Tusser, THOMAS, in Fuller's phrase, 'successively a musician, schoolmaster, serving-man, husbandman, grazier, poet, more skilful in all than thriving in any vocation,' was born at Rivenhall in Essex about 1527. After serving as a chorister in the chapel of Wallingford Castle, and at St Paul's, he went to Eton, where he was whipped by Udall, was elected in 1543 to a scholarship at King's College, Cambridge, but soon afterwards removed to Trinity Hall, where he tells us that he dwelt trimly and passed his time joyfully with a number of learned men. After a residence at court as a retainer of Lord Paget, he married and settled as a farmer at Cattiwade, near East Bergholt, in Suffolk, where he compiled his famous work, A Hundredth Good Pointes of Husbandrie (1557). Quarrelling with his landlord, Tusser left his farm, and became a lay clerk in Norwich Cathedral, which post he again gave up for a farmer's life. He died in London about April 1580, and was buried in the church of St Mildred in the Poultry. Tottel published in 1573 an edition of his book enlarged into Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, with a curious metrical autobiography. Warton says well that this old English Georgic has much more of the simplicity of Hesiod than of the elegance of Virgil, still it reflects in a pleasing manner the simpler virtues of the good old times.
Editions are by Dr W. Mavor (1812), Mr Arber (1873), and the English Dialect Society (1879).