somerset, and first cousin of Sir John Smith, one of the
Barons of the Exchequer in the reign of Edward the Sixth. This match
with Smith I take to have been the chief foundation of gentility in the
Tussers, for I can find no traces of them or their arms before this
connexion."[3]
At a very early age, and notwithstanding his mother's tears and
entreaties, he was placed by his father as a singing-boy in the
Collegiate Chapel of the Castle of Wallingford, in Berkshire, which,
according to Warton,[4] consisted of a dean, six prebendaries, six
clerks, and four choristers, and was dissolved in 1549. He has himself
recorded[5] in his homely and quaint style the hardships which he had
to endure at this school, the bare robes, the college fare, the stale
bread, and the penny ale. The excellence of his voice appears to have
attracted the notice of some of those persons to whom at that time
"placards" or commissions were issued, authorizing them to impress
singing-boys for the King's Chapel.[6] Afterwards, by the good offices
of some friend, he was admitted into the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral,
where he acquired a considerable proficiency in music under the tuition
of John Redford, the organist and almoner, of whom he speaks in terms
of the highest praise. From St. Paul's he was sent to Eton, probably
in 1540 or 1541, "to learn the Latin phrase," and was for some time
a pupil of Nicholas Udall,[7] the author of "Roister Doister," who
appears to have been a second Orbilius, and by whom he was unmercifully
thrashed, receiving on one occasion, "for fault but small, or none at
all," no fewer than fifty-three stripes.
From Eton he passed on to Cambridge, and, as already stated, was
elected to King's College in 1543,[8] but afterwards removed to
Trinity Hall, of which he appears to have retained pleasant memories.
Being obliged by a long illness to discontinue his studies, he left
the University, and joined the Court as a retainer of William, Lord
Paget,[9] by whom he was probably employed as a musician, and of whom
he speaks in terms of praise and affection. In this manner the next ten
years were passed, and during this time his parents died. At the end of
this period, either from disgust at the vices of the Court, or finding,
to use his own words, "the Court began to frown," he retired into the
country, married,[10] and settled down as a farmer at Cattiwade,[11]
a hamlet in the parish of Brantham, in Suffolk, and on the borders of
Essex, where he composed his "Hundredth Good Pointes of Husbandrie,"
the first edition of which appeared in 1557.
In consequence of his wife's ill-health, he removed to Ipswich, "a
town of price, like Paradise." Here his wife died, and he married Amy,
daughter of Edmond Moon, and settled down at West Dereham in Norfolk.
On leaving this town, on account of the litigious character of his
neighbours, he became, probably through the influence of his patron,
Sir Robert Southwell,[12] a lay-clerk or singing-man in the Cathedral
at Norwich, the Dean of which, John Salisbury, appears to have
befriended him in every way.
From Norwich a painful illness caused him to remove to Fairsted, about
four miles from Witham, in Essex, the tithes of which parish he farmed;
becoming involved in "tithing strife," he left that village, and once
more returned to London, where we find him living in St. Giles's,
Cripplegate, in 1572.[13] The plague, however, breaking out,[14] he
returned to Cambridge, where he at last found "a resting plot" in his
favourite College, Trinity Hall, in the choir of which he appears to
have been employed, as he was matriculated as a servant of the College,
probably on May 5th, 1573.[15]
His death, as appears from a paper read before the London and Middlesex
Archæological Society, took place in London, on the 3rd May, 1580, in
the fifty-fifth or fifty-sixth year of his age. His will,[16] which is
dated 25th April of that year, was proved by his son on the 8th August
following.
He was buried in the Church of St. Mildred, in the Poultry, where was
formerly, according to Stow,[17] a monument to his memory, inscribed as
follows:
"Here Thomas Tusser, clad in earth doth lie,
That sometime made the Poyntes of Husbandrie;
By him then learne thou maist, here learne we must,
When all is done we sleepe and turne to dust,
And yet through Christ to heaven we hope to go,
Who reades his bookes, shall find his faith was so."
This inscription is perfectly in character with the man, and was
probably written by Tusser himself.
A mural tablet to his memory has been erected in Manningtree Church in
Essex, with the following inscription: "Sacred to the memory of Thomas
Tusser, Gent., born at Rivenhall, in Essex, and occupier of Braham
Hall[18] near this town, in the reign of King Edward the Sixth, where
he wrote his celebrated poetical treatise, entitled, _Five Hundred
Points of Good Husbandry, etc._ His writings show that he possessed a
truly Christian spirit, and his excellent maxims and observations on
rural affairs evince that he was far in advance of the age in which he
lived. He died in London in 1580, at the age of 65, and was interred in
the parish church of St. Mildred in the Poultry, where the following
epitaph, said to have been written by himself, recorded his memory;"
then follows a copy of the epitaph already given.
The statement in this inscription that he wrote the "Five Hundred
Points" at Braham Hall is incorrect; what he did write there was the
"One Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie," afterwards enlarged to "Five
Hundred Points."
It has been a very generally received opinion that Tusser died in great
poverty. Fuller, in his "Worthies of Essex," p. 334, says, "Whether
he bought or sold, he lost, and when a renter impoverished himself,
and never enriched his landlord; he spread his bread with all sorts of
butter; yet none could stick thereon." Warton also says:[19] "Without
a tincture of careless imprudence, or vicious extravagance, this
desultory character seems to have thrived in no vocation."
Again, in Peacham's "Minerva," a book of emblems printed in 1612, there
is a device of a whetstone and a scythe, with these lines:--
"They tell me, Tusser, when thou wert alive,
And hadst for profit turned every stone,
Where'er thou camest, thou could'st never thrive,
Though hereto best thou could'st counsel every one,
As it may in thy Husbandry appear;
Wherein afresh thou liv'st among us here.
So like thy self, a number more are wont,
To sharpen others with advice of wit,
When they themselves are like the whetstone blunt."[20]
These statements, however, appear to be scarcely borne out by Tusser's
will. By it we find that, at the time of his death, his brother William
owed him £330, a large sum in those days, and, further, that he was
the owner of two small copyhold and leasehold farms. Had he been so
unfortunate in all his undertakings, and been, as Fuller terms him, "a
stone which gathers no moss," Tusser would hardly have been able to
lend his brother such a sum of money. If, however, it be true that he
lived and died poor, we may, in all probability, attribute it to his
love of hospitality, a prominent feature in his character, as well as
to a roving and unsteady disposition.
Dr. Mavor states in the introduction to his edition of 1810, p. 11,
that "it may be inferred from his [Tusser's] own words, that his
happiness was not permanently promoted by this match [his second
marriage]. He seems to complain of the charges incident 'to a wife in
youth,' and had she transmitted her thoughts to posterity, we should
probably have heard some insinuations against an old husband." I fail,
however, to see sufficient grounds for this assertion: on the contrary,
Tusser's words on the only occasion on which he speaks of his second
wife seem to bear an opposite construction:--
"I chanced soon to find a Moon
of cheerful hue;
Which well a fine me thought did shine
And never change--(a thing most strange)
Yet kept in sight her course aright,
And compass true."----Chapt. 114, stanza 19.
It is true that in several passages he speaks of the increased
expenses and responsibilities incident to a married life, but only,
as it appears to me, with the view of deterring others from entering
into that state without carefully considering beforehand the cost and
probable consequences of such a step.
By his first wife Tusser had no children, but by the second, who