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Poverty, Protest and Rebellion in Wales and England c.1485-1603

Vagrancy, the sturdy beggar and punishment

  • 3 things to know
  • A2 Unit 3

Overview

Recall questions on why masterless men frightened government, the punishments prescribed and how far they were carried out, the harshest statute and its repeal, and the houses of correction.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

What did contemporaries believe about the organisation of beggars?

Key term

State who counted in law as a vagrant in Tudor England and Wales.

Key term

Why did the Tudor state fear vagrancy so intensely?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    State who counted in law as a vagrant in Tudor England and Wales.

    Model answer

    Any able-bodied person of no fixed abode, without land, master or lawful trade, found wandering outside the parish where he belonged.

  2. 2

    Why did the Tudor state fear vagrancy so intensely?

    Model answer

    A masterless man belonged to nobody, could not be taxed, mustered or disciplined, and was assumed to be a thief, a spreader of plague and rumour, and the raw material of rebellion.

  3. 3

    Who actually took to the roads?

    Model answer

    Mostly young single men and women in their teens and twenties, discharged servants and soldiers, and whole families driven out by dearth, travelling to the nearest large town rather than roaming aimlessly.

  4. 4

    What did contemporaries believe about the organisation of beggars?

    Model answer

    Pamphleteers described a fraternity of rogues with its own ranks, disguises and secret language called canting, an alarming picture for which there is very little hard evidence.

  5. 5

    Give three of the fraudulent types described in the rogue literature.

    Model answer

    The counterfeit crank who feigned the falling sickness, the Abraham man who pretended madness, and the ruffler who posed as a wounded soldier.

  6. 6

    Why should the rogue pamphlets be used with caution?

    Model answer

    They were written to entertain and to sell, they copied one another, and court records show most vagrants were simply poor people looking for work rather than members of any organised underworld.

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1642, at .
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AUniversal male suffrage was kept.
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