Roguery in Print: Crime and Culture in Early Modern London 1783274409, 9781783274406

Table of contents :
Frontcover
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Rogues and their Historians
1 Cheap Print and Rogue Pamphlets
2 Laughter, Tricksters, and Good Fellows
3 Trust, Sociability, and Criminal Networks
4 Turning Cavaliers into Rogues: Crime and Polemic in the
Interregnum
Epilogue: Rogue Pamphlets after 1670
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN CULTURAL, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY Volume 33

ROGUERY IN PRINT

Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History ISSN: 1476–9107 Series editors Tim Harris – Brown University Stephen Taylor – Durham University Andy Wood – Durham University

Previously published titles in the series are listed at the back of this volume

ROGUERY IN PRINT Crime and Culture in Early Modern London

Lena Liapi

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Lena Liapi 2019 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Lena Liapi to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2019 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978-1-78327-440-6 The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate This publication is printed on acid-free paper

To Kostas, Anatoli, and Gregory Liapi

Contents List of Illustrations viii Acknowledgementsix Introduction: Rogues and their Historians

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1  Cheap Print and Rogue Pamphlets 17 2  Laughter, Tricksters, and Good Fellows 51 3  Trust, Sociability, and Criminal Networks 89 4 Turning Cavaliers into Rogues: Crime and Polemic in the Interregnum117 Epilogue: Rogue Pamphlets after 1670

155

Bibliography165 Index191

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Illustrations Plates

1 Robert Greene, A Notable Discouery of Coosenage (1591), title-page. Folger Shakespeare Library Call # STC 12280. Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 2 Thomas Harman, The Groundworke of Conny-Catching (1592), title-page. RB 61333. The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.  3 Luke Hutton, The Blacke Dogge of Newgate (1596), title-page. RB 61568 The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. 4  We Have Brought Our Hogs to a Fair Market, p. 5. RB 133045 The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. 5  We Have Brought Our Hogs to a Fair Market, p. 7. RB 133045 The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. 6 Anonymous, A Second Discovery of Hind’s Exploits (1651) Image on side-page © British Library Board E.1349.(1.). 

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42 78 132 133 135

Figures

1  Pamphlets per year 2  Discoveries and lives of criminals 3  Length of pamphlets pre- and post-1640

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21 24 37

Acknowledgements There are too many people to thank for the publication of this book. It has been a long time in the making, and I ended up with more debts of gratitude than I can possibly acknowledge, let alone repay. As is usual, but true, I thank them all for helping and I know the book is better for their input, but all its faults are my own. This publication has been made possible by a grant from the Scouloudi Foundation in association with the Institute of Historical Research. It has also been supported by a University of York Humanities Research Centre Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. While writing this book, I moved around and worked in three different institutions: the Universities of York, Aberdeen, and Keele. My nomadic life meant that I experienced different research environments and had the chance to discuss my ideas with various colleagues. I owe particular thanks to Mark Jenner, for his generosity with his time and ideas; his ability to understand what I am trying to say is always impressive (and not just because of the speed of my delivery!). Jim Sharpe has been very supportive and occasionally bemused by my attempts to combine crime and literature. I would like to thank Rachel Bright, Joel Sodano, Helen Smith, Simon Ditchfield, and Andy Gordon for discussing this project and providing excellent suggestions. Becky Bowler, Ian Atherton, Becky Yearling, Heidi Mehrkens, Bill Naphy, Antonis Liapis, Sara Meadows, Jo Aloizou, Costas Gaganakis, and Maria Dimitriadi all read parts of this book. I owe much to their intellectual and stylistic contributions. The anonymous readers and the editorial staff at Boydell and Brewer have provided support and very interesting suggestions for this book; they have contributed significantly to the final form of this work and especially the Epilogue. I would also like to thank my students in Aberdeen and Keele, who took my crime modules; it was good to hear fresh ideas on subjects I have mulled over for too long. I would also like to thank all my friends in the UK and Greece and others sprinkled around the world for coffees, drinks, music, and much discussion. No matter how much I love my subject, the process of writing the book would have been miserable without them. My parents and my brother have stood by me throughout this period, and I can only give them my love and thanks. My fascination with the prodigal son narrative stems from being a prodigal daughter, and they cope with it admirably. Finally, I owe much to Filippos Giannakopoulos. Not only has he dealt with the insanity that the book-writing process brings, but he has been forced to learn far more than he ever expected about early modern rogues.

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Introduction: Rogues and their Historians

Upon a cheating Companion. He that was borne out of a Bastard race, Betwixt a beggar and a Gentleman, A filthy Carkasse and an ougly face, And plaies the foole before Maid Marian: Can seeme as sober as a Millers Mare, And can not blush at any villany: In every Market shifteth for a share, And sits himselfe for every company: Hath all the Cards upon his fingers ends, And keeps a knave in store for many a tricke. Will be a traitor to his truest friends, And lives not by the dead, but by the quicke. Upon his Tombe what memory will passe? Here lies the damnedst Rogue that ever was.1

This epigram by Nicholas Breton captures many of the cultural assumptions about the rogue in early modern England. According to this, the worst kind of rogue is a ‘cheating companion’, an opportunist who haunts places where people congregate in order to ply his trade, or as it was commonly expressed in the early modern period, to ‘shift’. This rogue is portrayed as a criminal: he is a villain, he dissembles (‘plaies the foole’), and he cheats at cards. At the same time, Breton repeatedly evokes the idea of fellowship, using words such as ‘companion’, ‘company’, and ‘friends’. The rogue may be castigated for being a false companion, even a traitor, but it is clear that he is not viewed as a marginal figure. Breton’s observation that the rogue belongs to ‘a Bastard race, betwixt a

Nicholas Breton, Choice, Chance, and Change: Or, Conceites in Their Colours (1606), sig. I4r. Michael G. Brennan, ‘Breton [Britton], Nicholas (1554/5–c. 1626), Poet’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 5 January 2019, . In this, the rogue is also related to Robin Hood (through the reference to Maid Marian). 1 

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INTRODUCTION

beggar and a Gentleman’ accentuates the rogue’s ambiguity, showing that even his social status resists definition. As we will see, ‘rogue’ was a protean term which could signify various roles, including the beggar, the cheater, the outlaw, and even the prodigal son. Because of its multivalence, the figure of the rogue, the quintessentially urban criminal,2 fascinated early modern culture. In his/her various incarnations as trickster, victim of society, or threat to it, the rogue can be found in a variety of early modern texts, from plays, ballads, romances, and pamphlets, to moralising tracts and sermons, proclamations, and civic regulation. This monograph will provide a systematic examination of this figure and of rogue pamphlets, combining the history of the book with the history of crime and urban order. Historiography: Rogue Literature, Crime Pamphlets, and the Elizabethan Underworld

In the study of the phenomenon of roguery and the rogue pamphlet, two approaches have been followed by scholars in the field, each of which revolves around a separate discipline: history and literature. On the one hand, literary scholars have examined these publications as literature, connecting them to early modern literary studies (often as sources for Shakespeare’s plays), and viewing them as precursors to novels. The initial interest in rogue pamphlets emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when literary scholars and editors published editions of prose writers such as Robert Greene, Thomas Dekker, and Samuel Rowlands, with the stated intention of finding Shakespeare’s predecessors.3 This is evident in Alexander Grosart’s introduction to Greene’s works, where he repeatedly compared Greene to Shakespeare, describing him as the ‘father of Shakespeare’ or ‘an early rival’.4 These early editors noted the preoccupation of such writers with rogues and vagabonds, or, as Edward Rimbault phrased it, with ‘the idle and vicious’.5 This

There is debate about whether the term ‘rogue’ is necessarily connected with urban crime, but I will analyse the term at length in the next section. 3  Samuel Rowlands, The Four Knaves: A Series of Satirical Tracts, ed. Edward F. Rimbault, Early English Poetry, Ballads, and Popular Literature of the Middle Ages (London, 1843), p. 9; Alexander Balloch Grosart, The Life and Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Robert Greene, M.A., The Huth Library (New York, 1964); Thomas Dekker, The Non-Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker (New York, 1963), V. 4  Grosart, The Life and Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Robert Greene, M.A, p. xvii. The interest in Greene as Shakespeare’s rival is related to Greene’s allusion to ‘an upstart Crow’, which was taken as a reference to Shakespeare: Robert Greene, Greenes Groats-Vvorth of Witte, Bought with a Million of Repentance Describing the Follie of Youth, the Falshoode of Makeshifte Flatterers, the Miserie of the Negligent, and Mischiefes of Deceiuing Courtezans. Written before His Death, and Published at His Dyeing Request (1592), sig. F1v. 5  Rowlands, The Four Knaves, pp. 33–4; Dekker, The Non-Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, p. xix. 2 

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INTRODUCTION

led to the publication of anthologies of rogue texts.6 The first, Rogues and Vagabonds of Shakespeare’s Youth, was edited by Frederick Furnivall, a Shakespearean scholar and the founder of many literary societies, who was mostly interested in the ways in which such texts influenced Shakespeare’s writings.7 The phrase ‘Elizabethan Underworld’, which still haunts the study of rogue pamphlets, was coined by these early editors. This ‘underworld’ existed alongside, but in antagonistic relation with, the one inhabited by law-abiding citizens. It had ‘a language of its own and a large number of well-defined methods and traditions’.8 According to this interpretation, the typologies of rogues expounded a world of professionals with their own specialised practices and a distinct hierarchy, which mirrored or ridiculed that of respectable society. Such editors typically viewed the ‘elaborate classifications’ of the ‘urban underworld’ as historically accurate and described the rogue as ‘a professional, a professor of one of the crafts or mysteries odious to all right thinkers of the commonwealth’.9 Later literary scholars also explored rogue pamphlets in terms of their relationship to the works of Shakespeare and the cultural function of the criminal underworld. However, whereas the earlier studies of the rogue pamphlets considered them as accurate depictions of early modern life, scholars connected to New Historicism in the 1980s showed an interest in ‘lowlife’ literature as an articulation of power and as a site where subversion was generated in order to be contained.10 In doing so, they reiterated the significance of the ‘underworld’, but they viewed it as a rhetorical strategy intended to reaffirm ‘correct’ social values. Stephen Greenblatt, in his influential essay ‘Invisible Bullets’, analysed texts of discovery, Thomas Hariot’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588), and Harman’s A Caueat for Commen Cursetors (one of the early rogue pamphlets) as well as Shakespeare’s histories (especially Henry IV), in order to show that, while subversive elements existed in rogue pamphlets – such as the frequent claim that dissembling was not restricted to criminals, but a condition of

Edward Viles and F.J. Furnival, The Rogues and Vagabonds of Shakespeare’s Youth : Awdeley’s ‘Fraternitye of Vacabondes’ and Harman’s ‘Caveat’, New Shakespeare Society Reprints (London, 1880), p. 69; Frank Wadleigh Chandler, The Literature of Roguery (Boston, MA and New York, 1907); Frank Aydelotte, Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds, Oxford Historical and Literary Studies (Oxford, 1913), p. 1; A.V. Judges, The Elizabethan Underworld: A Collection of Tudor and Early Stuart Tracts and Ballads Telling of the Lives and Misdoings of Vagabonds, Thieves, Rogues and Cozeners, and Giving Some Account of the Operation of the Criminal Law (London, 1930). 7  William S. Peterson, ‘Furnivall, Frederick James (1825–1910), Textual Scholar and Editor’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 5 January 2019, . 8  Aydelotte, Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds, p. 1. 9  Judges, The Elizabethan Underworld, pp. xxvi–vii. See also Grosart, The Life and Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Robert Greene, M.A, p. 34; Aydelotte, Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds, pp. 2, 28, 77. 10  In refuting the reality of the phenomena described in rogue pamphlets, literary scholars took their cue from social historians of the 1970s, as I will show later. 6 

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INTRODUCTION

social life – they were ‘produced by and within the affirmations of order’ and did not undermine it.11 According to Greenblatt, in Harman’s and Shakespeare’s texts ‘actions that should have the effect of undermining authority turn out to be the props of that authority… moral values – justice, order, civility – are secured paradoxically through the apparent generation of their subversive contraries’.12 Thus, the main aim of such texts was to reaffirm authority’s power and worldview. Following Greenblatt’s example, many literary critics have worked on the assumption that rogue pamphlets obscured the living conditions of the actual poor by presenting an imaginary underworld,13 which was sometimes depicted as jovial and sometimes as sinister. The intention of such texts was to desensitise the readers to the pleas of the poor and to justify the repression of the lower orders. In these studies, rogue pamphlets are analysed as ‘rogue literature’ and they are connected to other literary genres, such as the romance, the jest-book, and the novel. The literary value of rogue narratives is often weighed and found wanting, and they are considered as a ‘low’ literary genre.14 However, it is their ‘realism’ and ‘artlessness’ that allows rogue literature to be considered as a precursor to the novel. This is accentuated by the tendency of novelists (such as Daniel Defoe) also to write journalistic pieces on crime in the metropolis.15 By consequence, rogue pamphlets continue to be examined because of their perceived influence on other, more familiar literary products. Historians and Crime Publications

Historians of crime have also shown some interest in rogue pamphlets, but they have typically examined them in the context of a teleology of crime publications. According to this, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century crime publications were primarily aimed at entertaining readers, while in the eighteenth and nineteenth Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Oxford, 1987), pp. 50–2. 12  Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations, p. 53. 13  For example, the term underworld is used in these studies: William C. Carroll, Fat King, Lean Beggar: Representations of Poverty in the Age of Shakespeare (Ithaca, NY, 1996), p. 37; Linda Woodbridge, Vagrancy, Homelessness, and English Renaissance Literature (Urbana, IL, 2001), pp. 51, 54; Mark Koch, ‘The Desanctification of the Beggar in Rogue Pamphlets of the English Renaissance’, in The Work of Dissimilitude: Essays from the Sixth Citadel Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Literature, ed. David G. Allen and Robert A. White (Newark, DE; Cranbury, NJ; and London, 1992), p. 95. 14  Steve Mentz, Romance for Sale in Early Modern England: The Rise of Prose Fiction (Aldershot, 2006); Bryan Reynolds, Becoming Criminal: Transversal Performance and Cultural Dissidence in Early Modern England (Baltimore, MD, 2002); Lincoln B. Faller, Turned to Account: The Forms and Functions of Criminal Biography in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1987); Hal Gladfelder, Criminality and Narrative in Eighteenth-Century England: Beyond the Law (Baltimore, MD and London, 2001). 15  Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel. Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (London, 1957), pp. 9–18; J. Paul Hunter, Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction (New York and London, 1990). 11 

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INTRODUCTION

centuries, such publications depicted crime as a serious social concern. This is partly a result of the rejection of early rogue pamphlets by social historians of the early modern period, but also of the way that crime publications are viewed in the eighteenth century. In the 1970s, social historians turned to the study of crime, looking at legislation and archival records. Comparing their findings with rogue pamphlets, they concluded that the latter did not represent social reality, nor the existence of a ‘criminal underworld’. Part of the problem for historians of crime were the discoveries of criminal practices included in such pamphlets, which presented different groups of criminals and their modus operandi. A.L. Beier, for example, concluded that even though there are occasional examples in other records of ‘the stereotyped qualities of the underworld’, in general ‘the literature’s taxonomy is superficial, its amusing stories trivial’.16 Paul Slack, examining records of vagrancy from 1598 to 1664, reasoned that the descriptions of vagrants in rogue literature were ‘the result of contemporary desires to define and perhaps to romanticize the vagrant phenomenon, to provide stereotypes in order to make the reality more explicable and more palatable’. Slack did not dismiss completely the possibility that ‘the picturesque or professional rogue’ existed, but he considered such cases as exceptions.17 A fair measure of social historians’ attitudes towards previous treatments of rogue pamphlets can be glimpsed from J.S. Cockburn’s review of Gamini Salgado’s The Elizabethan Underworld.18 Salgado used rogue texts exclusively in order to present the life of London’s lower orders, accepting unquestioningly their validity as sources of historical investigation.19 In his review, Cockburn contrasted the attempts of social historians to ‘examine vagrancy and crime in this period and to bring some perspective to the literature of deviance’ using legal records, with Salgado’s work on the ‘anti-society’ of criminals, as depicted by rogue literature. Cockburn criticised Salgado’s exclusive use of literary sources for his research, as it resulted in a work where ‘anecdote replaces empirical enquiry’, a statement which privileged social history’s mode of research by using the language of empiricism.20 A.L. Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560–1640 (London, 1985), pp. 123–45. It is interesting that A.V. Judges, who wrote one of the early anthologies of rogue texts, was a social historian working in this period at the Department of History of the London School of Economics: Judges, The Elizabethan Underworld, p. xiii. This shows the changes in the ways historians approached these texts. 17  Paul A. Slack, ‘Vagrants and Vagrancy in England, 1598–1664’, Economic History Review, 27:3 (1974), 360–79. 18  J.S. Cockburn, ‘Review: Gãmini Salgãdo, “The Elizabethan Underworld” (Book Review)’, Journal of Social History, 11:4 (1978), 594. 19  Gāmini Salgādo, The Elizabethan Underworld (London, 1977). 20  Similarly, but with less vehemence, the sociologist Roy Austin commented concerning The Elizabethan Underworld that ‘the reader should expect a literary approach, heavily dependent on literary sources, rather than a social scientific one’: Roy Austin, ‘Gāmini Salgādo. “The 16 

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INTRODUCTION

After discrediting rogue pamphlets as historical sources, most historians left them to the treatment of literary scholars. However, they still used rogue pamphlets in order to provide illustrative examples for their findings.21 In addition, historians of crime used other crime publications, such as lives of burglars and highwaymen, or murderers and witches, analysing their dying speeches as examples of hegemonic discourses propounding the power of the state and religious orthodoxy.22 Thus, such historians see rogue pamphlets as occupying a separate category from crime publications, even though lives of highwaymen and narratives of thieves are also included in rogue pamphlets (and their modern anthologies) and the thematology of ‘rogue pamphlets’ and lives of highwaymen often overlap.23 The historiography of crime in the eighteenth century collapsed this distinction, viewing all pre-1660 crime publications as trivial and intended solely for entertainment purposes. Historians of crime in the eighteenth century have examined extensively the impact of crime publications in heightening public concern about criminal activities.24 They chart the evolution of crime

Elizabethan Underworld” (Book Review)’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 436:1 (1978), 192. However, John McMullan, a criminologist and sociologist, has argued in favour of the existence of a criminal underworld; he also takes most of his evidence for this from rogue pamphlets: John McMullan, ‘Criminal Organization in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century London’, Social Problems, 29:3 (1982), 317. 21  Slack, ‘Vagrants and Vagrancy in England, 1598–1664’; Beier, Masterless Men, pp. 7, 123–45; Paul Griffiths, Lost Londons: Change, Crime, and Control in the Capital City, 1550–1660 (New York, 2008). 22  Peter Lake and Michael C. Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (New Haven , CT and London, 2002); J.A. Sharpe, ‘“Last Dying Speeches”: Religion, Ideology and Public Execution in Seventeenth-Century England’, Past & Present, 107 (1985), 144–67; Peter Lake and Michael Questier, ‘Agency, Appropriation and Rhetoric under the Gallows: Puritans, Romanists and the State in Early Modern England’, Past & Present, 153 (1996), 64–107; Peter Lake, ‘Deeds against Nature: Cheap Print, Protestantism and Murder in Early Seventeenth Century England’, in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Peter Lake and Kevin Sharpe (Basingstoke, 1994); Peter Lake, ‘Puritanism, Arminianism and a Shropshire Axe-Murder’, Midland History, 15:1 (1990), 37–64. Andrea McKenzie has done nuanced work on late seventeenth-century lives of highwaymen, but the later chronology allows her to avoid some of the problems associated with ‘rogue’ and ‘crime’ pamphlets: Andrea Katherine McKenzie, Tyburn’s Martyrs: Execution in England, 1675–1775 (London, 2007). 23  I use here ‘rogue pamphlet’ in a more limited way than I will do in the rest of the book; my aim here is to show how rogue pamphlets are distinguished from other, similar publications. As I will show in Chapter 1, I combine such texts in my analysis of rogue pamphlets. 24  Robert Shoemaker, ‘Print Culture and the Creation of Public Knowledge about Crime in Eighteenth-Century London’, in Urban Crime Prevention, Surveillance and Restorative Justice: Effects of Social Technologies, ed. Paul Knepper, Jonathan Doak, and Joanna Shapland (Boca Raton, FL, 2009), pp. 1–21; Peter King, ‘Making Crime News: Newspapers, Violent Crime and the Selective Reporting of Old Bailey Trials in the Late Eighteenth Century’, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés, 13:1 (2009), 91–116; Esther Snell, ‘Discourses of Criminality in 6

