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 survived him, he had three sons, Thomas, John and Edmond, and one daughter Mary.