himself claims to have been of gentle birth, but the family cannot be traced back further than to his grandfather. The date of Tusser's birth is uncertain. Dr. Mavor places it in 1515, on very slender grounds. This date is, however, supported by the entry in the register of the church of St. Mildred, which makes Tusser about sixty-four at his death, and the tablet in the church at Manningtree, which makes him sixty-five. If we accept the tradition referred to by R. B. Gardiner (Admission Reg. of St. Paul's School, p. 463), that he was at St. Paul's School when Lily was headmaster, we should have to place the date of his birth even a few years earlier. As, however, Tusser was elected to King's College, Cambridge, in 1543, and as he would have been ineligible at the age of nineteen, the date of his birth is more probably about 1524.
He was the fourth son of William Tusser and of Isabella, a daughter of Thomas Smith of Rivenhall (Visitations of Essex, 1558, 1612, Harl. Soc. 1878, xiii. 117, 304–5). At an early age he was sent as a chorister to ‘Wallingford College,’ i.e. the collegiate chapel of the castle of Wallingford in Berkshire, where, as would appear from his own account, he was ill-treated, ill-clothed, and ill-fed. He was hurried from one place to another ‘to serve the choir, now there, now here,’ by people who had license to press choristers for the royal service. At last, through the influence, it would appear, of some friends, he became a chorister in St. Paul's Cathedral, under John Redford [q. v.], organist and almoner, ‘an excellent musician.’ Hence he passed to Eton, where he studied under the famous Nicholas Udall [q. v.], of whose severity he complains in some well-known lines. Harwood (Alumni Etonenses, p. 160) erroneously gives his name as William, and the date of his entry as 1543.
After leaving Eton Tusser stayed for some time in London, and then went to Cambridge. Though he does not mention the fact in his autobiography, he was elected to King's College in 1543 (Hatcher, MSS. Catalog. Præpos. Soc. Schol. Coll. Regal. Cambr.) He removed to Trinity Hall, and has recorded the happy life he passed there among congenial companions. Sickness compelled him to leave the university, and he joined the court as ‘servant’ to William Paget, first baron Paget of Beaudesert [q. v.], in the character of musician. This is conclusively proved by his own words in the dedication of his ‘Hundreth Points’ (1557) to that nobleman: ‘A care I had to serve that way,’ and he contrasts his life at court with his subsequent labours: ‘My music since hath been the plough.’ In the service of Lord Paget, who was ‘good to his servants,’ Tusser spent ten years, and then leaving the court—against the wishes, it would seem, of his patron—he married and settled down as a farmer at Cattiwade in Suffolk. Here he composed a ‘Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie.’ He also introduced into the neighbourhood the culture of barley. But his wife fell ill, and ‘could not more toil abide, so nigh sea side,’ so Tusser removed to Ipswich, where she died. About the name and the family of this first wife we know nothing; she left Tusser no children. Shortly after her death he married Amy, daughter of Edmund Moon, a marriage which it may be conjectured was not very successful, for Tusser laments the increased expenditure in which ‘a wife in youth’ involved him. By this wife he had three sons—Thomas, John, and Edmond—and one daughter, Mary.
Tusser then settled down at West Dereham in Norfolk; but in 1559 on the death there of his patron, Sir Robert Southwell [see under Southwell, Sir Richard], he removed to Norwich. Here he found a new protector in John Salisbury, dean of Norwich, through whose influence he got a living, probably as singing-man in the cathedral. Sickness, however, forced him again to migrate, this time to Fairsted in Essex, the tithes of which place he farmed for some time with little success. He then came to London, and his third son, Edmond, was baptised at St. Giles's, Cripplegate, on 13 March 1572–1573. But the plague which raged in London during 1573–4 forced Tusser to take refuge once again in Cambridge, where he matriculated as a servant of Trinity Hall, at what date is not certainly known. Cambridge would seem, from Tusser's own account, to have been his favourite residence, but he did not settle there, returning to London, where he died on 3 May 1580, a prisoner for debt in the Poultry counter. He was buried in the church of St. Mildred in the Poultry, and his epitaph is recorded by Stow (T. Milbourn, History of the Church of St. Mildred, 1872, p. 34; Stow, Survey of London, ed. Strype, bk. iii. p. 31).
The first germ of Tusser's work was the ‘Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie, imprinted by Richard Tottel, the third day of February, An. 1557.’ In the same year (1557) John Daye had license to print the ‘Hundreth Poyntes of Good Husserie’ (Register Stationers' Hall, A. fol. 23 a). In 1561 Thomas Hacher had license for a ‘dyalogue of wyvynge and thryvynge of Tusshers,’ a poem which was later incorporated