INTRODUCTION

publications from entertaining in the seventeenth century to serious in the long eighteenth century. J.M. Beattie, for example, has argued that, from the late seventeenth century, there was a ‘shift in crime publishing from heavily fictionalised tales of the daring pranks of highwaymen intended as entertainment to something more approaching a source of public information’.25 The website of The Proceedings of the Old Bailey characterises accounts of crime in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as ‘inexpensive publications… designed to entertain’.26 A recent monograph on crime and print culture in the eighteenth century also reiterates this point that ‘the largely fictionalised and picaresque accounts of individuals that predominated in the seventeenth century came to be replaced in the following century by avowedly more factual accounts which addressed crime in the round’.27 This dismissal of earlier crime publications has been resisted by historians of seventeenth-century crime, as we have seen, but it seems likely to have influenced their attempt to separate the more ‘serious’ lives of criminals from other similar rogue pamphlets which present discoveries of criminality. Consequently, we can establish three recent approaches to rogue pamphlets: literary scholars often examine them as ‘low’ literary forms which are ideologically inflected in order to demonise the poor. Historians of the seventeenth century focus on a subset of them (the one that seems less tainted by fictionalisation); when they engage with rogue pamphlets, they – to an extent agreeing with literary scholars – consider them as part of official discourses aimed at using the poor as scapegoats by presenting a fictional underworld.28 Scholars of eighteenth-century crime view them as fictionalised and escapist, and a precursor to more ‘serious’ crime reporting in the following century. The main questions asked are the significance of such pamphlets as historical sources and whether their fictional character renders them unusable; the function of the imaginary criminal underworld; and which texts should be included in the category of the ‘rogue pamphlet’. This is evident in the most recent addition to the critical field, Rogues and Early Modern English Culture. This edited volume returns to the idea of the underworld and how its depiction could be used to scapegoat vagrants, claiming that much of the rogue literature ‘manufactured an imaginary criminal underworld for London’s growing metropolis, displacing dominant notions of social hierarchy and order onto the growing populations of homeless’ and that the Eighteenth-Century Press: The Presentation of Crime in The Kentish Post, 1717–1768’, Continuity and Change, 22:1 (2007), 13–47. 25  J.M. Beattie, Policing and Punishment in London, 1660–1750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror (Oxford, 2001), p. 3. 26  Clive Emsley, Tim Hitchcock, and Robert Shoemaker, ‘The Proceedings – Publishing History of the Proceedings’, Old Bailey Proceedings Online, accessed 10 January 2019, . 27  Richard M. Ward, Print Culture, Crime and Justice in Eighteenth-Century London, History of Crime, Deviance and Punishment Series (London and New York, 2014), p. 8. 28  For more details, see Chapter 2. 7

INTRODUCTION

‘these pamphlets reshaped the image of the unfortunate vagabond into a willing and stealthy member of a vast criminal network of organised guilds’.29 This book seeks to recast this discussion by undertaking a systematic analysis of a wide range of rogue pamphlets, both in terms of definition and chronology. It has four main aims: first, to go beyond the ‘canon’ of rogue literature and examine both discoveries of criminals and lives of thieves and highwaymen. Second, is to argue that these publications did not depict an underworld but actually portrayed criminals as part of urban society and often as tricksters, friends, or drinking companions. The third aim is to show that the significance of rogue pamphlets lies in their entanglement with various kinds of discourses about crime and urban culture in this period. Rogue pamphlets were part of a mass of cheap print publications which focused on the growth of London and the changes this effected on the mindset of its inhabitants. These publications often censured the abuses of other members of London society (merchants, usurers, gentlemen, even officers of the law) and included mentions of rogues and petty criminals as a part of society’s failings. Rather than being merely entertaining, rogue pamphlets were a significant part of metropolitan literature. This book places these publications squarely in their cultural context and analyses them alongside other texts detailing urban society and crime. The place of these publications in early modern print culture, their ambivalent depictions of trickery, conviviality, and sociability, as well as their ability to propagate political and religious viewpoints show that crime publications were embedded in early modern culture. Finally, through an investigation of the circumstances of production and the examination of rogue pamphlets as physical objects, this book aims to reach a more nuanced understanding of how rogue pamphlets were intended to be read and the possible reader responses to them.30 Definition: Rogues in Early Modern English Culture

One of the major premises of this book is that, when examining pamphlets about rogues, a broader range (both thematically and chronologically) of cheap printed texts should be considered. In order to examine cheap print about rogues, it is necessary first to interrogate the category of ‘rogue’. However, the mutability and multivalence of the term ‘rogue’ allowed it to be used in a variety of contexts to denote different types of criminal or even as a generalised derogatory term, thus making it impossible to define accurately. Some pamphlets used the term ‘rogue’ to describe vagrants, as in The Belman of London (1608), where Dekker described country rogues in these terms: ‘this is the Ragged Regiment: Villaines they are

Craig Dionne and Steve Mentz, ‘Introduction’, in Rogues and Early Modern English Culture, ed. Craig Dionne and Steve Mentz (Ann Arbor, MI, 2004), p. 7. 30  Alexandra Halasz, The Marketplace of Print: Pamphlets and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1997); Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 2003). 29 

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INTRODUCTION

by birth, Varlets by education, Knaves by profession, Beggars by the stattute and Rogues by act of Parliament’.31 In his next pamphlet, however, Dekker used the term ‘rogue’ for urban confidence tricksters: ‘It is a knot of Cheators but newly tyed, they are not yet a company… They have two or thrée names, (yet they are no Romaines, but errant Rogues).’32 Greene used the same term to denote a Curber, an urban criminal who used a hook to steal out of people’s windows: ‘It fortuned of late that a Courber & his Warpe went walking in the dead of the night to spy out some window open for their purpose… the rogue he plyed his busines and lighted on a gowne.’33 Robbers were often described as rogues: Hind, the highwayman, claimed that robbery would be sufficient to justify his being called a rogue. When he was insulted by a man, he shot back: ‘I wil make you call me Rogue for something: So Hind made him unty his greasy snapsack, where he found fifty pound in gold.’34 In Hannam’s last farewell to the world (1656), the author concludes his pamphlet about the burglar Hannam exhorting ‘Rogues and Thieves beware of Hannams END’.35 It seems likely that rogues and thieves were used as synonyms here. More intriguingly, merchants who cheated their customers could also be characterised as rogues. In Greene’s A Notable Discouery of Coosenage (1591), a woman who was cheated by a collier challenged him: ‘thou cosening rogue, quoth she, (speaking to the Collier) I will teach thee how thou shalt cosen me with thy false sackes’.36 The inclusion of the adjective ‘cosening’ (meaning deceitful, another term often used for criminals) highlights that ‘rogue’ here is not just a generalised insult, but relates specifically to his activities, even though he is an established trader. This profusion of meanings was apparent in other sources from the period. Judging by legislation and official documents the terms ‘rogue’ and ‘vagrant’ were used in overlapping ways to denote those who had no employment and could give no good account of their life, thus suggesting a rootless and suspicious background and the possibility to slide into criminality. According to An Order to Be Published and Executed by the Lord Maior of the Citie of London (1593), all persons wandering as beggars ‘being whole and strong in body and able to work, having no lands or other means to get their living, should be taken as

Thomas Dekker, The Belman of London (1608), sig. Cv. Thomas Dekker, Lanthorne and Candle-Light. Or, The Bell-Mans Second Nights-Walke (1608), sig. K3r. 33  Robert Greene, The Second Part of Conny-Catching (1592). 34  George Fidge, The English Gusman; or The History of That Unparallel’d Thief James Hind (1652), p. 28. Italics from the original text. 35  Anonymous, Hannam’s Last Farewell to the World: Being a Full and True Relation of the Notorious Life and Shamfull Death of Mr. Richard Hannam, the Great Robber of England; with the Manner of His Apprehension, Examination, Confession and Speech Made to the Sheriffs a Little before His Execution in the Round in Smithfield, in Tuesday the 17. of June, 1656 (1656), p. 14. Capitals appear in the original text. 36  Robert Greene, A Notable Discouery of Coosenage (1591), sig. D3v. 31 

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INTRODUCTION

Rogues and Vagabonds’.37 In this case, it is clear that rogues and vagabonds are considered the same thing, namely sturdy beggars. A Proclamation for the Due and Speedy Execution of the Statute against Rogues, Vagabonds, Idle, and Dissolute Persons (1603) identified these groups of people as a threat (‘they have swarmed and abounded everywhere’) and concluded that ‘such incorrigible or dangerous Rogues should… be banished’.38 In other official documents, however, rogues and vagabonds were not only conflated, but also connected with other illegal activities, such as stealing, pilfering and cheating (‘shifting’), which brought them closer to the descriptions of rogues in rogue pamphlets. In a letter from 1596 addressed to the Middlesex Justices of Peace, the Privy Council complained that Provost Marshalls were not sufficiently active in driving away ‘rogues and vagabonde persons’, thus allowing ‘those lewde and badd kind of people that lyve by prolinge [sic, probably prowling] and stealinge’ to return to London.39 This assumption was repeated in a 1625 proclamation: ‘And for other wandering poore, Vagabonds, Rogues, and such like base and unruly people, which pester the high way, and make it their Trade or profession to live by begging, pilfering, or other unlawfull shifting.’40 In these texts, rogues were not only conflated with vagrants, but also referred to as part of the poor. Most acts, proclamations, or civic orders about vagrants tied the relief of the poor together with the punishment of rogues and vagabonds. This is evident in the 1630 A Further Proclamation for the Suppressing and Punishing of Rogues and Vagabonds, and Reliefe of the Poore, which first delineates measures for the relief of the impotent poor, while ordering the punishment of ‘al Rogues and Vagabonds, who… shall bee found either wandring, or begging’.41 The same tendency to distinguish between the ‘worthy’ poor and ‘rogues and vagabonds’ was reflected in metropolitan administration. In a letter to the Mayor and Aldermen in 1638 ‘with respect to the great number of wandering poor in the City’, the Privy Council requested ‘order to be taken for the relief of the poor according to the laws, that they might have no pretence to wander and beg, and for the punishment of the rogues and vagabonds’.42 This suggests that in official

England and Wales Privy Council, An Order to Be Published and Executed by the Lord Maior of the Citie of London, and Other Officers in All Places within Three Miles of the Sayd Citie, for Auoyding of All Kind of Beggars That Doe Wander about Contrary to the Lawes and Statutes of the Realme (1593). 38  England and Wales Sovereign, By the King. A Proclamation for the Due and Speedy Execution of the Statute against Rogues, Vagabonds, Idle, and Dissolute Persons (1603). 39  Privy Council Great Britain, Acts of the Privy Council of England 26: 1596-97, ed. John Roche Dasent (London, 1890), pp. 23–4. 40  England and Wales Sovereign, By the King. A Proclamation for Restraint of Disorderly and Unnecessary Resort to the Court (1625). See also Great Britain, Acts of the Privy Council of England 25: 1595–96, ed. John Roche Dasent (London, 1901), p. 330. 41  England and Wales Sovereign, A Further Proclamation for the Suppressing and Punishing of Rogues and Vagabonds, and Reliefe of the Poore (1630). 42  London Metropolitan Archives (henceforth LMA), Remembrancia Book VIII, fol. 212. 37 

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INTRODUCTION

documents, rogues and vagabonds were considered as part of the ‘wandering poor’, albeit the most troublesome part. Outside legislative sources, the term had varying connotations. In The London Prodigall (1605) a character calls another ‘you cheating Roague, you cut-purse conicatcher’, effectively lumping together different categories of urban criminals, such as cutpurses, cony-catchers (confidence tricksters), and cheaters (most often used for those cheating at cards or dice).43 Thomas Scott used the term ‘rogue’ with a closer affinity to the legal definition, claiming that some ‘like rogues, and vagabonds travaile without pasport’ (pun possibly intended).44 Dictionaries as well gave a diverse picture: The Interpreter (1607), a dictionary of legal terms, claimed that rogue (written ‘Roag [Rogus]’) ‘signifieth with us an idle sturdie beggar’.45 Finally, John Wilkins’s An Essay towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language (1668) defined the ‘rogue’ as ‘begger’ (as a noun), and as an adjective meaning ‘wandring, vice, fraud [person]’.46 Work on defamation has shown that in the period the word ‘rogue’ was used loosely and often derogatorily. According to Martin Ingram, in cases of slander in the late sixteenth century ‘action was denied in cases where the victim was simply called “knave”, “villain”, “forsworn rogue”, or the like, on the extremely dubious grounds that such terms of abuse were of uncertain meaning and commonly uttered in passion or choler without any real intention of harming a person’s reputation’.47 The confusion of the term is shown clearly in the case of Ellen Allsop, who called a boy a ‘base roague’. His mother indignantly exclaimed ‘what does thou call my boy bastard’ understanding the term ‘rogue’ as denoting illegal status.48 Similarly, Catherine Barnaby, when accused of being a scold, attacked those who had accused her by saying that ‘she cannot be quiet for these roagues and Rascalls’.49 All the above examples suggest that the term ‘rogue’ was a flexible Anonymous, The London Prodigall (1605), sig. G2r. Thomas Scott, The High-Waies of God and the King Wherein All Men Ought to Walke in Holinesse Here, to Happinesse Hereafter. Deliuered in Two Sermons Preached at Thetford in Norfolke, Anno 1620 (1623), sigs H1r–H2r. 45  John Cowell, The Interpreter: Or Booke Containing the Signification of Vvords Wherein Is Set Foorth the True Meaning of All, or the Most Part of Such Words and Termes, as Are Mentioned in the Lawe Vvriters, or Statutes of This Victorious and Renowned Kingdome, Requiring Any Exposition or Interpretation (1607), sig. M2v. Hollyband defined the French term ‘rogue’ as ‘a presumptuous fellowe, arrogant’, which might explain some of the variation in the usage of the term: Claude Hollyband, A Dictionary French and English (1593), sig. Ee1v. 46  John Wilkins, An Essay towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language (1668), p. 264. 47  Martin Ingram, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570–1640, Past and Present Publications (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 296–7. 48  Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London, Oxford Studies in Social History (Oxford, 1998), p. 116. 49  Gowing, Domestic dangers, p. 123; Martin Ingram, ‘“Scolding Women Cucked or Washed”: A Crisis in Gender Relations in Early Modern England?’, in Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England, ed. Jennifer Kermode and Garthine Walker (Chapel Hill, NC, 1994), pp. 69–70. 43 

44 

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INTRODUCTION

term, which could be used in a variety of ways. The language of roguery was used widely and in differentiated ways, but always conveying a stigma of illegality to those to whom it was attached. Many scholars working on rogue texts have avoided using the term ‘rogue’ because it was too vague and negative in its connotations. Linda Woodbridge emphatically discounts the term ‘rogue’ as a ‘highly prejudicial term’ which connects vagrants and other poverty-stricken individuals to the figure of the ‘genial rogue’. Woodbridge has argued that this term ‘occludes important distinctions between destitute rural migrants and urban down-and-outs on the one hand, clever con artists on the other’.50 As we have seen, such a clear distinction was not made in the early modern period, but Woodbridge considers the continual use of the term ‘rogue’ by scholars as an example of uncritically accepting the authority’s rhetoric against vagrants. Likewise, Patricia Fumerton chooses the term ‘unsettled’ for the ‘mobile but gainfully employed’ poor, in order to distinguish them from the subjects of rogue pamphlets.51 However, the alternative terms used were not employed in the period under examination. The term ‘vagrant’, which is usually viewed by scholars as a less problematic term than ‘rogue’, did not denote a stable category either. Paul Slack has stated that ‘vagrant and vagabond were emotive, elastic terms’, which could be used against ‘lower-class mobility of all kinds’. Someone who could not give an account of his/her life could be punished as a ‘vagrant’, something that might change if the magistrates found more information about the defendant.52 In this monograph, I opt for the term ‘rogue’ in order to describe various kinds of urban deviant behaviour with direct links to small-scale economic crime. This term is employed by the pamphlets themselves to describe various kinds of criminals. At the same time, as we have seen, ‘rogue’ was a porous term, which denoted someone morally grey, potentially criminal, with definite links to illegality but not necessarily unlikeable. In this book, I analyse rogues-as-criminals and the ways in which they were portrayed in pamphlets dealing with urban criminality, but the broader cultural assumptions underpinning the image of the rogue came into play in the ways such criminals were depicted. The term ‘rogue’ has a clear connection to the trickster theme, which is one of the most characteristic aspects of rogue pamphlets and the main cohesive element between these texts.53 Even the lives of highwaymen, whose crime involved a more direct Woodbridge, Vagrancy, Homelessness, and English Renaissance Literature, pp. 28–9. Patricia Fumerton, Unsettled: The Culture of Mobility and the Working Poor in Early Modern England (Chicago, IL and London, 2006), pp. xvi, 43–6. 52  Slack, ‘Vagrants and Vagrancy in England, 1598–1664’, p. 362. Even though the term ‘vagrant’ could not be used in indictments, since it was prohibited by law to attribute an illegal occupation to a suspect, pre-trial documents employed the term more liberally: J.S. Cockburn, ‘The Nature and Incidence of Crime in England 1559–1625’, in Crime in England 1550–1800 (London, 1977), p. 63. 53  Adam Hansen, on the other hand, uses the term ‘rogue’ to emphasise the mobility of those criminals: ‘“rogues” are defined as those who enact what is considered deviant 50  51 

12

INTRODUCTION

approach to attaining money (accosting their victims on the highway, weapons drawn), were usually filled with stories of how they ‘cosened’ their victims, stories which usually were little different than the ones narrated in other pamphlets about rogues.54 Furthermore, the trickster theme connects the representations of these criminals with earlier popular stories of trickery and deceit and complicates the consideration of rogues as either threats to or victims of society. This broader definition of the term ‘rogue’ encompasses urban beggars, thieves, cutpurses, confidence tricksters, and highwaymen, as long as their activities can be viewed as economic crime and contain an element of trickery. I include all pamphlets which claim to present the criminal practices of rogues in the metropolis. As we will see in Chapter 1, all the texts I use have urban economic crime (of the kind associated with rogues) as their primary focus; additionally, they follow some conventional ways of presenting their material, such as depicting rogues as tricksters, following the trope of the prodigal son, and claiming to present news about criminals.55 Chapters

Chapter 1 examines the place of rogue pamphlets in London’s print trade, showing the changes and continuities in form and content from 1590 to 1670. To achieve this aim, the chapter employs the methodologies of the history of the book, reading closely an extensive body of cheap rogue publications, showing emphasis on the production and the material elements of these texts, in order to identify their place in the print trade as well as to illuminate the ways in which their physical form and paratextual elements created meaning. In addition, it analyses the impact of the different agents of the communication circuit on the form and contents of rogue pamphlets. Thus, the ways in which authors and booksellers marketed such pamphlets and how readers responded to them is investigated. Chapter 2 focuses on the ways that laughter was employed in rogue pamphlets to invoke different emotions: shame and merriment. Laughter can function both as a way to shame whoever is the butt of the joke and as an element of conviviality. This chapter analyses these two functions to highlight the conflicting messages of these pamphlets. It shows how humour can be a way of managing ambiguous situations, blurring the lines between respectable and deviant culture, or – on the contrary – guarding boundaries. This tension is not resolved

mobility’: Adam Hansen, ‘Realizing Rogues: Theory, Organization, Dialogue’, Ephemera, 4:4 (p. 333), accessed 28 December 2018, . 54  This will be discussed at length in Chapter 3. 55  This attempt to broaden the scope of the study of ‘rogue pamphlets’ has been made possible by new digital databases, particularly Early English Books Online (EEBO), which have increased access to previously inaccessible material. 13

