Traitor

Vagabonds in the Sixteenth Century

The word ‘vagabond’ conjures up an image of romance and freedom on the open road, but the life of such people in the sixteenth century was anything but romantic.

They were the dispossessed of the age. They had no land, no welfare and were driven on from town to town. When apprehended, they could face the whip, mutilation or death by hanging.

If the Elizabethan historian William Harrison is to be believed, then the vagabonds of England were subjected to virtual genocide during the reign of Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII.

In his Description of Britain, Harrison wrote in 1577 that Henry ‘did hang up three score and twelve thousand of them in his time’. So, out of a population of probably no more than 3 million, he executed 72,000 vagabonds (the equivalent for today’s population would be about 1.5 million).

Harrison said that Henry’s brutality seemed to terrify the vagabonds into submission, but that since the king’s death their numbers had greatly increased and there were now over 10,000 roaming the land and they had become so well organised that they had their own social structure and cant (some of which has survived in common usage, as you will see from the short lexicon below).

Yet Harrison clearly had no time for able-bodied vagabonds. He said: ‘They are all thieves and caterpillars in the commonwealth and, by the word of God, not permitted to eat since they do but lick the sweat from the true labourers’ brows.’

Facing such hostility, the vagabonds sought protection in numbers, forming themselves into large bands. This, of course, only served to make them seem more menacing and they came to be seen as a great social nuisance by the burgesses of towns and by the government. In London, they would be rounded up and thrown into Bridewell for whipping and forced labour.

Respectable townsfolk were both afraid of them – and fascinated by their lifestyle, much in the way we now find old-time pirates glamorous.

In 1565, the printer and writer John Awdeley brought out a small volume entitled The Fraternitye of Vacabondes, which was so popular that it was immediately reprinted – and then brought out again ten years later. His book was followed by Thomas Harman’s equally famous Caveat, published in 1567.

Both men claimed to have talked extensively with vagabonds to obtain their information, and there are great similarities between their accounts.

A Vagabond Who’s Who

This is the hierarchy of the vagabond bands, as outlined by Awdeley (and modernised and shortened by this author):

Upright Man: One that goes with a staff. He has so much authority that meeting with any of his profession he may call them to account and command a share of all that they have gained. And if he do them wrong, they have no remedy against him, even though he beats them. He may also command any of their women, which they call doxies, to serve his turn.

Curtall: Much like an upright man, but his authority is not so great.

Kitchen co: an idle, renegade boy.

Kitchen mort: A girl. She is brought at her full age to the Upright Man to be broken, and so she is called a doxy, until she comes to the honour of an Altham [the wife of a Curtall].

Abraham Man: He walks bare-armed and bare-legged, and feigns himself mad and calls himself Poor Tom.

Ruffler: Carries a weapon and seeks work, saying he has served as a soldier in the wars. But his main trade is robbing poor wayfarers and market women.

Prigman: Steals clothes and poultry and carries them to the alehouse, which they call the boozing inn, and there sits playing at cards and dice until he spends all he has stolen.

Lackman: One that can read and write and sometimes speak Latin. He makes counterfeit licences [i.e., to prove he has permission to beg alms], which they call ‘gybes’.

Whipjack: He uses counterfeit licences to beg as though he were a mariner, but his chief trade is to rob booths at a fair, which they call ‘heaving of the booth’.

Frater: He goes with a licence to beg alms for a hospital and preys upon poor women.

Quire bird: One that came lately out of prison and goes to seek work in service. He is commonly a stealer of horses, which they term a Prigger of Palfreys.

Washman: Also called a palliard [one who wears a patched cloak]. He lies in the path, begging with lame or sore legs or arms, bitten with spickwort and sometimes with ratsbane.

Patriarch co: He makes marriages, until death do part the married couple, which happens like this: when they come to a dead horse or any dead cattle, then they shake hands and so depart.