| Topic Name: |
Swagger Off the Plank |
| Message Name: |
Footnotes |
| Date Posted: |
01/05/2006 |
| In Reply To: |
The several disorders and degrees amongst our idle vagabonds.
1. Rufflers.
2. Uprightmen.
3. Hookers or anglers.
4. Rogues.
5. Wild rogues.
6. Priggers or pransers.
7. Palliards.
8. Fraters.
9. Abrams.
10. Freshwater mariners or whipjacks.
11. Drummerers.
12. Drunken tinkers.
13. Swadders or pedlers.
14. Jarkemen or patricoes.
Of the women kind.
1. Demanders for glimmar or fire.
2. Bawdy-baskets.
3. Mortes.
4. Autem mortem.
5. Walking mortes.
6. Doxies.
7. Dells.
8. Kinching mortes.
9. Kinching cooes.
The punishment that is ordained for this kind of people is very sharp, and yet it cannot restrain them from their gadding: wherefore the end must needs be martial law,to be exercised upon them, as upon thieves, robbers, despisers of all laws, and enemies to the commonwealth and welfare of the land. What notable robberies, pilferies, murders, rapes, and stealings of young children, burning, breaking, and disfiguring their limbs to make them pitiful in the sight of the people, I need not to rehearse; but for their idle rogueing about the country, the law ordaineth this manner of correction. The rogue being apprehended, committed to prison, and tried in the next assizes (whether they be of gaol delivery or sessions of the peace), if he happen to be convicted for a vagabond, either by inquest of office or the testimony of two honest and credible witnesses upon their oaths, he is then immediately adjudged to be grievously whipped and burned through the gristle of the right ear with a hot iron of the compass of an inch about, as a manifestation of his wicked life, and due punishment received for the same. And this judgment is to be executed upon him except some honest person worth five pounds in the queen's books in goods, or twenty shillings in land, or some rich householder to be allowed by the justices, will be bound in recognisance to retain him in his service for one whole year. If he be taken the second time, and proved to have forsaken his said service, he shall then be whipped again, bored likewise through the other ear, and set to service: from whence if he depart before a year be expired, and happen afterwards to be attached again, he is condemned to suffer pains of death as a felon (except before excepted) without benefit of clergy or sanctuary, as by the statute doth appear. Among rogues and idle persons, finally, we find to be comprised all proctors that go up and down with counterfeit licences, cozeners, and such as gad about the country, using unlawful games, practisers of physiogonomy and palmestry, tellers of fortunes, fencers, players, minstrels, jugglers, pedlers, tinkers, pretended scholars, shipmen, prisoners gathering for fees, and others so oft as they be taken without sufficient licence. From among which company our bearwards are not excepted, and just cause: for I have read that they have, either voluntarily or for want of power to master their savage beasts, been occasion of the death and devouration of many children in sundry countries by which they have passed, whose parents never knew what was become of them. And for that cause there is and have been many sharp laws made for bearwards in Germany, whereof you may read in other. But to our rogues. Each one also that harboureth or aideth them with meat or money is taxed and compelled to fine with the queen's majesty for every time that he doth succour them as it shall please the justices of peace to assign, so that the taxation exceed not twenty, as I have been informed.
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| Message: |
1. Rufflers:'First in degree of vagabonds,' a man without a trade who will panhandle if he can, but will not stop short of more direct means if he must; if not hanged he inevitably becomes an Uprightman in a year or two.
Hookers:those who go house to house seeking charity during the day and study the lie of the land. After dark the hooker revisits the marks carrying a staff with an iron hook to reach in through windows to steal clothes and other stuffs. Wild rogues:those born rogues.
Palliards:beggars in patched cloaks.
Abrams:those who pretend to have been mad and sent to Bedlam, who seek to beg house-to-house for money or food on the strength of the ill-treatment they claim to have received. If there are children, or others likely to be intimidated in the house, they will act out until paid to go away.
Dummerers: beggars pretending dumbness.
Swadders:pedlars. Demanders for glimmer:female beggars pretending to have lost all that they had by fire.
Morts:female beggars not legally married.
Dells: female beggars who are still maidens.
Uprightmen:the highest rank of rogues.
Rogues:beggars pretending to seek kinsmen
Priggers of prancers:horsestealers.
Fraters:pretended proctors with false licences. A proctor was one who held a licence to collect alms for ??spital-houses.
Freshwater mariners:pretended shipwrecked sailors.
Drunken tinkers:thieves posing as tinkers.
Jarkmen:clerkly rogues who make false licences and unite their comrades in wedlock.
Bawdy baskets:female pedlars.
Autem morts:legally married female rogues.
Doxies: mistresses to rogues.
Kinching morts:young female rogues.
Kinching coes:young male rogues.
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