INTRODUCTION

in the pamphlets. This chapter examines how, by dissecting specific practices, pamphlets attempt to shame not only criminals, but also other kinds of deviant behaviour, often associated with respectable society. Some of these practices are often not considered illegal: trade and its malpractices, miscarriages of justice, the pursuit of luxury and fashion. In general, this shows how humour could be employed as a form of correction of abuses which were not restricted to criminals but were often inherent in urban life. Rogue pamphlets are shown to be a part of the pamphlet literature which satirised urban deceit and vice. Additionally, criminals in rogue pamphlets are often presented as tricksters and good fellows, invoking feelings of admiration for the witty criminals and suggesting that criminals could be discursively included in the company of the readers. This chapter shows that laughter’s ability to bring people together as an imagined group can be expanded to include criminals, thus problematising the extent to which rogue pamphlets presented a separate criminal underworld. Chapter 3 explores further how rogue pamphlets deal with London and its transformation, by focusing on issues of trust and sociability. Whereas a narrative of distrust is often evident in rogue pamphlets and other texts about London, stressing the fickleness and performativity of interpersonal relationships in the city, this narrative is also counterbalanced by a continuous impulse to trust even potential criminals. Examining rogue pamphlets and legal records from Middlesex and Westminster Sessions, this chapter will show that they often had different aims based on which side of the story they portrayed: whether a relationship between individuals would be described as ties of sociability or a sinister criminal network depended on the aims of the narrator, who could be the author, suspected criminal, accomplice, or justice of the peace. In the legal records, the magistrates posing the questions attempt to construct networks of criminals (by leading the defendants towards this interpretation), whereas those questioned often try to reconstruct their ties with criminals as based on sociability and friendship rather than organised crime. Rogue pamphlets tended to be more ambivalent, and – as the chapter will show – often presented conflicting narratives of trust and distrust. Chapter 4 examines the ways in which rogue pamphlets became politicised in the 1650s, following the War of the Three Kingdoms. The explosion of cheap print in general, and its employment as polemic, allowed crime pamphlets to be appropriated and used as ways to manipulate public opinion. One of the interesting findings of this chapter is that this appropriation takes place more clearly in the 1650s, when the Commonwealth regime was attempting to control the press, rather than in the 1640s. This was the case with robbers who were portrayed as Royalists and whose exploits were employed as a critique against what was perceived as an illegitimate regime. This chapter shows how rogue pamphlets evolved in the 1650s, retaining various previous characteristics (such as criminality, the trope of the prodigal son, and of ‘living by their wits’), but also adapting to the changed political environment by focusing on specific criminals who were Royalists, and on hectors, a new category of urban criminal 14

INTRODUCTION

which became politicised as well. This chapter will show that the term ‘robber’ and ‘rogue’ started as terms of invective, but they came to be seen as badges of allegiance to the ‘true’ monarchical succession. The Epilogue takes these insights beyond the scope of this monograph, by examining the case of William Nevison, the ‘Yorkshire rogue’, in the 1680s. It shows how the elements identified earlier (the emphasis on trickery and wit, the narration of short stories, the politicisation of rogue pamphlets after 1650s, and the Robin Hood theme) were still relevant in the volatile atmosphere of the 1680s. At the same time, the long narrative and change of format presaged later changes and the move towards the chapbooks and the romanticised highwaymen narratives of the eighteenth century.

15

1 Cheap Print and Rogue Pamphlets

In 1618 an epigram by John Harington was published called A Prophesie when Asses shall grow Elephants, a thinly veiled critique of the changing mores of the English people: When making harmful gunnes, unfruitfull glasses, Shall quite consume our stately Oakes to ashes… When Monopolies are giv’n of toyes and trashes… When clergy romes to buy, sell, none abashes, When fowle skins are made fair with new found washes, When prints are set on work, with Greens & Nashes1

A major part of Harington’s critique targets consumerism and the commodification of things which are either too significant or too trivial to have a price: trees are destroyed to produce ‘unfruitful glasses’, monopolies are given for trivial wares, the Church peddles forgiveness and, finally, printers produce texts by Greene and Nashe. These two authors are lumped together and viewed as emblematic of a particular kind of writing, both trivial and for the market: hence the emphasis on print and not writing. Robert Greene’s name came, for Harrington and his contemporaries, to be a byword for writing for print, a trend that has subsequently coloured the way scholars of early modern history and literature view rogue pamphlets, as ‘popular’ and ‘low’.2

John Harington, The Most Elegant and Witty Epigrams of Sir Iohn Harrington (1618), sig. D5r. These were published posthumously. 2  Kirk Melnikoff and Edward Gieskes, ‘Introduction: Re-imagining Robert Greene’, in Writing Robert Greene: Essays on England’s First Notorious Professional Writer, ed. Kirk Melnikoff and Edward Gieskes (Aldershot, 2008), p. 3; Richard Helgerson, The Elizabethan Prodigals (Berkeley, CA and London, 1976), p. 80. See also Charles Crupi, ‘Greenes Life’, reprinted in Kirk Melnikoff, Robert Greene (Farnham, 2011), p. 17. Anna Bayman also mentions the ‘condescending’ attitudes towards Dekker because of his description as a ‘hack’ writer; Anna Bayman, Thomas Dekker and the Culture of Pamphleteering in Early Modern London (Aldershot, 2014), p. 2. 1 

17

ROGUERY IN PRINT

Rogue pamphlets occupy an ambivalent position in early modern studies. As we saw in the Introduction, this relates to the definition of such texts: literary scholars focus mostly on ‘rogue literature’, a narrow selection of texts about urban tricksters, examining them as a literary development which complemented the drama of the Elizabethan and early Jacobean period.3 The texts included in this ‘rogue literature’ are gleaned from two canon-setting anthologies, The Elizabethan Underworld, edited by A.V. Judges, and Rogues, Vagabonds, & Sturdy Beggars, edited by Arthur Kinney.4 Historians often discount these cony-catching texts as fictional, while mining them for references relating to the criminalisation of the poor, or to illustrate the state of life in the metropolis.5 In this chapter, I aim to situate rogue pamphlets as part of cheap print produced in London. Rather than focusing on cony-catching tales from the 1590s and early 1600s, this book examines a wide range of pamphlets relating to rogues in London, published between 1590 and 1670. If we examine these texts as pamphlets, rather than a separate ‘rogue literature’, it becomes evident that these texts are hybrid in form, incorporating various elements found in satires, romances, news pamphlets, and jest-books.6 Furthermore, they served similar functions as other kinds of cheap print, conveying information, entertainment, polemic, and moral commentary.7 This chapter analyses the developments in the production of rogue pamphlets, paying attention to their materiality, the ways in which they were produced and circulated, as well as the ways in which they constructed an audience and marketed their contents. I will show that rogue pamphlets were cut from the same cloth as other cheap print and followed the printing conventions of other kinds of pamphlets. Additionally, I will examine the ways in which these pamphlets appealed to their readers, and how readers responded. Woodbridge, Vagrancy, Homelessness, and English Renaissance Literature; Fumerton, Unsettled; Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations; Salgādo, The Elizabethan Underworld; Reynolds, Becoming Criminal. Reynolds adds John Taylor’s texts as well as the two pamphlets about Ratsey. 4  Judges, The Elizabethan Underworld; Arthur F. Kinney, Rogues, Vagabonds, & Sturdy Beggars: A New Gallery of Tudor and Early Stuart Rogue Literature Exposing the Lives, Times, and Cozening Tricks of the Elizabethan Underworld (Amherst, MA, 1990). An exception here is Anna Bayman, ‘Rogues, Conycatching and the Scribbling Crew’, History Workshop Journal, 63:1 (2007), 1–17. 5  See Introduction for more details. 6  Some of these different elements have been occasionally touched upon by scholars, who have, however, utilised the catch-all category of ‘rogue literature’ to describe them. Mentz, ‘Magic Books: Cony-Catching and the Romance of Early Modern London’, in Rogues And Early Modern English Culture, ed. Dionne and Mentz, pp. 240–58; Linda Woodbridge, ‘Jest Books, the Literature of Roguery, and the Vagrant Poor in Renaissance England’, English Literary Renaissance, 33:2 (2003), 201–10. 7  Even the canon-defining anthology of Judges did not present one kind of rogue text. Even though the majority of texts in The Elizabethan Underworld were discoveries of criminal practices, which is the rogue text most often analysed in scholarship, other kinds of rogue writings were included. These were narratives of life and death (Blacke Bookes Messenger), descriptions of prisons (The Blacke Dogge of Newgate), and parodies (‘The Testament of Laurence Lucifer’, being part of the The Blacke Booke). 3 

18

CHEAP PRINT AND ROGUE PAMPHLETS

In order to do so, a more capacious definition of the ‘rogue pamphlet’ is needed. Rogue pamphlets are pamphlets (according to Joad Raymond’s definition ‘a short, vernacular work, generally printed in quarto format, costing no more than a few pennies, of topical interest or engaged with social, political or ecclesiastical issues’) which narrate the exploits of London criminals.8 As we saw in the Introduction, roguery usually carried connotations of trickery and property crime and thus excluded more serious crime (such as murder). This selection combines the texts used by historians and literary scholars, such as discoveries of criminals (pamphlets presenting taxonomies of London criminals) and life and death relations of named criminals and expands the chronology of them.9 By examining all these texts as rogue pamphlets we can appreciate how much they have in common: all follow the same form of writing about criminals by presenting their crimes as ‘pleasant tales’ or ‘jests’, thus connecting them to the crime, but also trickery.10 The publications analysed are spread more widely in terms of chronology, allowing an examination of the evolution of these pamphlets. The examination starts in 1590, since only four rogue pamphlets were printed before this date: three of them were reprinted after 1590 (and their reprints are analysed here) and the last one does not present urban crime, so it was not considered necessary to start earlier.11 The end date coincides with the beginning of the printed Proceedings of the Old Bailey, which created a more systematic narrative of the crimes of those tried at the sessions of the Old Bailey. The Proceedings of the King’s Commission of the Peace and Oyer and Terminer, and Gaol-Delivery of Newgate, held for the City of London and the County of Middlesex, at Justice-Hall, in the Old Bailey were published from 1678, and contained brief accounts of most (if not all) of the trials taking place at each session of the Old Bailey (eight times per year). They had to be approved by the mayor of London, thus making them a semi-official publication. These texts were, in some ways, a continuation of earlier material, since earlier pamphlets often included the trials of known criminals (and in one of Goodcole’s pamphlets, even a selection of trials).12 At the same time, they

Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, p. 8. In discoveries of criminals, I have also included descriptions of prisons; this is because they often present descriptions of the incarcerated criminals, but also of the jailors and others officers of the law (sometimes presenting them as criminals, as we will see in Chapter 2). 10  This aspect will be analysed in Chapter 2. 11  Robert Copland, The Hye Way to the Spyttell Hous. Copland and the Porter. Who so Hath Lust, or Wyll Leaue His Thryft (1536); Gilbert Walker, A Manifest Detection of the Moste Vyle and Detestable vse of Diceplay (1555); Thomas Harman, A Caueat for Commen Cursetors Vvlgarely Called Vagabones, Set Forth by Thomas Harman, Esquier, for the Vtilite and Proffyt of Hys Naturall Countrey (1567); John Awdeley, The Fraternitye of Vacabondes (1565). Only Copland’s text was not reprinted. 12  Henry Goodcole, Londons Cry: Ascended to God, and Entred into the Hearts, and Eares of Men for Reuenge of Bloodshedders, Burglaiers, and Vagabounds. Manifested the Last Sessions, Holden at Iustice Hall in the Old Baily the 9. 10. 11. 12. of December, Anno Dom. 1619 (1620). About the Proceedings, 8  9 

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ROGUERY IN PRINT

were a periodical form of crime pamphlet and one which had a clearer official function than the previous pamphlets. I have opted to finish before this development, but Kate Loveman and Rachel Weil have shown that rogue pamphlets continued to be produced in the 1680s.13 The Epilogue employs the pamphlet The Yorkshire-Rogue, or, Capt. Hind Improv’d; in the Notorious Life, and Infamous Death, of That Famous Highway-Man, William Nevison (1684) as a case study of the evolution of the rogue pamphlet after the end of the period under examination. This chapter examines the chronological spread and trends over time of rogue pamphlets as well as the main agents of the ‘communication circuit’ (authors–booksellers/printers–readers) to show that rogue pamphlets follow the conventions, style, and evolution of pamphlets more broadly.14 This will support the argument that these texts should be examined as ‘pamphlets’ and part of the cheap print about London (and not as a separate ‘rogue literature’). Through this analysis, I will show how such pamphlets were marketed as both informative and entertaining, and that these claims were evaluated by the readers. In particular, the tendency of individuals to respond to pamphlets mentioning their name shows that they could be taken very seriously and used to present contesting ‘truths’, both in order to defend a personal reputation, and in order to present political messages. In these ways, rogue pamphlets could influence public opinion in subtle ways. Rogue Pamphlets and Change Over Time

I have identified 122 extant editions of pamphlets about rogues over eighty years (including both original texts and reprints).15 This number of texts attests to a sustained interest in pamphlets of this kind, especially if we consider the lower likelihood of such pamphlets surviving in comparison to other, bulkier works, due to their perceived low literary value and their ephemeral physical appearance. see Robert B. Shoemaker, ‘The Old Bailey Proceedings and the Representation of Crime and Criminal Justice in Eighteenth-Century London’, Journal of British Studies, 47:3 (2008), 559–80. 13  Kate Loveman, ‘“Eminent Cheats”: Rogue Narratives in the Literature of the Exclusion Crisis’, in Fear, Exclusion and Revolution: Roger Morrice and Britain in the 1680s, ed. Jason McElligott (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 108–22; Rachel Weil, ‘“If I Did Say so I Lyed”: Elizabeth Cellier and the Construction of Credibility in the Popish Plot Crisis’, in Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England: Essays Presented to David Underdown, ed. Susan Dwyer Amussen and Mark A. Kishlansky (Manchester and New York, 1995), pp. 189–212. 14  About the ‘communication circuit’, see Robert Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History (London, 1990). 15  The selection of texts was done through keyword searches on EEBO (examining the occurrence of words such as ‘rogue’, ‘cosenage’, ‘robbery’, ‘theft’, and their variation in the full text, and not just the titles of such tracts. This is clearly not an exhaustive search but produced a significantly more extensive list of rogue pamphlets. Reprints are included because they showed a sustained interest in rogues, but also because reprinting the same text (and the choice of what to add and how to repackage it) could make different claims and influence how it was read. 20

CHEAP PRINT AND ROGUE PAMPHLETS

Figure 1  Pamphlets per year Before 1640, very few collectors were interested in such ‘frivolous’ printed materials.16 Additionally, the practice of stitching the sheets of cheap print, rather than binding them, meant that they could easily perish or be dispersed. Pamphlets of such size and format were not produced to be retained, and many authors commented on the fate of such pamphlets after they were read. A good example is Thomas Nashe, who jokingly admonished his readers to read his pages and ‘If there be some better than other, he craves you would honor them in their death so much, as to drie and kindle Tobacco with them… But as you love good fellowship and ames ace [sic], rather turne them to stop mustard-pots, than the Grocers shuld haue one patch of them to wrap mace in.’17 The 122 rogue pamphlets between 1590 and 1671 amounts to approximately 1.5 pamphlets per year, but this is a somewhat misleading way to view it. There were variations in the numbers published each year, especially in the context of the general increase in printed titles after 1640 (or 1650 in our case). What is especially obvious if one looks at the graph about the distribution of pamphlets Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999), p. 33; Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, p. 5. Raymond also, however, gives examples of collectors who preserved small pamphlets, albeit often in bundles and without caring to copy the pamphlets’ individual names in their inventories. 17  Thomas Nashe, The Unfortunate Traueller. Or, The Life of Iacke Wilton (1594), sig. A3v. Similarly, but less graphically, Nashe authorised his readers ‘to stop mustard pots with my leaues if they will’: Thomas Nashe, The Terrors of the Night or, A Discourse of Apparitions (1594). 16 

21

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per year is that there were a few very noticeable peaks of production. These peaks often occurred when a case or a pamphlet left a striking impression in people’s minds, thus creating an impetus for publications. These peaks were usually shortlived, dying off in the next few years. Publishers followed the logic of (modern) newspaper editors, in attempting to find the ‘hottest’ topic and produce as many relevant pamphlets as possible before the interest faded away. The first peak is the initial wave of cony-catching pamphlets in 1591–1592, which can be almost entirely attributed to Robert Greene. Nine out of the ten pamphlets published in this year were written by him; even though the tenth was a reprint of Harman’s A Caueat for Commen Cursetors (1567), the title was changed to The Groundeworke of Conny-Catching in order to mirror Greene’s pamphlets.18 Greene managed to find a niche in the market for this kind of pamphlets, and the high output in one year can only be explained as an indication of consumers’ interest in this style of writing. The fact that nine printers and booksellers were involved in publishing Greene’s pamphlets indicates that they thought these pamphlets would sell well.19 However, it could be connected as well to a style of writing that was in vogue in the 1590s but especially in the first two decades of the seventeenth century. This kind of writing focused on the changes in London, particularly how increased wealth and consumerism corrupted the mores of Londoners. Examples of this tendency were Thomas Nashe’s Pierce Penilesse (1592, same year as Greene’s pamphlets), most of Thomas Dekker’s pamphlets, Samuel Rowland’s Diogines’ Lanthorne (1607), and city comedies by playwrights such as Thomas Middleton and Ben Jonson, which dealt with London and its underworld (one of which, The Roaring Girl, co-authored with Dekker, narrated the story of a real female rogue by the name of Mary Frith).20 These texts shared a profound interest in exploring the changes underway in London, in a geographical, economic, social, and moral sense. This affected the production of more lowlife pamphlets which peaked again (even though less

Thomas Harman, The Groundworke of Conny-Catching (1592); Harman, A Caueat for Commen Cursetors Vvlgarely Called Vagabones, Set Forth by Thomas Harman, Esquier, for the Vtilite and Proffyt of Hys Naturall Countrey. 19  The printers were John Wolfe, Thomas Scarlet, Abel Jeffes, and John Danter. The booksellers included Thomas Nelson, William Wright, Thomas Gubbins, John Busbie, and C. Burby. 20  Thomas Nashe, Pierce Penilesse His Supplication to the Divell (1592); Samuel Rowlands, Diogines’ Lanthorne, (1607); Thomas Middleton, Gary Taylor, and John Lavagnino, Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works (Oxford, 2007); Dekker, The Non-Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker; Paul Griffiths, ‘Frith [Married Name Markham], Mary [Known as Moll Cutpurse] (1584x9–1659), Thief’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 11 January 2019, . More details are given in Chapter 2. See also Dieter Mehl, Angela Stock, and Anne-Julia Zwierlein, Plotting Early Modern London: New Essays on Jacobean City Comedy, Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama (Aldershot, 2004); David M. Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson (eds), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson (Cambridge, 2012). 18 

