Thomas Tusser's Hundred Good Points of Husbandry - TUSSER, THOMAS (1524?-1580)

Agricultural writer and poet was born at Rivenhall, near Witham in Essex...

Born at Rivenhall, he attended Eton School under Nicholas Udall, went to Cambridge University, until sickness compelled him to leave Trinity Hall, and he then spent ten years at court in the service of William Paget before marrying and settling down to farm at Cattiwade in Suffolk on the Essex border. There he composed his Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie.

Robert Southey speaks of him as 'a good, honest, homely, useful, old rhymer'. His verses have some practical agricultural value, but it is surprising how many of his quaint expressions force themselves upon the memory, indeed many English proverbs can be traced back to Tusser.

It is usual to contrast the shrewdness of Tusser's maxims with the apparent ill-success of his life. He died a prisoner for debt. In Peacham's Minerva are the following lines:

  Tusser, they tell me when thou wert alive Thou, teaching thrift, thyself couldst never thrive: So, like the whetstone, many men are wont To sharpen others when themselves are blunt.

Fuller harps on the same theme in his Worthies of England: 'This stone of Sisyphus could gather no moss'. He spread his bread with all sorts of butter, yet none would stick thereon'; 'None being better at the theory or worse at the practice of husbandry'.28

What does verse number 23 tell us about useful boys and farming in the Tudor period? Why is this good advice in rhyme?

  Then forth with thy slings and thine arrows and bows,
till ridges be green, keep the corn from the crows,
A good boy abroad by the day star appear:
shall scare good man crow, that he dare not come near.

 
Hundred Good Points of Husbandry (1)
  
Hundred Good Points of Husbandry (2)