Excerpt from Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds SO far as I know this is the first book to treat Elizabethan rogues and vagabonds from the point of view here taken, piecing together historical and literary material so as to make as complete a picture as possible of their life. They have received attention from writers on social history and on the poor laws; Professor F. W. Chandler has published a compendious account of the literature of the subject from the sixteenth century to the present, with preliminary sec tions devoted to Spanish, French, German, and Dutch works, but leaving untouched the historical aspect; and C. J. Ribton Turner published in 1887 a History of Vagrants and Vagramy covering all periods from the earliest times down to the pre sent which touches the material I am using, but gives, as his scheme demanded, a very limited Space to each period. One side of rogue life, their canting speech, already so fully treated by Henley and Farmer, has not been attempted in this book. For the rest I cannot pretend to have exhausted the material, either literary or historical, which relates to these rogues and vagabonds, but only hope to have made a little clearer the outlines of the life of this class which played no small part in the national affairs of Elizabethan England and fills no small place in its literature. My thanks are due to the Librarian and Fellows of Mag dalene College, Cambridge, to the authorities of the British Museum and the Public Record Office, and to Mr. F. Madan, Librarian of the Bodleian, for permission to reproduce various illustrations. My Obligations to books are, so far as possible. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.