22

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spectacularly) in the beginning of the 1610s. This increase in the numbers of such pamphlets might have been assisted by the publication of Thomas Dekker’s Belman of London (1608) and Lanthorne and Candle-Light (1608), whose popularity can be evidenced by the fact that they were reprinted regularly in the next thirty years. A further testament to their appeal is that publishers used strategies of connecting other pamphlets with them. For example, Greene’s A Disputation between a HeeConny-Catcher and a SheeConny-Catcher was reprinted in 1615 as Theeues Falling out, True-Men Come by Their Goods: Or, The Belman Wanted a Clapper (1615), thus mendaciously presenting it as a continuation of the Bellman’s pamphlets.21 In the next twenty years pamphlets about rogues continued to appear in small numbers, usually one to two per year, with the publishers of such tracts supplying the reading public with a combination of reprints of particularly popular pamphlets as well as new ones. In the 1640s, however, pamphlets about rogues all but disappear, with only five texts being published in this decade. Even though this might be due to issues of survival, it seems more likely to be dependent upon the sudden shift in readers’ and publishers’ priorities. The marked increase of interest in war news and political tracts was a natural consequence of the great upheaval of life in the period of the Civil Wars. Furthermore, printing paper was expensive, and its supply limited, since it was imported from continental Europe.22 Consequently, the explosion of printed material relating to the political situation in England could only be possible if publishers privileged the publication of political tracts and war news at the expense of other, less topical (or less crucial to their readers’ everyday lives), pamphlets. The combination of political concerns and the publication of pamphlets about rogues proved far more successful in the 1650s, with the vast increase of pamphlets about highwaymen who were considered as Royalists or generally favourably disposed towards Charles II. Out of the twenty-six pamphlets about rogues printed in the 1650s, nineteen related to highwaymen. As will be shown in Chapter 4, this was due to the instability in the meaning of legality in this period and the political exploitation of the notoriety of specific criminals, chief among them being James Hind. This shows the extent to which the publication of pamphlets about rogues was contingent on developments in the print trade as well as the political climate. The last two decades of the period under examination (1650–1671) witnessed a significant increase in the publication of pamphlets about rogues. Between

Robert Greene, A Disputation between a HeeConny-Catcher and a SheeConny-Catcher (1592); Robert Greene, Theeues Falling out, True-Men Come by Their Goods: Or, The Belman Wanted a Clapper (1615, 1617, 1621, 1637). 22  John Bidwell, ‘French Paper in English Books’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Vol. IV, 1557–1695, ed. John Barnard and D.F. McKenzie (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 583–601; Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, pp. 72–3. Also see D.F. McKenzie, Making Meaning: ‘Printers of the Mind’ and Other Essays (Amherst, MA, 2002). 21 

23

Figure 2  Discoveries and lives of criminals

CHEAP PRINT AND ROGUE PAMPHLETS

1591 and 1640, sixty-two editions were published: this amounted to an aggregate of approximately 1.2 pamphlets per year. On the contrary, from 1650 until 1671 fifty-six pamphlets were printed, meaning a publication of approximately 2.7 pamphlets per year. This difference mirrors the general trend of the print trade in the period after 1640 for more but shorter pamphlets. In addition, it seems that bestselling pamphlets of the 1590s and early seventeenth century did not cross the 1650s divide; whereas until 1640 pamphlets such as A Disputation between a HeeConny-Catcher and a SheeConny-Catcher (1592) and Lanthorne and Candle-Light (1608) were reprinted regularly, they disappear after 1640 (with the exception of English Villanies, which was reprinted a last time in 1648).23 Nonetheless, it should be noted that a lot of similar stories crop up in later pamphlets, even if the pamphlets themselves are not reprinted. A good example of this practice is the pamphlet The English Gusman (1652), which included a story titled ‘How Hind robbed a Gentleman in Yorkshire, and afterwards came to the Inn where he lay to sup with him’.24 This is strikingly reminiscent of Ned Browne’s boast ‘I haue robbed a man in the morning, and come to the same Inne and bayted, yea and dyned with him the same day’, in Greene’s Blacke Bookes Messenger (1592).25 In the final twenty years, cases of specific criminals dominated pamphlet production, with clusters of pamphlets outlining specific cases or reacting to them. Four cases in particular generated significant amounts of pamphlets. The first related to James Hind, a highwayman who became famous due to his Royalist affiliation. The second pamphlet moment was due to Richard Hannam, a very successful burglar and escaped prisoner; or, at least, successful up to the point when his luck ran out in 1656, leading to his arrest and execution. The third cluster revolved around the case of Colonel James Turner, who was accused of organising a burglary against one of his clients in 1663 and 1664. Even though Turner was a lawyer, the title ‘Colonel’ was used by the publishers to emphasise his earlier participation in the Civil War, in an attempt to connect him to the pamphlets about highwaymen soldiers. Finally, a flurry of publications followed Claude du Vall, a (purportedly) French highwayman. His execution in 1669 caused a sensation and was allegedly attended by great numbers of high-born lords and ladies.26

Thomas Dekker, English Villanies, Eight Severall Times Prest to Death by the Printers (1648). Nonetheless, as we will see in the Epilogue, pastiches of earlier discoveries appeared in the 1680s. 24  Fidge, The English Gusman; or The History of That Unparallel’d Thief James Hind, p. 26. 25  Robert Greene, Blacke Bookes Messenger (1592), sig. B4v. Another example, where Hind mentions the same expression against lawyers as in one of Ratsey’s pamphlets, is presented in Chapter 2. 26  Walter Pope, The Memoirs of Monsieur Du Vall (1670), three or four editions were published in the same year; Elizabeth Cellier, The Ladies Answer to That Busie-Body, Who Wrote the Life and Death of Du Vall (1671); Samuel Butler, To the Memory of the Most Renowned Du-Vall: A Pindarick Ode (1671). 23 

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A change in the most prevalent themes of pamphlets can be traced in this period, namely from discoveries of crime to life and death narratives of individual criminals. Whereas before 1640 fifty-three discoveries were published, after 1650 seventeen appeared, with six of them belonging to one serial publication, The Wandring Whore. On the contrary, after 1640 the increase of lives of criminals shows an interest in named cases: while before 1640 nine lives of criminals were printed, after this date the number of lives shot up to forty-three. This development may be connected to the increase of regular domestic newsbooks after 1640.27 Newsbooks dealt primarily with political events, but they included some information about criminals, often on their last page. These reports whetted the readers’ appetite for more detailed coverage which could be provided by ‘true relations’ of the lives of such criminals.28 Additionally, the general fears of unruliness and crime waves after the Civil War, the celebration of bravery and a combat-oriented ethos, and the discovery that criminal stories could be employed for political reasons elicited greater interest in robbers’ lives. Even though discoveries of criminals continued to be printed after 1640, they were limited in number. This change suggests that the argument that crime publications in the eighteenth century became progressively more ‘journalistic’ or more focused on specific criminals misses the fact that this development can be traced in the second half of the seventeenth century.29 The Communication Circuit: Authors, Publishers, and Readers

As recent literature on the history of the book has shown, the meaning of a text is not a stable element, inherent in the text, but a product of the printing process which was influenced by all the agents involved in the ‘communication circuit’: the author, the publisher, the printer, the shipper, the bookseller, and the reader.30 In order to understand the role of rogue pamphlets in early modern English print trade, engaging with these agents in the communication circuit is important, even if it is not always easy to disentangle what authors and publishers contributed to the finished product. This analysis will focus on the ways in which authors and publishers marketed the pamphlets, stressing that they were useful and entertaining. Looking at (the admittedly few) reader responses, we can see that both claims were taken seriously and sometimes critically by readers. This

Joad Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks, 1641–1649 (Oxford and New York, 1996). 28  See examples from James Hind’s case in Chapter 4. 29  Mentioned in the Introduction. 30  Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette, p. 111; McKenzie, Making Meaning, pp. 237–58. See also Zachary Lesser, Renaissance Drama and the Politics of Publication: Readings in the English Book Trade (Cambridge, 2004); Helen Smith, ‘Grossly Material Things’: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2012). 27 

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part will also support the argument made in this chapter, that rogue pamphlets are part of ‘popular print culture’ and not a separate genre.31 Authors

The publication of rogue pamphlets and their vexed relationships with authorship follows the conventions of print production in this period, particularly relating to the emergence of the professional writer and the progressive rise of anonymous publication. Robert Greene, on his deathbed, apologised for the pamphlets he produced in the last years of his life: ‘I crave pardon of you all, if I have offended any of you with lascivious Pamphleting. Many things I have wrote [sic] to get money, which I could otherwise wish to be supprest.’32 It is difficult to know whether Greene’s repentance was genuine, but this comment illustrates the emergence of the professional writer in the late sixteenth century. The practices of the print trade and the development of a commercial book trade facilitated the appearance of authors who wrote for the market and who relied on the reading public for their remuneration. Even though writers were paid once for each manuscript, their continued access to print depended on the existence of a readership willing to pay again for their ‘wares’.33 Many well-known authors of this period, such as Robert Greene, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, and Samuel Rowlands, tried their hand at writing rogue pamphlets. One of the threads connecting these authors was a preoccupation with the city of London in their writing. Thomas Dekker, for example, produced plays, plague pamphlets, pageants, and other pamphlets, all relating to urban life.34 In this corpus of works, rogue pamphlets fitted well. The significance of such authors should not obfuscate the fact that many rogue pamphlets were printed anonymously or pseudonymously. Pamphlets claiming to be written by criminals implied intimate knowledge of the subject matter. Criminals such as John Clavell, James Hind, Luke Hutton, and Charles Courtney were the alleged authors of a number of rogue pamphlets.35 This suggests that the inclusion of a criminal’s name lent credibility to the account.

Joad Raymond, ‘Introduction’, in The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture: Volume One: Cheap Print in Britain and Ireland to 1660, ed. Joad Raymond (Oxford and New York, 2011), p. 4, but also the reappraisal of the term in Andy Kesson and Emma Smith (eds), The Elizabethan Top Ten: Defining Print Popularity in Early Modern England (Burlington, VT, 2013). 32  Robert Grene, Greenes Vision: Written at the Instant of His Death. Conteyning a Penitent Passion for the Folly of His Pen (1592), sig. A4r. 33  Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, pp. 58–9. Joad Raymond estimates that in 1591 there were two printed books for each Londoner, a number which rose to six books by 1681, p. 90. 34  Anna Bayman, Thomas Dekker and the Culture of Pamphleteering in Early Modern London, pp. 67–88. 35  John Clavell, A Recantation of an Ill Led Life (1628); James Hind, The Declaration of Captain James Hind (1651); Luke Hutton, The Blacke Dogge of Newgate (1596). 31 

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Charles Courtney, for example, justified the publication of his life narrative by claiming that he was defending his reputation: if anie thirstie or unsatisfied spleen, either rejoycing at my death, or bemoaning my ruine, shall desire to see unraveld the whole web of my life, he shall here behold the peece of my Travels: in reading which, I desire him to wash from his memorie the stains of my name: here shall he reade my diurnal transgressions, which I request him to pardon, and not to reprove (since no Curre is so cruell to bite the dead)36

In doing so, Courtney both advertised that this was an opportunity to present ‘the whole web’ of his life and attempted to direct the way that the pamphlet should be read. Pamphlets were often published anonymously or with the author’s initials, possibly because the author did not wish to be associated with this material. This was common, as pamphleteering was considered trivial, ‘vain’, and potentially seditious.37 Dekker’s decision not to include his name in the first edition of The Belman of London may be attributed to this. Equally, it could suggest that the author’s name was featured only when it had some ‘brand value’.38 The trend to publish anonymously picks up after 1640, with the majority of rogue pamphlets published anonymously: whereas before 1640 only ten out of sixty-three editions were published anonymously, after 1640 forty out of sixty-one editions were published without the author’s name. Even though in 1642 the House of Commons decreed that every publication should include the name of the author, many authors ignored this regulation and continued printing their works anonymously. Examining the authors who included their name in post-1640 pamphlets, it is obvious that some of them were known authors (such as Walter Pope and Edmund Gayton). Instead of adding his name, Samuel Butler identified himself as ‘the author of Hudibras’, thus connecting this pamphlet to his best-known work. Another reason for publishing a pamphlet anonymously could be the increased politicisation of cheap print after 1640 and the hightened scrutiny of publications to prohibit seditious material.39 However, as we will see in Chapter 4, publishers could also make political statements through the use of rogue pamphlets, even where such pamphlets were not attributed to a specific author. Sometimes, obscuring the author’s name could backfire: Walter Pope’s decision to publish The Memoirs of Monsieur Du Vall (1670) anonymously landed him in hot water. In it, he ridiculed the highwayman Claude Du Vall and the Charles Courtney, The Life, Apprehensio[n,] Arraignement, and Execution of Char[Les] Courtney (1612), sig. B2r, emphasis mine. It is not necessary that Courtney wrote this himself; regardless, it suggests that defending one’s reputation was a reason for the publication of such texts. 37  Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, p. 9. 38  For the use of Dekker’s name in various publications, see Bayman, Thomas Dekker and the Culture of Pamphleteering in Early Modern London, p. 21. 39  McKenzie, Making Meaning, p. 168. 36 

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women who visited him in prison and lamented his execution. He was castigated for this, as can be seen from Elizabeth Cellier’s response The Ladies Answer to That Busie-Body, Who Wrote the Life and Death of Du Vall (1670): I to thy cost would soon defend their Fame [the ladies’ and the criminal’s], But Coward as thou art, thou hid’st thy Name40

Omitting his name makes the author all the more contemptible. Pope clearly felt he had to justify his position, and in subsequent editions, he included a last section titled ‘The Authors Apology why he conceals his Name’, where he mentions that some ‘will look upon this harmless Pamphlet as a Libell, and invective Satyre; because the Author has not put his Name to it. But the Book sellers printing his true name, and place of abode, wipes off that objection.’41 However, the fact that he still concealed his name suggested that even if it was not construed as libel, this pamphlet could still damage the author’s reputation. This comment also echoes the greater significance accorded to the publisher’s name in such publications. In order to appeal to their audience, writers followed a tradition of pamphleteering set by the Marprelate tracts, while also stressing that their contents were useful and entertaining. The Marprelate tracts advocated a Presbyterian platform through the medium of cheap print. According to Joseph Black, the Marprelate pamphlets sought to popularise the Presbyterian agenda ‘through the use of fictional strategies, a racy, colloquial prose, anecdotes anchored in the everyday details of their readers’ lives, and a willingness to put into print the personal failings of individual bishops’.42 This style and format was employed by the anti-Martinist campaign and also significantly influenced subsequent pamphleteering altogether.43 In rogue pamphlets, the imitation of the Martinist style is evident: rogue pamphlets used the same technique as Marprelate, employing the jest-book format to illustrate the crimes of criminals.44 Examples include ‘How a woman cosained a minister often groates’,45 ‘How a cosoning Life stole a cloake out of a Scriueners shop’, ‘How a man was cosoned in the euening by buying a guilt spoone’, ‘How Ratsey robd a Scholler of Cambridge, and causde

Cellier, The Ladies Answer to That Busie-Body, Who Wrote the Life and Death of Du Vall. Pope, The Memoirs of Monsieur Du Vall, p. 16. 42  Martin Marprelate, The Martin Marprelate Tracts: A Modernized and Annotated Edition (Cambridge, 2008), pp. xxvii–iii. 43  Lake and Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat, pp. 521–38. 44  Marprelate used this format to attack bishops: Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, p. 34. See Chapter 2 for more information on the employment of the jest-book format. 45  Thomas Johnson, A World of Wonders. A Masse of Murthers. A Covie of Cosonages (1595), sig. A4v. 40  41 

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him make an Oration to him in a Wood’, ‘How he troubled an honest Ale-wife not farre from Cripplegate: and how finally she requited him.’46 Examining these rogue pamphlets as part of popular print culture allows us to think more fruitfully about their contradictions: the pamphlet, influenced in a formative way by the Marprelate controversy, was a site of discussion, where the author addressed an audience in order to persuade.47 For this purpose, highlighting the significance of what was being written and making the contents entertaining could be efficacious. Such intentions did not preclude financial considerations as well: by making pamphlets more appealing, authors also made them more saleable and more memorable. Authors often highlighted the significance of rogue pamphlets by stressing their value as information and instruction. This is evident in prefaces: the author of A World of Wonders (1595), for example, stated in his preface that the criminal practices included in his pamphlet were meant: as a pretious glasse to see the frailitie of man, to vein the wickednesse of this world, the end of mischiefs, the punishment of such greeuous enormities & such like that therby, other seing the same may refrain the like, and seeke to shunne such paths as lead to distruction.48

This claim was so common in rogue pamphlets, that it could sometimes find its way even in the least expected places. In the pamphlet The Wandring Whore (1660) – a mostly pornographic description of prostitution – the author sought to demonstrate how useful his pamphlet was, by adding at the end an advertisement – paradoxically – to the ‘modest reader’: Some libidinous wretches out of despight to the design of the publisher hereof, and affection to the wicked Actors, concerned in the List, have censured, condemned, insinuated, and suggested the intent hereof to be for propagating of whoreing, and tempting Customers to go amongst them, instead of destroying them: This the world may be assur’d of, that instead thereof, some of them like rats have remov’d for fear of ruine, others have chang’d their names, some thereby have been denied Licences and thrust out of their parishes, others have profered gratuities to be obliterated.49

Samuel Rowlands, Greenes Ghost Haunting Coniecatchers (1602), sig. C2v; Anonymous, The Life and Death of Gamaliell Ratsey (1605), sig. Cr; Anonymous, The Life and Death of Griffin Flood Informer (1623), sig. A4v. 47  Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, p. 95. 48  Johnson, A World of Wonders. A Masse of Murthers. A Covie of Cosonages, sig. A2v. See also the pamphlets by Greene, Dekker, and Goodcole. 49  Anonymous, The Wandring Whore Continued a Dialogue between Magdalena a Crafty Bawd, Julietta an Exquisite Whore, Francion a Lascivious Gallant, and Gusman a Pimping Hector (1660), part 3, p. 15. 46 

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This ambiguous statement was probably intended playfully rather than seriously. Nonetheless, it suggested that the claim that this was a serious attempt to discover criminals was expected in such pamphlets, however tongue-in-cheek it was made. A different way to stress that such pamphlets were a timely intervention in the growing issue of crime was to dedicate them to officers of law enforcement. Luke Hutton’s The Blacke Dogge of Newgate (1596) was dedicated to Sir John Popham knight, lord chief Justice of England, in order ‘to certifie you of the notable abuses dayly committed by a great number of very bad fellowes’.50 Londons Cry (1620) was dedicated ‘To the honorable descended and generous Knight Sir Edward Sackveile’ with the claim that this pamphlet was telling the truth, while John Clavell’s A Recantation of an Ill Led Life (1628) was dedicated to various figures of the Court as well as the Judges of the King’s Bench, the Chief Justice, the Kingdom’s Justices of the Peace and ‘to all the grave, and learned Serjants and Counsellours at law’.51 Such dedications portrayed rogue pamphlets as a serious discovery of criminal practices, with advice which could be acted upon to prevent crime. Presenting rogue pamphlets as news was another way to bolster their significance. In Greene’s Theeues Falling out, True-Men Come by Their Goods (1592), the preface begins by highlighting the contemporary thirst for news: ‘Newes and greene bushes at taverns new set up; every man has his Penny to spend at a Pint in the one, and his Eare open to receive the sound of the other.’ The narrator then promises that his news will bring about the discovery of the abuses of those cheaters that frequent London, making his ‘wares’ highly relevant to his audience.52 Another case in point is The Devils Cabinet Broke Open (1657). This was a reprint of A Recantation of an Ill Led Life (1628), a long poem written by the highwayman John Clavell in order to thank the king for pardoning him in 1628. The publisher of The Devils Cabinet Broke Open had the earlier text transcribed into prose, and attributed to an anonymous criminal who was sentenced to transportation in 1657. The fact that the preface to the reader was signed ‘From on Ship-board in the Downs, September 20. 1657’ created a false impression that

Hutton, The Blacke Dogge of Newgate, sig. A3r. Cathy Shrank thinks that this dedication was ‘possibly in gratitude for Popham’s successful intercession on Hutton’s behalf when he was convicted on a capital charge in 1595’: Cathy Shrank, ‘Hutton, Luke (d. 1598), Highwayman and Writer’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 11 January 2019, . Given the tone of the pamphlet, which is highly critical of the execution of justice, Popham might have been included as a way to show that the pamphlet was intended as a serious contribution to discourses on crime. 51  Clavell, A Recantation of an Ill Led Life, sigs A2r–B1v. This didn’t stop him from having a preface ‘to the Reader’ as well. 52  Greene, Theeues Falling out, True-Men Come by Their Goods: Or, The Belman Wanted a Clapper, sig. A2r, a reprint of Greene, A Disputation between a HeeConny-Catcher and a SheeConny-Catcher. 50 

