Liographlical Sketch of the Author. XV 
through the influence of his patron, Sir Robert Southwell,! 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 Fair- 
sted, 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 1572.2 The plague, how- 
ever, breaking out,® 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 sth, 
1573." 
His death, as appears from a paper read before the London and 
Middlesex Archeological Society, took place in London, on the 
3rd May, 1580, in the fifty-fifth or fifty-sixth year of his age. His 
will,’ 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, 
1 Tusser is generally supposed to have addressed Sir Richard Southwell as 
“Thou worthy wight, thou famous knight,” but it is clear that Sir Robert South- 
well is intended, for in 1573 Tusser alludes to Southwell’s death as having occurred 
some years before, but Sir Richard Southwell did not die till 1579, while Sir 
Robert died twenty years previously.—Cooper, Ath. Cant. 
2 His second son, Edmond, was baptized at St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, 13th March, 
1572-3: 
3 The plague to which Tusser evidently alludes (in stanza 31 of Autobio- ~ 
gaphy), according to Maitland, raged in London in 1573 and 1574. 
4 Cooper, Ath. Cantab, vol. i. p. 422. 
BRSEe pei xXIx. 