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this was a contemporaneous account presenting new information, and not a text almost thirty years old.53 Authors often claimed that their pamphlet was intended to ‘set things straight’, distinguishing their account from other versions of the events described. This was an attempt to present their pamphlet as the authoritative version, something evident in the dedicatory epistle to Goodcole’s Londons Cry, where the author complained about the many ‘untruths divulgd in the world of Malefactors’ and stated that ‘to give the world satisfaction I have hastily written this small Pamphlet, wherein is nothing but truth’.54 In The Declaration of Captain James Hind the author was licensed by the criminal himself to provide a ‘true’ account: ‘whereas there hath been sundry and various Relations of the proceedings of Capt. James Hind, fraught with impertinent stories, and new-invented fictions; I am (in order thereunto) desired by the said Mr. Hind, to publish this ensuing Declaration, for satisfaction, & true information of the People’.55 A half-hearted acknowledgment that there were objections to this version as well as an attempt to establish its authority was expressed in The Trepan (1656): ‘now I proceed to a Discovery of what they have since acted, wherein… the Reader shall have unquestionable proofs as will silence all Cavills’.56 Claims of truth and the significance of rogue pamphlets could exist alongside reassurances that the pamphlet was entertaining and delightful. This was often the case with pamphlets claiming that their stories will incite laughter and delight. An example of this is the preface of The English Gusman (1651): Reader, thou wilt not finde this ensuing History set out, and garnish’d with a fine stile, and studied phrase; but (which is best of all) an ordinary Expression, a natural Story, and a pure Jest; That so the meanest may understand what they read, and not be perplexed with difficult words: I doubt not but upon perusal, Thou wilt find it pleasant and witty.57

The narration of a criminal’s ‘pranks’ or ‘merry tales’ from their lives were also intended to entertain the reader; this will be analysed in Chapter 2. As we will

Anonymous, The Devils Cabinet Broke Open: Or A New Discovery of the High-Way Thieves (1657), sig. A4v; Clavell, A Recantation of an Ill Led Life. 54  Goodcole, Londons Cry, sig. A2v. Emphasis mine. 55  Hind, The Declaration of Captain James Hind (1651), p. 1. 56  Samuel Vernon, The Trepan: Being a True Relation, Full of Stupendious Variety, of the Strange Practises of Mehetabel the Wife of Edward Jones, and Elizabeth Wife of Lieutenant John Pigeon (1656), p. 2. 57  Fidge, The English Gusman; or The History of That Unparallel’d Thief James Hind, sig. A4v. See also Anonymous, A Pill to Purge Melancholy: Or Merry Newes from Newgate: Wherein Is Set Forth, the Pleasant Jests, Witty Conceits, and Excellent Couzenages, of Captain James Hind (1652), p. 3. For more on delight in reading rogue pamphlets, see the section on title-pages in this chapter. 53 

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see in the next section, assurances that pamphlets would bring delight appeared often in title-pages. Publishers

Work on the history of the book has emphasised how the format and typographical features of a printed work affect its meaning. D.F. McKenzie has argued that it is impossible to divorce the substance of the text from the physical form of its presentation.58 This brings us to the province of printers and booksellers, who were usually responsible for the physical appearance of the printed work. The publisher provided the capital and decided on what to publish and how to market it. The term publisher is used somewhat loosely here: the printer and the publisher were usually different individuals. However, it is not always clear who made the decisions in terms of format, so unless specifically stated, I am using the term to refer to both printers and booksellers. Alexandra Halasz has warned against focusing too much on authorship, as ‘any authorial name creates a fiction of individual production’ and obscures other agents involved in the ‘communication circuit’.59 Nonetheless, we have seen that in rogue pamphlets the publisher’s name becomes progressively more significant: it was almost always included on title-pages, and after 1640 it was often the only name mentioned. Examining rogue pamphlets, it is clear that publishers were primarily responsible for the packaging of the text: the choice of size, format, and typographical elements. This does not mean that the author had no say in some decisions relating to the packaging of pamphlets. In his preface to the second edition of Pierce Penilesse (1592), Nashe complained that he couldn’t decide on the form of the pamphlet, because he was not in London at the time of the printing (in Nashe’s words, ‘feare of infection detained me… in the Countrey’) and the printer decided to go on regardless. As we will see, Nashe asked the printer to change the title-page, and the printer obliged him.60 This example highlights both that an author could hope for some control over the printing of his work and his limitations in this respect. Reprints of pamphlets were highly likely to be published without the author’s consent or influence in the pamphlet’s form. John Clavell’s A Recantation of an Ill Led Life (1628) was a pamphlet authored by a highwayman. Even though the first edition was produced in the author’s charge in 1628, in the same year a publisher (Richard Meighen) bought the copy and produced two more editions. A fourth edition appeared in 1634, where Meighen included an address from ‘The Stationer to the Buyer’:

McKenzie, Making Meaning, p. 200. Halasz, The Marketplace of Print, p. 68. 60  ‘A private epistle of the Author to the printer’ in the second impression of Nashe, Pierce Penilesse His Supplication to the Divell, sig. A2r. 58  59 

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Declaring That having purchased this Copie of the Author, during his imprisonment, and making quicke sale of the two first Impressions, was importun’d to forbeare a third, that the memory of the Authors fault (as hee allegedged) might grow cold, lest it stucke, as a freash and lasting Blemish on his future actions: To this nicitie of his, against my profit, I hitherto most willingly condescended.61

Here, Meighen made clear that he had intended to produce more editions but had been stopped from doing so by the author. However, the letter clearly implies that Clavell had nothing to do with this reprint, since the stationer did not consult with the author but ‘with many of the Authors friends, and wel-wishers’ – who would be unable to stop the reprint in any case – before deciding that another edition would be made.62 Reprints more broadly seem to have been produced without much attention to authors or licensing. This is the case with last dying speeches of criminals, which could be printed in a longer life-and-death narrative, but could also be detached from it and published separately (often by other publishers). In the case of The Speech and Confession of Mr. Richard Hannam (1656) and The Speech and Deportment of Col. Iames Turner at His Execution in Leaden-Hall-Street January 21. 1663 (1664), longer pamphlets existed which detailed more fully the actions and lives of these criminals. Especially in the former case, the publisher (George Horton) seems to have printed a shorter version of an already published pamphlet in order to bypass licensing laws, since Horton did not have the licence for the other pamphlets about Hannam.63 Publishers’ decisions to produce a text depended on whether they thought this was relevant to their clientele. Zachary Lesser has argued that publishers were also privileged readers, since ‘a publisher’s job is not just to read texts but to predict how others will read them’.64 Consequently, publishers chose texts which fitted with their publishing specialties.65 Indeed, some of the publishers involved in commissioning rogue pamphlets were known as publishers of cheap, ephemeral print, such as William Barley, T. Nelson, John Trundle, and William Wright.66 What is equally important, however, is the lack of specialisation in this field. Whereas ballads were published by a few, specialised publishers (from 1624

Clavell, A Recantation of an Ill Led Life (1634), sigs A2r–A2v. Ibid, sig. A2r. 63  Anonymous, The Speech and Confession of Mr. Richard Hannam, 1656; Anonymous, The Speech and Deportment of Col. Iames Turner at His Execution in Leaden-Hall-Street January 21. 1663 (1664). 64  Lesser, Renaissance Drama and the Politics of Publication, p. 8. 65  What Lesser calls ‘Politics of Publication’: Lesser, pp. 20–1. About publishers of cheap print, see also Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 74–80, 257–95; Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England, pp. 1–64. 66  Based on R.B. McKerrow, A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers in England, Scotland and Ireland, and of Foreign Printers of English Books, 1557–1640 (London, 1910). 61 

62 

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named the Ballad partners),67 rogue pamphlets were published by many different publishers in this period. Between 1590 and 1640, no fewer than thirty-four printers and thirty-six booksellers were involved in producing a total of sixty-two rogue pamphlets. From 1641 to 1670, twenty-six booksellers and only six printers were involved in the publication of sixty-five pamphlets.68 This suggests that they were considered a good financial venture, which could cater to a broad audience. This finding also follows broader trends of pamphlet production. Due to the economic practices of the printing house, pamphlets were a particularly convenient format for publishers and printers, and they have been characterised as the ‘motor’ of the print trade.69 Pamphlets provided quick remuneration for a small initial investment: pamphlets of few sheets could be printed in between more substantial jobs, costing little and, since they were bought by a wide clientele, providing a ready income. D.F. McKenzie has analysed how printing houses usually printed more than one work at any given time; this practice of concurrent printing was an expedient way to print pamphlets alongside more substantial works.70 The latter took longer to print, cost more, and targeted a more limited reading public, thus involving a higher level of risk. This could be counterbalanced by the small, inexpensive, and quick-to-print pamphlets. Rogue pamphlets were this kind of cheap publications. The main determinant for the price of a printed work in this period was the number of sheets of paper used.71 Given that the price of printed works before the 1630s was roughly half a penny per sheet,72 then most of the rogue pamphlets would cost between 2.5 and 4d; with a possible retail price up to 50 per cent more, their maximum price would be between 3.75 and 6d. This is in line with Robert Greene’s comment that his pamphlets (which were between four and six sheets long) were sold for 4d, thus suggesting a price between 0.7 and 1d per sheet.73 On the other hand, Cuthbert Wright, John Wright, Edward Wright, John Grismond, Thomas Pavier, and Henry Gosson. See Kris McAbee and Jessica C. Murphy, ‘Ballad Creation and Circulation: Congers and Mongers’, University of California, ‘English Broadside Archive’, , [accessed 25 August 2018]. 68  This is based on information given on the title-pages or provided by ESTC. The fact that after 1640 it was considered less important to include their name conforms to broader themes in early modern print trade, namely the progressive decline in significance of printers, as booksellers became more influential in the print trade: Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, p. 71. 69  Halasz, The Marketplace of Print, pp. 15–16. 70  McKenzie, Making Meaning, p. 25. 71  Even though pamphlets were printed on ‘pot paper’, a smaller and cheaper size of paper, this still accounted for a half to three-quarters of the cost of production; Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, pp. 72–3. 72  Raymond, p. 82; Francis Johnson, ‘Notes on English Retail Book-Prices, 1550–1640’, The Library, 5:2 (1950), 83–112. 73  In Greene, The Second Part of Conny-Catching, a farmer says ‘I bought a book for a groate’, meaning Greene’s A Notable Discovery of Coosenage (which was five sheets long). Greene, The Second Part of Conny-Catching, sig. B2v. 67 

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Luke Hutton claimed that if his readers ‘accept my penne and paper, it will countervaile the charge of six pence’.74 Since his pamphlet was six sheets long, this would suggest that it was priced at 1d per sheet. In the British Library copy of The Life, Apprehensio[n,] Arraignment, and Execution of Char[Les] Courtney (1612), ‘pr: 3d’ is written on the top left corner of the title-page. Even though it is not possible to ascertain when this was written, the price of 1 penny per sheet (since the pamphlet was three sheets long) agrees with the previous evidence.75 The price of printed works could occasionally be closer to the lower end of the scale: Francis Johnson has found in the inventory of a Cambridge physician of this period plays of ten to eleven sheets which were bought for 6d, which means that their retail price was between 0.6 and 0.55 per sheet.76 After 1640, rogue pamphlets were significantly shorter: out of fifty-nine in total published after 1640, forty-eight were between one and three sheets, which meant a retail price of between 1 and 3d; thus, even though book prices increased in this period to 1d per sheet retail price, rogue pamphlets became cheaper.77 Out of the 122 texts in this corpus, fifty-nine fell between one and three sheets. From these fifty-nine pamphlets, only eleven were published before 1640, and all of them were three sheets long. On the contrary, after 1640, twenty-two pamphlets were one sheet long and seventeen two sheets long. The same tendency is evident in the longer texts, which were between four and twelve sheets. These were predominantly published before 1640: fifty-three such pamphlets were published before the Civil War, whereas only eleven longer ones were printed after 1640. This dovetails with what is known about print production after the outbreak of the Civil War, when there was an increase in the number of titles produced as well as a trend to publish shorter quartos; this shows that in the case of pamphlets about rogues there was no increase in the total number of printed sheets published after 1640, just a differentiation in the way they were used.78 Rogue pamphlets followed the conventions of general pamphlet production not only in their size, but in their format as well. Excluding twelve pamphlets printed in octavo, one in folio, and one in duodecimo, all the other rogue pamphlets were printed in quarto, the common pamphlet format. Interestingly, A Recantation of an Ill Led Life (1628) and Certaine Characters and Essayes of Prison and Prisoners (1618) had a first, octavo edition, which was printed in the author’s charge. They were both picked up by publishers afterwards and reprinted three times in quarto.79 Even Mihil Mumchance, a reprint from the octavo Manifest

Hutton, The Blacke Dogge of Newgate, sig. A4r. Courtney, The Life, Apprehensio[n,] Arraignement, and Execution of Char[les] Courtney. General Reference Collection C.27.c.35. 76  Johnson, ‘Notes on English Retail Book-Prices, 1550–1640’, p. 91. 77  For prices, see Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, p. 83. 78  Raymond, p. 168; McKenzie, Making Meaning, p. 145. 79  The first edition of A Recantation of an Ill Led Life was printed ‘for the authous [sic] use’, while the first edition of Certaine Characters and Essayes of Prison and Prisoners is the only one 74 

75 

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Figure 3  Length of pamphlets pre- and post-1640 Detection, did not follow the original in its format.80 The choice of publication in short quartos presented these texts as pamphlets, which not only marked them as ephemeral but also connected them to other pamphlet publications, especially news pamphlets, which were aimed at a broad audience, in the hopes of selling or influencing public opinion.81 The fact that pamphlets about rogues echoed the publication trends of news pamphlets (or news books) is more evident after 1640. Rogue pamphlets, similarly to news publications, continued to be printed in quarto, whereas other forms of ‘popular’ printed material were progressively printed in octavo after 1640. A final example of the way in which rogue pamphlets followed broader terms in pamphlet production was the use of typesetting. Of the sixty-two rogue pamphlets printed between 1590 and 1640, forty-nine were printed in black-letter typeface, apart from their title-pages, dedicatory epistles (where they existed), and prefaces to the reader, which were printed in roman or italic. This even includes all the reprints of these pamphlets, which continue until 1648. The that does not mention a bookseller, which suggests that it was printed for the author. Clavell, A Recantation of an Ill Led Life; Geffray Mynshul, Certaine Characters and Essayes of Prison and Prisoners (1618). 80  Anonymous, Mihil Mumchance, His Discouerie of the Art of Cheating in False Dyce Play (1597); Walker, A Manifest Detection of the Moste Vyle and Detestable vse of Diceplay. 81  Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, pp. 102–22. The two aims need not be mutually exclusive. 37

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period from 1580 to 1610 marks the transition from black-letter to roman or italic typeface, so the use of black-letter by printers may suggest that they marketed these pamphlets as more ‘popular’.82 Nonetheless, after 1640 rogue pamphlets were printed in roman type, even though other kinds of printed works, such as ballads, still retained black-letter.83 Out of the sixty-one rogue pamphlets printed in the period 1640–1670, only three employed black-letter type.84 This reinforces the assumption that rogue pamphlets followed other pamphlet publications in their material aspects. This examination of the publisher’s role shows that they were very significant in the production of rogue pamphlets, making decisions about the publication and packaging of such texts. The numbers of stationers involved in their production and the format of such texts suggests that rogue pamphlets were considered as products which could appeal to a wide audience. In this, they mirrored developments in pamphlet production more broadly. Title-Pages and Advertising Techniques

So far, we have discussed the physical aspects of rogue pamphlets and the ways in which their format and small size suggested that they were marketed as ephemeral, less important, and cheap, available for a wide range of readers and requiring little investment from them. In addition, we have discussed how authors tried to advertise their pamphlets as useful and entertaining. Both impulses can more readily be illustrated with a final example, the use of titlepages in rogue pamphlets, whose appearance could be influenced by authors and publishers. The first part of the pamphlet that readers encountered was the title-page. Thomas Nashe complained bitterly that many readers ‘consider neither premisses There has been an intense debate about the use of black-letter as an indication of ‘popular print’: Charles Mish, ‘Black Letter as a Social Discriminant in the Seventeenth Century’, PMLA, Publications of the Modern Language Association, 68 (1953), 627–30; Zachary Lesser, ‘Typographic Nostalgia: Play-Reading, Popularity, and the Meanings of Black Letter’, in The Book of the Play: Playwrights, Stationers, and Readers in Early Modern England, ed. Marta Straznicky (Amherst, MA, 2006), p. 103; Angela McShane, ‘Typography Matters: The Branding of Ballads and the Gelding of Curates in Stuart England’, in Book Trade Connections from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Centuries, ed. John Hinks and Catherine Armstrong (New Castle, DE and London, 2008), p. 27. 83  This was not the case for all ballads, which has been seen as an issue of popularity. McShane, ‘Typography Matters: The Branding of Ballads and the Gelding of Curates in Stuart England’. See also the debate between Mark Jenner and Angela McShane focusing on the significance of the typeset used for ballads in 1660: M.S.R. Jenner, ‘The Roasting of the Rump: Scatology and the Body Politic in Restoration England’, Past & Present, 177 (2002), 84–120; Mark Jenner, ‘Reply’, Past & Present, 196:1 (2007), 273–86. 84  George Fidge, Wit for Mony. Being a Full Relation of the Life, Actions, Merry Conceits, and Pretty Pranks of Captain Iames Hind (1652); Anonymous, No Jest like a True Jest Being a Compendious Record of the Merry Life and Mad Exploits of Capt James Hind the Great Robber of England (1657, 1660). 82 

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nor conclusion, but piteouslie torment Title Pages on everie poast, never reading further of anie Booke, than Imprinted by Simeon such a signe’.85 Title-pages were important as advertising techniques: in order to draw readers, they used arresting titles, which could not only be read, but also cried out.86 Authors and publishers of rogue pamphlets, as I will detail below, used every technique available to them to make the title-pages of these pamphlets interesting to a broad audience. More specifically, they used to good effect familiar names and woodcuts connecting a specific pamphlet to previous, successful ones; alternatively, they emphasised the usefulness of reading pamphlets by highlighting their authority or newsworthiness. In order to understand that rogue pamphlets were packaged in such a way as to attract various readers, a comparison of them with the title-pages of Thomas Nashe’s printed works will prove indicative of the ways that other writers could ‘protect’ their texts from more lowly readers. Thomas Nashe consciously avoided arresting and interesting title-pages for his pamphlets. Even though – or, perhaps, because – Nashe was aware that a number of readers did not easily go past the title-page, he clearly did not try to make his title-pages attractive to his prospective readers. In the first edition of Pierce Penilesse, which was printed without Nashe’s consent, the printer advertised its content by putting on the title-page, after the title, that it ‘Described the over-spreading of Vice, and suppression of Vertue. Pleasantly interlac’d with variable delights: and pathetically intermixt with conceipted reproofs.’87 This title-page was, however, rejected by Nashe, who asked the printer in the next edition to ‘cut off that long-tayld Title, and let mee not in the forefront of my Booke, make a tedious Mountebanks Oration to the Reader’, thus disassociating himself from a characteristic kind of sales pitch encountered in markets and fairs.88 The next editions were as bare as most of the other works by Nashe.89 It is precisely this kind of sales pitch that title-pages of rogue pamphlets utilised. If the title-pages of Nashe’s works are compared to the ones from Greene’s cony-catching pamphlets (which are an excellent example of many of the marketing strategies used in rogue pamphlets), it is clear that the latter attempted Nashe, The Terrors of the Night or, A Discourse of Apparitions, sig. A4. Preachers also complained that many readers read only the title-page, or the first few pages of printed works: Arnold Hunt, The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and Their Audiences, 1590–1640 (Cambridge, 2010), p. 178. 86  Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, pp. 85–7. 87  Nashe, Pierce Penilesse His Supplication to the Divell (1592, 1st edition), title-page. 88  Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (1592, 2nd edition), sig. ¶r. 89  See, for example, Thomas Nashe, Strange Newes, of the Intercepting Certaine Letters, and a Convoy of Verses, as They Were Going Privilie [sic] to Victuall the Low Countries (1592); Nashe, The Terrors of the Night or, A Discourse of Apparitions; Nashe, The Unfortunate Traueller. Or, The Life of Iacke Wilton; Thomas Nashe, Christs Teares Ouer Ierusalem (1599). However, the kinds of readers this title-page is imagining suggests that Nashe was using the ‘mountebank’ style ironically. 85 

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to draw in the readers, both with the use of phrases advertising the contents in the same way as criers did and with the employment of woodcuts. Importantly, Greene’s cony-catching pamphlets established their own trademark, the rabbit (or cony) holding cards, lockpicks, and other tools of the rogue’s trade, which appeared in most of Greene’s title-pages.90 The cony was such a distinctive image for Greene’s cony-catching pamphlets that Harman’s reprint The Groundworke of Conny-Catching (1592) not only utilised a title that connected it to Greene’s pamphlets, but employed a similar woodcut on the title-page: namely, it re-used woodcuts from Greene’s pamphlets (featuring the cony with various suspicious tools), albeit on a smaller scale.91 On Greene’s title-pages, a variety of readers are welcomed to the pamphlet in a fashion highly reminiscent of marketplace wares. The title-page of A Notable Discouery of Coosenage (1591) imagined its own socially mixed audience: ‘Written for the general benefit of all gentlemen, cittizens, aprentises, countrey farmers, and yoemen, that may fall into the company of such coosening companions.’92 These kinds of readers were evoked in Greene’s prefaces and encompassed a variety of social backgrounds, from gentlemen to apprentices. Even in less obvious cases, the listing of the pamphlet’s contents on the title-page seems intended to appeal to readers by its vividness and playfulness: ‘A disputation, betweene a heeconny-catcher, and a sheeconny-catcher whether a theefe or a whoore, is most hurtfull in cousonage, to the common-wealth. Discovering the secret villanies of alluring strumpets. With the conversion of an English courtizen, reformed this present yeare, 1592. Reade, laugh, and learne’ (1592).93 The last sentence was echoed in Blacke Bookes Messenger (1592) title-page as ‘Read and be warnd, Laugh as you like, Judge as you find.’94 Advancing the claim that the contents were both useful, since they pertained to the discourse of criminal practices in London, and entertaining, by being narrated in a jocular fashion, was a way to cast the net wide, taking care not to discourage any kind of readers. Since it was common to view pamphleteers as exploiters of the ‘vulgar’,95 the claim that the contents were useful could be seen as an attempt to assuage the fears that these pamphlets catered for the idle desires of these readers, without sacrificing their appeal to entertainment. Other title-pages of rogue pamphlets advertised their value as entertainment or instruction: Greenes Ghost Haunting Coniecatchers (1602) claimed that its contents

Greene, A Notable Discouery of Coosenage; The Second Part of Conny-Catching; The Defence of Conny Catching; A Disputation, betweene a HeeConny-catcher, and a SheeConny-catcher. 91  Harman, The Groundworke of Conny-Catching. Reprint from Harman, A Caueat for Commen Cursetors Vvlgarely Called Vagabones, Set Forth by Thomas Harman, Esquier, for the Vtilite and Proffyt of Hys Naturall Countrey. 92  Greene, A Notable Discouery of Coosenage, sig. A2r. 93  Greene, A Disputation between a HeeConny-Catcher and a SheeConny-Catcher, sig. A2r. 94  Greene, Blacke Bookes Messenger, title-page. 95  Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, pp. 92–3. 90 

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Plate 1  Robert Greene, A Notable Discouery of Coosenage (1591), title-page.

Plate 2  Thomas Harman, The Groundworke of Conny-Catching (1592), title-page.

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were ‘Ten times more pleasant than anything yet published of this matter’, while The Life, Apprehensio[n,] Arraignement, and Execution of Char[Les] Courtney (1612) maintained that it was ‘worthy the note and Reading’.96 In the same vein, other pamphlets emphasised their newsworthiness and their authority as reportage of specific trials or crimes. Dekker’s subsequent edition of Lanthorne and Candle-Light. Or, The Bell-Mans Second Nights-Walke (1608), titled O per Se O (1612), advertised the fact that it depicted new crimes: ‘In which, are discovered those villanies, which the bell-man (because hee went i’th darke) could not see: now laid open to the world.’97 The title-page of Londons Cry (1620) attempted to establish its authority by maintaining that it was a report of the sessions in the Old Bailey: ‘Manifested the last sessions, holden at Iustice Hall in the old Baily the 9.10. 11. 12. of December, Anno Dom. 1619. Likewise heerein is related, the courts legall proceedings, against the malefactors that were executed at Tiburne and about London, and the chiefest offenders, there offences and confessions at large expressed.’98 Similarly, The Araignment of Iohn Selman, Who Was Executed Neere Charing-Crosse the 7. of Ianuary, 1611. for a Fellony by Him Committed in the Kings Chappell at White-Hall upon Christmas Day Last, in Presence of the King and Diuers of the Nobility (1612) kept the title-page as close to neutral reportage as it could.99 Particularly successful pamphlets, such as Greene’s or Dekker’s, were extremely saleable, and it is not surprising that other rogue pamphlets attempted to connect their titles to existing traditions. We have already seen Harman’s reprint titled The Groundwork of Conny-Catching (1592), but Greenes Newes Both from Heaven and Hell (1593) and Greenes Ghost Haunting Coniecatchers (1602) also found their way into print.100 Martin Mark-All, Beadle of Bridewell; His defence and Answere to the Belman of London (1610) was framed as a response to Dekker’s well-known The Belman of London (1608).101 Rowlands, Greenes Ghost Haunting Coniecatchers; Courtney, The Life, Apprehensio[n,] Arraignement, and Execution of Char[les] Courtney. 97  Thomas Dekker, O per Se O. Or A New Cryer of Lanthorne and Candle-Light Being an Addition, or Lengthening, of the Bell-Mans Second Night-Walke. In Which, Are Discouered Those Villanies, Which the Bell-Man (Because Hee Went i’thdarke) Could Not See: Now Laid Open to the World (1612). Dekker’s pamphlets continuously stressed the fact that they delivered new wares: Lanthorne and Candle-light (1608) claimed that it was a ‘second nights walke’ of the Bellman, and all its subsequent editions were emphasing their news value: the title-page of English Villanies Six Severall Times Prest to Death by the Printers; But (still reviving againe) are now the seventh time, (as at first) discovered by Lanthorne and Candle-light (1632) adds that it will uncover ‘another conspiracie of abuses lately plotting together, to hurt the peace of this kingdome’. Notice also the fact that the contents of the pamphlet are sketched on the title-page. 98  Goodcole, Londons Cry. 99  Anonymous, The Araignment of Iohn Selman, Who Was Executed Neere Charing-Crosse the 7. of Ianuary, 1611. for a Fellony by Him Committed in the Kings Chappell at White-Hall upon Christmas Day Last, in Presence of the King and Diuers of the Nobility (1612). 100  Barnabe Rich, Greenes Newes Both from Heaven and Hell (1593); Samuel Rowlands, Greenes Ghost Haunting Coniecatchers (1602) 101  Samuel Rid, Martin Mark-All (1610). 96 

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In order to create continuity between different pamphlets or to cash in on the success of previous ones, publishers often re-employed the same woodcuts in title-pages. The same woodcuts, or at least the same motifs, could be used on the title-page of numerous pamphlets, serving not only to decrease the cost of the pamphlet, but to make it more easily recognisable. We have seen how Greene’s cony was used in all of his cony-catching pamphlets, and how it was used in The Groundwork of Cony-Catching (1592). The other repeatedly utilised image was the Bellman. Used in Dekker’s pamphlets The Belman of London and Lanthorne and Candle-Light, which were reprinted twelve times in total, the image became a stock one.102 As such, it was used in the 1615 reprint of Disputation Betweene a HeeConnycatcher and a SheeCony-catcher where the title-page reads Theeues Falling out, True-Men Come by Their Goods: Or, The Belman Wanted a Clapper and the woodcut shows a man and a woman talking in the presence of the bellman. Considering that the bellman was irrelevant to the scene, and that his persona did not feature in the pamphlet at all, the only possible reason for his (both graphic and textual) inclusion was the desire to connect the pamphlet with the successful Dekker ones.103 After 1640, pamphlets’ title-pages did not change dramatically. The same tendencies to advertise the contents of the pamphlets and emphasise the pleasure derived from reading them can be discerned. Three major differences can, however, be noted: first, after 1640 the percentage of life and death stories increases dramatically, as pamphlets in this period become even more reportage-like.104 At the same time, this did not lead to an eschewal of pleasant stories or promises of pleasure from reading such texts.105 The second major difference

While at the same time it was not original: Samuel Rowlands has used a similar image in Diogines’ Lanthorne (1607), which was reused in the 1608 edition of Lanthorne and Candle-Light. There are textual links between the two as well – see the next chapter for the reasons behind re-employing this image. 103  Greene, Theeues Falling out, True-Men Come by Their Goods: Or, The Belman Wanted a Clapper. The Bellman is mentioned twice in the pamphlet, but only to show that he has written something similar, as when one of the two narrators mentions ‘I need not discribe the lawes of villanie, because the Bel-man hath so amply pend them downe in the first part of Connycatching’, ibid., sig. A4r. Similarly, in sig. B4v: ‘the Belman hath sworne in despight of the Brasill Caffe, to tell such a foule Tale of him in his Second part’. 104  As we saw earlier. 105  Anonymous, A Second Discovery of Hind’s Exploits: Or A Fuller Relation of His Ramble, Robberies, and Cheats in England, Ireland, Scotland, with His Voyage to Holland. Wherein Is Set Forth the Notorious Villanies of Theeves and Highway-Men. Full of Delight, and May Serve as a Guide to Gentlemen and Travellers, to Avoyd Their Treacheries (1652); S.E., The Witty Rogue Arraigned, Condemned, and Executed. Or, The History of That Incomparable Thief Richard Hainam. Relating the Several Robberies, Mad Pranks, and Handsome Jests by Him Performed, as It Was Taken from His Own Mouth, Not Long before His Death. Likewise the Manner of Robbing the King of Denmark, the King of France, the Duke of Normandy, the Merchant at Rotterdam, Cum Multisaliis. Also, with His Confession, Concerning His Robbing of the King of Scots. Together with His Speech at the Place of Execution. Published by E.S. for Information and Satisfaction of the People (1656); Anonymous, The Womans Champion; or the Strange Wonder Being a True Relation of the Mad Pranks, Merry 102 

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is that, since there was a significant increase in the number of anonymous publications after 1640, when publishers attempted to connect a pamphlet to previous ones, they usually chose known subjects, rather than known authors. Thus, the life and death of Thomas Knowles was titled in such a way as to connect it to the famous pamphlets about Hind: Hinds Elder Brother, or the Master Thief Discovered. Being a Notable Pithy Relation of the Life of Major Thomas Knowls His Many Exploits Escapes, and Witty Robberies (1652).106 Neither of these changes, however, were so dramatic as to alter the form of rogue pamphlets’ title-pages: title-pages such as The Catterpillers of This Nation Anatomized, in a Brief yet Notable Discovery of House-Breakers, Pick-Pockets, &c. Together with the Life of a Penitent HighWay-Man, Discovering the Mystery of That Infernal Society. To Which Is Added, the Manner of Hectoring and Trapanning as It Is Acted in and about the City of London (1659), or The Pleasant and Delightful History of Captain Hind (1651) continued an established tradition of advertising their contents as useful and delightful.107 Nonetheless, a significant change in the use of woodcuts on title-pages occurred: before 1640 most of the pamphlets had at least a woodcut on the title-page: thirty-five were illustrated with woodcuts. After 1640 the trend is reversed, and only twenty pamphlets bore any woodcuts, compared to forty with no illustration. This suggests an increasing reliance on words rather than images in order to advertise their contents. Readers

In the previous sections, we examined how rogue pamphlets advertised their contents as appealing to a wide audience by presenting them as informative, significant, and entertaining. This begs the question: could such claims be accepted by the readers? Gauging audience response for any kind of cheap print is fraught Conceits, Politick Figaries, and Most Unheard of Stratagems of Mrs. Mary Frith, Commonly Called Mall Cutpurse (1662); Anonymous, The Triumph of Truth: In an Exact and Impartial Relation of the Life and Conversation of Col. James Turner Which He Imparted to an Intimate Friend a Little before His Execution (1664). 106  Anonymous, Hinds Elder Brother, or the Master Thief Discovered. Being a Notable Pithy Relation of the Life of Major Thomas Knowls His Many Exploits Escapes, and Witty Robberies (1652). For more details, and the re-employment of one of Hind’s woodcuts in this pamphlet, see Chapter 4. 107  Anonymous, The Catterpillers of This Nation Anatomized, in a Brief yet Notable Discovery of House-Breakers, Pick-Pockets, &c. Together with the Life of a Penitent High-Way-Man, Discovering the Mystery of That Infernal Society. To Which Is Added, the Manner of Hectoring and Trapanning as It Is Acted in and about the City of London (1659); Anonymous, The Pleasant and Delightful History of Captain Hind: Wherein Is Set Forth a More Full and Perfect Relation of His Several Exploits, Stratagems, Robberies, and Progress, Both in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Holland: The like Never Heard of throughout All Ages. Together with His Letter to the King of Scots: And the Manner of His Life and Carriage: Further Shewing, How He Rob’d a Gentleman in Gloucestershire by Laughing: How He Rob’d Old Peny-Father the Excise-Man: How He Ro’d [sic] a Gentleman of 15 Pounds, by Laying a Cloak-Bag in the High-Way: And How He Neatly Cozened a Lawyer of His Watch. Likewise, Divers Other Remarkable Passages; in Relation to His Proceedings, Full of Mirth; and a Discovery of His Strange and Unparalleld Escapes. Published According to Order (1651). 45

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with difficulties because few readers recorded comments on books or left notes about their book reading. Even if they did so for more lengthy works, sometimes taking excerpts and including them in commonplace books, this was far less likely in cases of ephemeral texts.108 This is corroborated by research on rogue pamphlets, since readers rarely inserted marginal annotations or other signs (highlights, underlining, etc.) in rogue pamphlets.109 There is one exception to this finding: Anthony Wood (a known bibliophile of the seventeenth century, who collected cheap print material) not only included nineteen rogue pamphlets in his collection, but probably he (or someone else living in the seventeenth century) added some notes after The English Gusman (1652).110 The reader included handwritten information about Hind, gleaned from his/her personal knowledge. Thus, he/she has written that ‘Twentie horse of Hinds company this year robbed, committed 40 robberies about Barwik (not far from Lond) in the space of two hours.-about 22 Sept 1649.’ More comments were included, coming from people who had known Hind: for example, ‘one James Dewy... who long before my acquaintance with him was one of his desperate companions’, or ‘Arthur Rue a farmer of Oxon was his servant, a dour-right drudge at fighting, a rustical Hero from whom I have heard many of the pranks committed by Hind’. In this way, the reader sought to corroborate the stories included in the pamphlets, and sometimes found them to be untrue, as seen by the comment ‘[Hind’s] life was written by one who calls himself George Fidge is very weakly performed – many things are true in it, but most are false,

Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton, ‘“Studied for Action”: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livey’, Past & Present, 129 (1990), 30–78; William H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England, Material Texts (Philadelphia, PA, 2008); Ann Moss, Printed CommonplaceBooks and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford and New York, 1996); Adam Smyth, ‘Profit and Delight’: Printed Miscellanies in England, 1640–1682 (Detroit, MI, 2004). 109  This is based on examination of all extant copies of rogue pamphlets deposited at the British Library, the Senate House Library, and the Guildhall Library. 110  Greene, A Notable Discouery of Coosenage; Thomas Middleton, The Blacke Booke (1604); Dekker, The Belman of London; Rid, Martin Mark-All; Thomas Dekker, English Villanies Seven Severall Times Prest to Death by the Printers, Now the Eigth Time Discovered by Lanthorne and Candle-Light (1638 and 1648); Anonymous, The Humble Petition of James Hind (1651); Fidge, The English Gusman; or The History of That Unparallel’d Thief James Hind; Anonymous, A Notable and Pleasant History of the Famous Renowned Knights of the Blade, Commonly Called Hectors (1652); Anonymous, The English Villain, or The Grand Thief, a Full Relation of the Desperate Life and Deserved Death of R. Hanam (1656); Anonymous, The Devils Cabinet Broke Open: Or A New Discovery of the High-Way Thieves; Anonymous, The Fifth and Last Part of the Wandring Whore: A Dialogue (1661); Anonymous, The Lawyer’s Clarke Trappan’d by the Crafty Whore of Canterbury (1663); Anonymous, The Speech and Deportment of Col. Iames Turner at His Execution in LeadenHall-Street January 21. 1663; Anonymous, A True and Impartial Account of the Arraignment, Tryal, Examination, Confession and Condemnation of Col. Iames Turner (1664); Anonymous, The Cheating Solliciter Cheated: Being a True and Perfect Relation of the Life and Death of Richard Farr (1665); Anonymous, Leather-More or Advice Concerning Gaming (1668); Butler, To the Memory of the Most Renowned Du-Vall: A Pindarick Ode. 108 

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& many material things are ommitted’.111 This comment, in addition to the fact that Anthony Wood had bound together various rogue pamphlets with other texts about criminals suggests that such pamphlets were considered a way to find out more about criminals, but their claims of veracity were not accepted uncritically.112 Even if we do not have much information about the readers of rogue pamphlets, we can reach some conclusions about the kinds of readers authors and publishers sought to attract: as we have seen from the ways authors and publishers packaged their wares, it seems likely that they wanted to attract a variegated audience, ranging from artisans (or even further down the social scale) to gentlemen.113 Sometimes they identified different kinds of readers: in An Excellent Comedy, Called, The Prince of Priggs (1651), the author split the readers into ‘the wise’ and ‘the vulgar’: ‘Pamphlets no Critick can more contemn then my self; however, it may please thousands of the vulgar (for whose sakes I am purposely plain and spungey) something there is here that will inform the wiser sort.’114 It is possible that this address was meant as flattery to the readers, who may consider themselves above such humble readers, regardless of their actual station; nonetheless, the author addresses a wide range of readers. Anthony Wood’s example suggests that some affluent readers collected such pamphlets. Given the high

Fidge, The English Gusman; or The History of That Unparallel’d Thief James Hind from the Bodleian Library, Anthony Wood’s collection, Wood 372 (2). 112  Texts included: Anonymous, The Humble Petition of James Hind (1651); Fidge, The English Gusman; or The History of That Unparallel’d Thief James Hind (1652); Anonymous, The Witty Rogue Arraigned, Condemned, and Executed. Or, The History of That Incomparable Thief Richard Hainam. (1656); Anonymous, A True and Impartial Account of the Arraignment, Tyral, Examination, Confession and Condemnation of Col. Iames Turner (1663); Anonymous, The Speech and Deportment of Col. Iames Turner at His Execution in Leaden-Hall-Street (1663); Anonymous, The Triumph of Truth: In an Exact and Impartial Relation of the Life and Conversation of Col. James Turner (1663); Anonymous, The Life and Death of James, Commonly Called Collonel, Turner (1663); Anonymous, The Cheating Solliciter Cheated: Being a True and Perfect Relation of the Life and Death of Richard Farr (1665); Anonymous, A Narrative of the Life, Apprehension, Imprisonment, and Condemnation of Richard Dudly (1669); Pope, The Memoires of Monsieur Du Vall: Containing the History of his Life and Death (1670); Butler, To the Memory of the Most Renowned Du-Vall: A Pindarick Ode (1671); Denzil Holles, A True Relation of the Unjust Accusation of Certain French Gentlemen, Charged with a Robbery (1671); Richard Head, Jackson’s Recantation, Or, The Life and Death of the Notorius [sic] High-way-man (1674); Anonymous, The Grand Pyrate: Or, The Life and Death of Capt. G. Cusack (1676); Anonymous, Sadler’s Memoirs: Or, The History of the Life and Death of that Famous Thief Thomas Sadler (1677); Anonymous, Dangerfield’s Memoires, Digested into Adventures, Receits, and Expenses (1685); Elkanah Settle, The Notorious Impostor, Or, The History of the Life of William Morrell, Alias Bowyer, Sometime of Banbury, Chirurgeon (1692); Elkanah Settle, The Second Part of the Said History of the Life of William Morrell, Alias Bowyer, Sometime of Banbury, Chirurgeon (1692). From the Bodleian Library, Anthony Wood’s collection, Wood 372. 113  See Greene’s address to the Reader on p. 40. 114  J.S., An Excellent Comedy, Called, The Prince of Priggs (1651), sig. A2r. 111 

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literacy rates and the higher wages in London, it seems possible that a wider section of the population may have been able to access such pamphlets.115 One group that is commonly excluded from the potential audience of rogue pamphlets is women. As we have seen, most prefaces which specified groups of readers addressed them to men (gentlemen, merchants, apprentices, etc.). This did not change even with the publication of two pamphlets about Mary Frith in the 1660s. Mary Frith (or Moll Cutpurse) was a famous cross-dressing criminal from the early Jacobean period, so it would make sense for such a pamphlet to include advice to women to avoid this kind of life.116 However, and in common with most other pamphlet literature, rogue pamphlets were addressed to men, something evident from prefaces and title-pages. Women were not expected as readers, which mirrored the lower rates of literacy among them, but also the cultural expectation that women should not read ‘trifles’.117 In addition, some of the stereotypes most commonly used in rogue pamphlets, of the prodigal son, the trickster, and the good fellow, were employed as constructions of masculinity, so they were more relevant for a male audience.118 It seems likely that post-1640 more women (as well as member of lower social groups) were – or expected to be – readers.119 In the eighteenth century, novels were expected to attract a female audience.120 This in not evident in the texts examined here. The only case where we are aware of a female reader is in The Ladies Answer to That Busie-Body, Who Wrote the Life and Death of Du Vall (1670) mentioned earlier, where Elizabeth Cellier clearly had read the pamphlet in

Margaret Spufford, Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and Its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1981), pp. 23–7, 32–3; David Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 145, 147; Thomas Laqueur, ‘The Cultural Origins of Popular Literacy in England 1500–1850’, Oxford Review of Education, 2:3 (1976), 255–75. For wages, see Jeremy Boulton, ‘Wage Labour in Seventeenth-Century London’, The Economic History Review, 49:2 (1996), 268–90. 116  Anonymous, The Life and Death of Mrs. Mary Frith. Commonly Called Mal Cutpurse (1662); Anonymous, The Womans Champion. There was also the early seventeenth century play by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker, The Roaring Girle. Or Moll Cut-Purse (1611). 117  Martine Van Elk, Early Modern Women’s Writing: Domesticity, Privacy, and the Public Sphere in England and the Dutch Republic, Early Modern Literature in History (Cham, Switzerland, 2017), pp. 27–80. 118  See Chapter 2, but also Tim Reinke‐Williams, ‘Misogyny, Jest‐Books and Male Youth Culture in Seventeenth‐Century England’, Gender & History, 21:2 (2009), 324–39. 119  Halasz, The Marketplace of Print, p. 11; Spufford, Small Books and Pleasant Histories; Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640; Raymond, ‘Introduction’, in The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, p. 8. 120  Ann Bermingham and John Brewer, The Consumption of Culture, 1600–1800: Image, Object, Text, Consumption and Culture in the 17th and 18th Centuries (London and New York, 1995); Vivien Jones, Women and Literature in Britain, 1700–1800 (New York, 1999); Katherine Binhammer, ‘The Persistence of Reading: Governing Female Novel-Reading in Memoirs of Emma Courtney and Memoirs of Modern Philosophers’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 27:2 (2003), 1–22. 115 

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order to answer.121 It is not clear if Pope had expected a female audience, but he definitely did not anticipate such a passionate response: in the addition to the new editions of The Memoires of Monsieur Du Vall (1670), he argued that he had included an explanation for his anonymity in order to ‘exempt me from being so pitiful and inconsiderate a fellow, as possibly some incensed females may endeavour to represent me’.122 The ‘incensed females’ could also write, much to Pope’s chagrin: Cellier accused Pope of being a coward, not only for his anonymity but also because he ‘employ[ed] thy Pen onely against Weak Women, and Dead Men’.123 Cellier presents women as weak because they cannot defend their honour. This seems oxymoronic, since she defended the ladies’ honour through print, thus showing that not only were such pamphlets read, but they could also be considered significant enough to warrant a response in kind. The same was true with A Vindication of a Distressed Lady (1663) which was an answer to The Lawyers Clarke Trappan’d by the Crafty Whore of Canterbury (1663). The initial pamphlet was a life narrative of a (purported) confidence trickster, Anne Carleton, which follows the conventions of rogue pamphlets, by presenting her life and her tricks. This was a famous case, which provoked the publication of a number of pamphlets, attacking or defending Carleton. It also prompted Carleton herself to write, a rare occasion in this period. The story is long and interesting, but what is relevant for our purposes is the expectation that such a pamphlet could be read widely and thus had to be answered fully through print.124 These two cases are intriguing examples of women readers, who considered that they needed to defend their own or their gender’s reputation and did not baulk at using print to do so. Conclusion

This chapter has shown that pamphlets narrating the practices of criminals committing various kinds of property crime (thieves, robbers, confidence tricksters, all encompassed in the definition of ‘rogue’ employed in early modern England) were published throughout the period under investigation. Even though it is clear that pamphlet production was uneven, there was sustained interest in such publications, evidenced by the continuous appearance of both original pamphlets and reprints. One of the overarching themes of this monograph is that rogue pamphlets should be examined as part of cheap print about London; See p. 29. Pope, The Memoirs of Monsieur Du Vall, p. 16. 123  Cellier, The Ladies Answer to That Busie-Body, Who Wrote the Life and Death of Du Vall. 124  Anonymous, A Vindication of a Distressed Lady in Answer to a Pernitious, Scandalous, Libellous Pamphlet Intituled The Lawyers Clarke Trappan’d by the Crafty Whore of Canterbury (1663). There are more pamphlets relating to this case, and they have been analysed by Mihoko Suzuki, ‘The Case of Mary Carleton: Representing the Female Subject, 1663–73’, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 12:1 (1993), 61–83. The case goes beyond my examination of rogue pamphlets, but The Lawyers Clarke was written as a rogue pamphlet, which is why I include it here. 121  122 

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supporting this claim, this chapter has shown that rogue pamphlets follow the trends of pamphlet production more broadly, in terms of format, typography, themes and the numbers of stationers involved in their publication. Additionally, this chapter has illustrated the marketing strategies used by authors and publishers in order to make rogue pamphlets appealing to a wide range of readers: employing the physical characteristics of pamphlets (the fact that they were short, inexpensive, ephemeral) but also title-pages, addresses to the reader, and woodcuts, pamphleteers advertised such pamphlets as informative and entertaining. We may have few examples of readers’ response, but these suggest that readers could take such claims seriously, evaluating their accuracy and sometimes their claims of entertainment (as we have seen, Wood described Hind’s actions as ‘pranks’). The attempt to address a wide audience could be connected to financial considerations, with the intention to appeal to both the ‘learned’ and the ‘unlearned’ in order to maximise profit from the publications. However, ‘popularity’ in print could also be a deliberate strategy, a way to participate in political (broadly defined) debates or discussions.125 Joad Raymond has argued that ‘it was precisely this capacity to speak to the unknown, to the crowd, the multitude, even the many-headed hydra, that empowered the pamphlet to imagine a public, and to speak to and fashion the public’s opinions’.126 This ‘popularity’ could be employed by rogue pamphlets in order to turn the stories of London criminals into commentary on the political and social transformations of their times, as we will see in the next chapters.

Raymond, ‘Introduction’, in The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, pp. 5–6. Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, p. 95. Michelle O’Callaghan, ‘“Thomas the Scholer” versus “John the Sculler”: Defining Popular Culture in the Early Seventeenth Century’, in Literature and Popular Culture in Early Modern England, ed. Matthew Dimmock and Andrew Hadfield (Farnham, 2009), p. 56 examines ‘popularity’ as a strategy. Even though O’Callaghan does not examine how this strategic use of ‘popularity’ could serve political aims, this was precisely what John Taylor did in his Civil War pamphlets, see Bernard Capp, ‘Taylor, John [Called the Water Poet] (1578–1653), Poet’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 11 January 2019, . 125  126 

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2 Laughter, Tricksters, and Good Fellows

At the beginning of Jests to Make You Merie (1607), Thomas Dekker defines a jest as: the bubling vp of wit. It is a Baum which beeing well kindled maintaines for a short time the heate of Laughter. It is a weapon wherewith a fool does oftentimes fight, and a wise man defends himselfe by. It is the food of good companie, if it bee seasoned with iudgement: but if with too much tartnesse, it is hardly disgested but turne to quarrel. A iest is tried as powder is, the most sudden is the best. It is a merrie Gentleman and hath a brother so like him, that many take them for Twins: For the one is a Iest spoken· the other is a Iest done.1

This definition highlights many issues which will be significant in this chapter: it connects jests with laughter and wit, and it suggests that their use in social interactions can distinguish wise men from fools, lead to merriment and good company, but also to a quarrel if the jest is too malicious. Finally, a jest can be a funny story or a trick or prank. This chapter will show how rogue pamphlets employed jesting in all the different forms Dekker suggests. It will highlight the ways in which rogue pamphlets appropriated the form (and often content) of the jest-book, in order to narrate stories about witty trickster criminals. These stories led to the ‘bubbling up’ of laughter, but could also work in various ways, something that Dekker seems to recognise: on the one hand, authors could use laughter as satire, a way to correct abuses evident in society at large. On the other, laughter could foster good fellowship, a feeling of community and merriment. I argue that these different functions coexisted in rogue texts and the ambivalence of laughter allowed the creation of an ambivalent image of criminals. This focus on laughter complicates previous treatments of rogue pamphlets, which argue that such pamphlets were intended to incite fear or disgust towards

Thomas Dekker, Jests to Make You Merie: With the Coniuring vp of Cock VVatt, (the Walking Spirit of Newgate) to Tell Tales. Vnto Which Is Added, the Miserie of a Prison, and a Prisoner. And a Paradox in Praise of Serieant, (1607), p. 1. 1 

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the ‘criminal underworld’. Such approaches combine narratives of state-building and hegemony (privileging an ordered society by constructing the ‘anti-society’ of criminals to act as an anti-symbol), of self-representation needing an ‘other’ to act as its mirror. As we saw, when rogue pamphlets received concentrated attention from scholars in the 1980s, these texts were usually viewed as part of an ‘othering’ process through which the elites attempted to marginalise and stigmatise the mass of poor and unemployed. This work paralleled and drew on Said’s insights into Orientalism, namely his understanding that the creation in literature of two separate worlds, Western and Oriental, acted as a way of containing and dominating the ‘Other’, while increasing the coherence of ‘us’, or the West.2 The idea that the representation of what is alien serves to discursively create and contain it was the basis of the inversion-containment position of New Historicism, as we saw in the Introduction. Drawing upon the idea articulated by Stuart Clark that early modern thought experienced and conceptualised the world in binary oppositions, scholars such as William Carroll, A.L. Beier, and Peter Lake have stated that rogue pamphlets depicted a battle between order and chaos, fought in the streets of London by law enforcers and criminals.3 Peter Lake insisted that cheap crime pamphlets depicted two idealised images of contemporary society, one of order and one of chaos, pitted against each other and that this led to the marginalisation of vagrants and prostitutes.4 Lake acknowledges that crime pamphlets employ the ‘festive mode of inversion’, evoked by ‘the narrative dwelling at some length, and in considerable titillating detail, on the nightmare vision of the world turned upside down evoked by crime’. However, he argues that ‘the moralised version [namely the idea that the world was righted again by the actions of the human authorities and divine providence] always won out’.5 A.L. Beier argues that the recording of deviance was instrumental in shaping mid-Tudor norms of social relations, by casting rogues as subjects that were feared and liable to punishment: ‘The rogue literature… more than confirmed the learned theory of vagrancy [that vagrants were criminals, parts of a specialised ‘anti-society’]; it elaborated and propagated it.’6 Paul Griffiths, while Edward W. Said, Orientalism (Harmondsworth, 1985), p. 3. Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1997), p. 15; Stuart Clark, ‘Inversion, Misrule, and the Meaning of Witchcraft’, Past & Present, 87 (1980), 98–127. See also Carroll, Fat King, Lean Beggar, p. 15. 4  Lake, ‘Deeds against Nature: Cheap Print, Protestantism and Murder in Early Seventeenth Century England’, p. 277; Peter Lake, ‘From Troynouvant to Heliogabulus’s Rome and Back: “Order” and Its Others in the London of John Stow’, in Imagining Early Modern London: Perceptions and Portrayals of the City from Stow to Strype, 1598–1720, ed. J.F. Merritt (Cambridge, 2001), p. 249. 5  Lake and Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat, pp. xx–i, 128. 6  Beier, Masterless Men, p. 8; A.L. Beier, ‘New Historicism, Historical Context, and the Literature of Roguery: The Case of Thomas Harman Reopened’, in Rogues and Early Modern English Culture, p. 111. 2  3 

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acknowledging that ‘the worlds of citizens and criminals crossed all the time’, considers marginality a ‘political myth’, a way of discursively setting citizens against criminals in a time when it was feared that London was changing so fast that it would be ‘lost’ to its inhabitants.7 In a characteristic quote, Griffiths argued that pamphleteers of rogue pamphlets were ‘hack-authors whose main aim was to say over and over again that “criminals” were deviant, different, and distant’.8 According to this logic, the authors of these pamphlets presented the criminal as a fearsome opponent to law and order, with a view to strengthening the ‘imagined community’ of the (non-criminal) citizens of London.9 Even Steve Mentz, who recognises that in rogue pamphlets the legal and outlaw worlds often overlap, argues that they are still presented as opposites because social order depended on these binaries.10 This approach of seeing rogue pamphlets as othering the criminal and the poor reached its culmination in the work of Michael Long, Linda Woodbridge, and Patricia Fumerton. Michael Long has argued that these pamphlets construct this criminal type as ‘the diametric opposite of the godly subject’, the ‘anti-subject’ itself, and that ‘the various conycatchers, bawds, foists and legions of other criminal types are not simply criticised for their outlawed activities but are effectively demonised’.11 Linda Woodbridge and Patricia Fumerton have argued that the basic function of rogue pamphlets, whether as part of official discourse or as literature targeted at the middling sort, was to obscure the problem of poverty. Patricia Fumerton has maintained that through the pamphlets, the itinerant poor were transformed into idle rogues, who chose to steal and deceive rather than work. The actual problem of the poor was thus obfuscated by being presented as a matter of choice, rather than circumstance.12 Such analyses often home in on the harsh language employed in the pamphlets to describe criminals: ‘these vilanous vipers, unworthie of the name of men, base rogues... being outcasts of God, vipers of the world, an excremental reversion of sin’, ‘these hellmoths, that eat a man out of bodie & soule’, a ‘fraternity of falsehood, and fellowship of fraud’, ‘a basiliske of a common

Paul Griffiths, Lost Londons, pp. 143–7, 177. Ibid., p. 137. 9  This term is employed by Benedict Anderson to show how nations constitute socially constructed communities, which are not based on personal interaction between their members but rely on technology (especially print) to foster a sense of shared identity. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. edn (London, 1991). Here I use the term to refer to the way print constructed the imagined community of Londoners. 10  Mentz, ‘Magic Books: Cony-Catching and the Romance of Early Modern London’, p. 252. 11  Michael Long, ‘Constructing the Criminal in English Renaissance Rogue Literature Transgression and Cultural Taboo’, Cahiers Élisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies, 54:1 (1998), 1–2 (emphasis mine). 12  Patricia Fumerton, ‘Making Vagrancy (In)Visible: The Economics of Disguise in Early Modern Rogue Pamphlets’, English Literary Renaissance, 33:2 (2003), 211–27. 7  8 

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wealth’, ‘these Conny-catchers, these vultures, these fatall Harpies, that putrifie with their infections, this flourishing estate of England, as if they had their consciences sealed with a hot iron’, ‘licentious rebels’, and in the Bellman’s words, the ‘Ragged Regiment: Villaines they are by birth, Varlets by education, Knaves by profession, Beggars by the stattute and Rogues by act of Parliament. They are the idle drones of a Countrie, the Caterpillers of a common wealth, and the Aegiptian lice of a Kingdome.’13 The language of infection, monstrosity, and sacrilege recurs in rogue pamphlets.14 However, in the same texts, the lives of the criminals were often depicted as exciting and funny, and the narration of tricks was intended to bring pleasure. This made it difficult for readers to decide how serious the moralising lines were. Most analyses of rogue pamphlets often sideline laughter, even though it is clear that parts of the rogue pamphlets are intended to provoke such a response from their readers. When the funny stories are analysed, they are taken as evidence that rogue pamphlets were ‘merry’ and disengaged from reality: we have seen how Beier described the ‘amusing stories’ of the literature as ‘trivial’ or how scholars of the eighteenth century have considered these publications as entertaining.15 Linda Woodbridge, however, claims that laughter plays a far more sinister role in these pamphlets: laughter here is again meant to present criminals as ‘Other’. According to her, these publications were consciously styled after jest-books, so as to ‘identify the lowliest poor as funny, worthy of contemptuous laughter rather than social concern’.16 Woodbridge argues that by laughing, readers ignored the harsh realities of the life of the poor, turning them into fictional rogues and villains. However, more recent research on laughter has shown that early modern theories of laughter encompassed five different concepts: superiority (laughing at the folly of someone), sociability (laughing with someone), reforming (satire), incongruity (laughter as surprise), and relief (as physiological release).17 The concepts of reformation, superiority, and sociability in particular are central to my analysis of rogue pamphlets. As I will show, the funny stories narrated in these pamphlets are expected to elicit the laughter of the audience, but the readers are frequently invited to laugh with the criminal and at their victims. I Greene, A Notable Discouery of Coosenage, sig. Dr; Rowlands, Greenes Ghost Haunting Coniecatchers, sig. A2v; Rid, Martin Mark-All, sig. B3v; Greene, The Second Part of ConnyCatching, sig. *3r; Clavell, A Recantation of an Ill Led Life, sig. B6v; Dekker, The Belman of London, sigs B4r–B4v. 14  More about this argument in Long, ‘Constructing the Criminal in English Renaissance Rogue Literature Transgression and Cultural Taboo’, pp. 1–25. 15  See the Introduction for more information. 16  Woodbridge, ‘Jest Books, the Literature of Roguery, and the Vagrant Poor in Renaissance England’, p. 209. 17  Mark Knights and Adam Morton, ‘Introduction’, in The Power of Laughter and Satire in Early Modern Britain: Political and Religious Culture, 1500–1820, ed. Mark Knights and Adam Morton (Woodbridge, 2017), p. 2. 13 

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argue that inversion and laughter are used differently in these texts: inversion does not necessarily affirm the social hierarchy, by demonstrating that stealing or deceiving is (always) morally wrong. On the contrary, these pamphlets often subvert established narratives by presenting agents of law enforcement as worse criminals than the rogues and asking for the correction of their abuses. More broadly, these pamphlets form part of the literature on London which is ambivalent towards the metropolis. In these texts, the wit of the city (which is considered constitutive of London’s wealth and importance) is both celebrated and criticised, and rogues are depicted as sharing this characteristic. In addition, rogue pamphlets often show how criminals and the expected audience share common values, chief among them being conviviality. Conviviality, or – to use a term that contemporaries would have understood – ‘good fellowship’, was a spirit of companionship or comradeship, relating specifically to drinking, feasting, and merrymaking. This chapter argues that crime pamphlets were multivocal and inherently ambivalent, and that laughter was one of the main elements of their ambivalence. In this, my analysis comes close to Pinsky’s (and Bakhtin’s) exploration of Rabelaisian laughter, which shows the various different elements of laughter: ‘One of the most remarkable traits of Rabelais’ laughter is its multiplicity of meaning, its complex relation to the object. Frank mockery and praise, uncrowning and exaltation, irony and dithyramb, are here combined.’18 Pinsky relates this kind of laughter to ‘joie de vivre’, but we can also see that this definition shows the different impulses that Rabelaisian laughter can accommodate (irony, praise, exaltation), which are similar to Dekker’s definition of ‘jest’. I will focus on the different ways in which laughter worked in these texts: first, I will examine the ambivalence towards wit and trickery in rogue pamphlets, as it related to urban practices and the criminal-as-trickster. Here the narration of witty stories highlighted that rogues had a close relation to urban deceit but also to traditional tricksters. This ambivalence was absent in the case of officers of the law, as the second part will show; on the contrary, laughter was used to shame agents of law enforcement who used trickery to advance themselves, showing that this was not an acceptable performance of wit. The final part of this chapter will show that laughter could figuratively include criminals in the company of the readers, by casting them as good fellows. Overall, this chapter will argue that wit and trickery in rogue pamphlets were considered more appropriate for those less privileged or without legal authority, and that while laughter and jokes created outsiders and insiders – those who ‘get’ the joke and its implications and those against whom it is played – this was not a function of the othering of criminals but of a figurative inclusion of the criminal in urban society.

L.E. Pinsky, Realism of the Renaissance, quoted in M.M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Bloomington, IN, 1984), p. 142. 18 

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Trickery and Urban Deceit

In The Third and Last Part of Conny-Catching (1592), Greene narrates the story of ‘How a cunning knaue got a Truncke well stuffed with linnen and certaine parcels of plate out of a Cittizens house, and how the Master of the house holpe the deceiver to carry away his owne goods.’ According to the story, ‘a cunning villaine’, having watched the house of a tradesman for some time, eventually found the opportunity when the house was empty and the tradesman busy in his shop to enter and take a big trunk full of goods out of the house. The story continues: having [the trunk] out at the doore, unseene of anye neighbour or any body else, he stood strugling with it to lift it up on the stall, which by reason of the weight trobled him very much. The good man coming foorth of his shop, to bid a customer or two farwell, made the fellow affraide he should now bee taken for all togither: but calling his wittes together to escape if he could, he stoode gazing vp at the signe belonging to the house, as though hee were desirous to know what signe it was: which the Cittizen perceiving, came to him and asked him what he sought for? I looke for the signe of the blew bell sir, quoth the fellowe, where a gentleman having taken a chamber for this tearme time, hath sent me hether with this his Troncke of apparrell: quoth the Citizen I know no such signe in this stréet, but in the next (naming it) there is such a one indéed, and there dwelleth one that letteth foorth Chambers to Gentlemen. Truely sir quoth the fellowe, thats the house I should goe to, I pray you sir lend me your hand, but to help the Trunck on my back, for I thinking to ease me a while upon your stall, set it shorte, and now I can hardly get it up againe. The Cittizen not knowing his owne Trunke, but indeede never thinking on any such notable deceite: helpes him up with the Trunke, and so sends him away roundly with his owne goods.19

This is a characteristic example of how the practices of rogues were depicted in rogue pamphlets. These often judged the perpetrator as a villain, while emphasising both his cleverness – his wit – in duping his victim and the victim’s unwitting complicity in the plot. Equally important was narrating the story in a way that would induce laughter and highlighting the urban character of these crimes. Wit and trickery were important elements of these pamphlets. As we will see, rogue pamphlets were influenced by earlier stories about tricksters, such as the story of Reynard the Fox or other jest book tales. The form of these tales, which followed a formula of ‘how x did y’ and aimed to be funny, often with a punchline, influenced the treatment of criminals in rogue pamphlets. Trickster stories were common, and in them, the wit of the trickster was celebrated for his superiority over his/her victims, who became the objects of ridicule. By appropriating the form of these tales, rogue pamphlets also inherited their ambivalence towards the trickster. This was not just about tradition, however. If we look at the depiction of wit and trickery in these pamphlets, we notice that these qualities were seen

19 

Robert Greene, The Third and Last Part of Conny-Catching (1592), sig. E4r. Emphasis mine. 56

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to be shared by urban society more broadly. Rogue pamphlets presented an ambivalent depiction of urban life, heaping praise upon London for its wit, but also scorn for the decline of ‘plain dealing’. I will argue here that rogue pamphlets functioned as a way of negotiating urban change (for both their readers and their writers) and depicted roguery as part of the urban scene. The praise of the witty city coexisted with condemnation of urban deception, and this elicited an ambivalent treatment of rogues as well. In this, rogue pamphlets shared insights with other forms of literature dealing with London, such as city pamphlets, ballads, and plays (as we will see later). ‘Reynart the Thief’: The Trickster and the Rogue

Laughter, especially related to trickster tales, was an important ‘context of enunciation’ for rogue pamphlets. Elizabeth Harvey has argued that, in the early modern period, the political force of metaphors of woman was not fixed in patriarchal terms (thus, did not have a single meaning, neutrally accessible to all), but depended upon the ‘context of enunciation’, which is recognised or even produced by the readers.20 I would like to suggest that this concept can be utilised in relation to the figure of the rogue, considering trickster tales as such a context. In particular, I will use the story of Reynard the Fox, one of the best-known trickster figures in the Middle Ages and the early modern period, to show that trickster tales had a long tradition (both literary and as a folk motif), eliciting laughter often directed at the victim, and showing fascination with – not condemnation of – the witty trickster protagonist. Readers of rogue pamphlets were enmeshed in this tradition, which influenced both their reading and their writing. Even though reader response is difficult to gauge, by highlighting passages where even the voice of particularly critical authors slips into the narration of a trickster tale, I will show how prevalent and influential this format was and how it shaped the treatment of rogues. Reynard the Fox’s story was initially based on one of Aesop’s fables but went through various adaptations in the Middle Ages, in both manuscript and oral versions. It was first printed in England by William Caxton in 1481; seven editions appeared between that date and 1600. In the seventeenth century it was reprinted at least nine more times as The Most Delectable History of Reynard the Fox. Newly Corrected and Purged from All the Grosenesses Both in Phrase and Matter. As Also Augmented and Inlarged with Sundry Excellent Moralls and Expositions Vpon Euery Seuerall Chapter (1620).21 In this version printed marginalia were added which

Elizabeth D. Harvey, Ventriloquized Voices Feminist Theory and English Renaissance Texts (London, 1992), p. 57. Mikhail Bakhtin has also stressed that laughter can imply a multiplicity of meaning; Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, p. 141. 21  Anonymous, The Most Delectable History of Reynard the Fox. Newly Corrected and Purged from All the Grosenesses Both in Phrase and Matter. As Also Augmented and Inlarged with Sundry Excellent Moralls and Expositions Vpon Euery Seuerall Chapter. Neuer before This Time Imprinted (1620, 1629, 1634, 1640, 1646, 1650, 1654, 1656, 1662, and 1667). Mentions of Reynard the Fox 20 

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attempted to provide a moralistic undertone, suggesting an attempt to control the reading of this particularly immoral story. Nonetheless, the story was still described as ‘delectable’ suggesting an expectation that it would bring delight.22 Reynard is portrayed in the stories as cruel and immoral, a thief and villain, caring only about himself and his family and hurting everyone else. In the 1620 version, the criticism against Reynard was far more severe: whereas in the 1481 version Reynard is described as ‘Reynart the thief’, in the 1620 edition this is replaced by ‘Reynard, that false and dissembling traytor’.23 In every edition, however, throughout the stories, his exploits are described with delight and expected to cause laughter. The stories highlight the ways in which Reynard manages repeatedly to outwit his opponents, who are courtiers in the court of the Lion King. He punishes those sent to summon him to court (to face the accusations against him) and then even makes the king and queen look like fools. The stories are funny and revolve around the idea that the trickster’s victims deserve their fate. For example, when the Bear tries to bring Reynard before the king, to answer his summons, Reynard tricks him: he promises the Bear that he will show him a place where he can get as much honey as he wants. The Bear, greedy, agrees to it, delaying their journey back to get the honey. Thus, he falls into Reynard’s trap, and ends up snared and beaten up by the humans who lived nearby. Even in the 1620 edition, the moralistic marginal annotation lays the blame equally on the bear and the fox (or even more on the victim): The Morall. In this encounter betweene the Fox and the Beare, is exprest the dissimulation of two wicked persons each plotting to doe the other mischief… In the Beares greediness to eate honey is exprest, the lascivious inconstancie of a loose and unrestrained nature, that for a minutes inioying of their own delights, quite forget the businesse and cares they have in hand. In the Fox is exprest the cunning of wisedome, which ever casts out to loose natures those baytes of delight.24

Surprisingly, the Bear’s attempt to force Reynard to answer the king’s summons, is construed here as ‘mischiefe’ rather than his duty to his liege. This robs the Bear of justification for his actions and makes the victim look as culpable as the trickster. In addition, the ‘Morall’ clearly relates the anthropomorphic animals to humans, showing that this was meant as a satire of particular human behaviours.

(in various spellings) appear in texts where trickery is described: see, for example Nashe, Pierce Penilesse His Supplication to the Divell, sig. B4r; François Rabelais, The First [Second] Book of the Works of Mr. Francis Rabelais, Doctor in Physick, Containing Five Books of the Lives, Heroick Deeds, and Sayings of Gargantua, and His Sonne Pantagruel (1653), p. 94; Richard Overton, Vox Plebis, or, The Peoples out-Cry against Oppression, Injustice, and Tyranny (1646), p. 53. Often the use was ironic, as in the latter case. 22  According to John Baret, An Aluearie or Triple Dictionarie in Englishe, Latin, and French (1574), sig. S3r: ‘Delectable: fayre to beholde: pleasaunt’. 23  Anonymous, The Most Delectable History of Reynard the Fox, sig. B3v. 24  Anonymous, The Most Delectable History of Reynard the Fox, sigs C2r–C3v. 58

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Even the king and queen are not immune to such temptations, and they pay for it: when Reynard is brought in the king’s presence to answer for his crimes, he spins a tale of treason and treasure, promising to return with the treasure if he is left at liberty. ‘The King and Queen having great hope to get this inestimable treasure from Reynard’, not only let him go, but honour him above all other animals and allow him to go as a pilgrim to Rome.25 The expected audience response to this act of trickery against the sovereign is shown by the author’s comment, when Reynard leaves the king’s court, equipped as a pilgrim: ‘O hee that had seene how gallant and personable Reynard was, and how well his staffe and his male became him… it could not have chosen but have stirred in him very much laughter.’26 Reynard the Fox’s story is an example of the formulaic tradition of narrating trickster tales which also shaped narratives about rogues.27 This was partly the result of using the ‘how’ formula of jest-books, texts which often narrated trickery. The ambivalence of these tales can be illustrated in Merie Tales Newly Imprinted [and] Made by Master Skelton Poet Laureat (1567), which included a story titled ‘How Master Skeltons Miller deceyved hym manye times, by playinge the theefe, and howe he was pardoned by Master Skelton, after the stealinge a waye of a Preestoute of his bed, at midnight.’28 In this story Skelton uncovers his Miller’s deceit, but instead of delivering him to the hands of justice (where he would face execution for his crime), Skelton decides to challenge him. Thus, Skelton asks the Miller to steal various things from his house; if he can do that undetected, the Miller will escape his fate. What is particularly interesting is that the victim is willing to negotiate with the trickster-thief, who in the eyes of justice deserves to be hanged, and that the narrative focuses on the ingenious ways in which the Miller completes his tasks. In a similar fashion, Pasquils Jests (1609) also included tales of criminals deceiving their victims. In stories such as ‘How cunningly a knaue deuised to get money by his wit’, where the knave asks to be put to the pillory so that his companions can rob the crowd gathered to watch the punishment, or ‘How merry Andrew of Manchester served an usurer’ thefts are presented as jests, with criminals outwitting officers of the law or deserving victims.29 In rogue pamphlets as well, criminals were repeatedly portrayed as tricksters, often charming and funny, even if their end game was purportedly to ‘eat a Anonymous, The Most Delectable History of Reynard the Fox, sig. G3r. Anonymous, The Most Delectable History of Reynard the Fox, sig. H4r. 27  For a detailed analysis of the trickster in theatrical texts, see Richard Hillman, Shakespearean Subversions: The Trickster and the Play-Text (London and New York, 1992). Other trickster texts: Nashe, The Unfortunate Traueller. Or, The Life of Iacke Wilton; Diego Hurtado De Mendoza, The Pleasaunt Historie of Lazarillo de Tormes a Spaniarde, Wherein Is Conteined His Marveilous Deedes and Life (1586). 28  Anonymous, Merie Tales Newly Imprinted [and] Made by Master Skelton Poet Laureat (1567), sigs C1r–D2v. 29  Anonymous, Pasquils Jests. Mixed with Mother Bunches Merriments (1609), sigs B2r–v, B4v–Cr. 25  26 

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man out of bodie and soule’.30 Their tricks were narrated with gusto, and it is clear that laughter was an expected response to the narration of their deceitful ways. Even Thomas Harman, who used his status as a justice of the peace to condemn rogues for their actions, did not escape from this tendency. He narrated a story of how two rogues who managed to steal a parson’s money made the victim promise to spend twelve pence at the local alehouse, because the landlady inadvertently helped them to find his house. When the landlady learned what had happened, she exclaimed ‘now by the masse they be merrie knaves’.31 Stories like this did not have a straightforward moral, especially since the response of those who witness (or hear) the tale is usually laughter against the victims. Similarly, in a story about James Hind, he and his gang dressed a shepherd as a bishop while they posed as his servants at an inn. They claimed they did it as a jest (asking the shepherd to ‘be merry with’ them), but in the end, they left the inn, claiming that their master would pay for the reckoning. When the innkeeper found out what had happened, his response was to laugh.32 A sense of humour is evident in Goodcole’s Londons Cry (1620) as well, even though this pamphlet is based on the 1619 sessions of the Old Bailey and thus could be considered a more ‘sombre’ account: two robbers who stole a man’s clothes added insult to injury by dressing their victims with their own rags, saying ‘that the shirt was too fine for him, he should have another to keepe him warme’.33 A similar comment, which involved a festive appropriation of biblical messages, is placed in the ballad A Total Rout (1653), where the author comments that these rogues consider it a sin ‘to suffer superfluous Coats on another, when he that hath two must give one to his brother’.34 On the title-page of Blacke Bookes Messenger (1592), the paradoxical description of rogues as both villains and pranksters is evident: according to it ‘heerein hee telleth verie pleasantly in his owne person such strange prancks and monstrous villanies by him and his Consorte performed’. The description of his deeds as both ‘strange prancks’ and ‘monstrous villanies’ shows that the author did not attempt to evoke a unified emotional response to his readers by means of this pamphlet. According to Keith Thomas, the contemporary definition of ‘merry prank’ was ‘a story in which a man is deceived wittily’, which again connects rogue pamphlets to the trickster trope.35 Ned Browne in his own address to the

Rowlands, Greenes Ghost Haunting Coniecatchers, sig. A2v. Harman, The Groundworke of Conny-Catching, sig. C2r. 32  George Fidge, Hind’s Ramble, or, the Description of His Manner and Course of Life (1651), pp. 9–11. 33  Goodcole, Londons Cry, sig. Cr. 34  Anonymous, A Total Rout, or a Brief Discovery, of a Pack of Knaves and Drabs, Intituled Pimps, Panders, Hectors, Trapans, Nappers, Mobs, and Spanners (1653). 35  Keith Thomas, ‘The Place of Laughter in Tudor and Stuart England’, Times Literary Supplement, 22 (1977), 71–81. 30  31 

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reader was conscious of that, by acknowledging his lewd life and yet ‘discoursing to you all merrely, the manner and methode of my knaveries, which if you hear without laughing, then after my death call me base knave, and never have me in remembrance’.36 In Browne’s words, laughter can to an extent exonerate the criminal and make him worthy of remembrance. This is evident in the many cases where the rogue-as-trickster tricks deserving victims. A good example of this tendency is Hinds Elder Brother, or the Master Thief Discovered. Being a Notable Pithy Relation of the Life of Major Thomas Knowls His Many Exploits Escapes, and Witty Robberies (1652). This pamphlet will be analysed in Chapter 4, but here it is worth mentioning that Knowles was probably an actual soldier who was portrayed as a thief and confidence trickster. The pamphlet describes various stories of Knowles’ robberies and tricks, again using the ‘how’ format of the jest-book. In one of the stories, ‘Of his curing an Usurer of the Toothach’, a usurer, pretending to be a poor man, asks a doctor to cure his toothache for free. Unfortunately for him, Knowles has been disguised as a doctor, and while he is working on the usurer’s teeth, his accomplice steals all his money. Prompted by Knowles, the usurer swears before a witness that he has no money on him, to avoid paying the ‘doctor’. When he discovers he has been robbed, he cannot ask for his money back, since he has sworn he had none. The story finishes with a poem which makes apparent that the usurer was outmanoeuvred by the criminal and paid for his greed: Knowls thought this Robbery was but just To rob the man that no body would trust, Who for to save a little of his Pelf [sic] Before witnesse, basely forswears himself.37

Sometimes, even in the (admittedly few) texts where the author was unequivocally against the criminal depicted, the trickster tale could superimpose itself and influence the narrative. A World of Wonders (1595) is a pamphlet aiming to expose the vice and iniquity of the age and warn readers of how imperative a reformation of manners was: the author mentions that he will present wonders, murders, and cozenage since they are the most ‘evident and manifest signes’ that the ‘finall end’ is at hand and ‘that Christ is even readie to call us unto iudgement’.38 However, the language of fire and brimstone slips, and a more casual narration of merry tales asserts itself which is evident from the introductory poem: Who would the wily slights, of Cousnage gladly heare, Heerin for his delights: a Couie dooth appeare.

36  37  38 

Greene, Blacke Bookes Messenger, sig. Br. Anonymous, Hinds Elder Brother, pp. 2–3. See Chapter 1 for more on this pamphlet. 61

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In the same pamphlet, the theme of the trickster tricked is used to comic effect: Not three yéeres passed, it chaunced that a certaine man traveling towards Northhawton meet with an other man in a solitarie place wheras was none other but them twaine, the one of them commaunded the other to stay and to deliver him his pursse for he wanted money, the other partie seemed willing, & said truly I haue but two shillinges, but seing it is so that thou wilt needs have it heere it is, and so gave it him & departed. This party who had they pursse went forward, and he that lost the purse séemed to goe forward an other way, but seeing opportunitie crossed over two or thrée closes or feildes till he came and met the other theefe againe, and then commaunding him to stay charged him to deliver his pursse for he was a goodfellow wanted mony, and lately robbed and now must and would have money.39

Even though the author claims that these stories of deceit were included to warn readers, it is clear that they were expected to delight as well. This tendency is accentuated by the description of one of the tales of deceit as ‘an odde jest’.40 In the pamphlet The Cheating Solliciter Cheated (1665), Richard Farr, the solicitor, is painted in the worst possible colours because he used lawsuits to blackmail his victims. If his victims did not give in, he brought them to trial and ruined them financially with the use of false witnesses. Richard Farr is depicted throughout the pamphlet as a blood-sucking leech, who destroys innocent people. However, midway through the narrative, the author states that ‘for variety sake, [I will] give you one of his Tricks, somewhat more Comical. Wanting a Summ of Money, he set his Wits to work, and fram’d his Plot thus: he habits himself like a Country Grazier, comes into a great Inn in Smithfield…’,41 and goes on to narrate a usual story of trickery, where Farr disguised as a rich man persuaded the innkeeper to lend him some money (which, unsurprisingly, he never saw again). This story is one of the most common in rogue pamphlets but does not fit with the general tone of this particular pamphlet, since, as the author admits, it is ‘comical’. In addition, whereas all of his other acts were described in past tense, in the description of this one the author slips to the present tense, which was far more usual in trickster narratives. It is possible that one of the reasons for the inclusion of this story was that the author was trying to make his pamphlet more saleable, or easier to read. Regardless, this suggests that it had become conventional to link stories of cheating criminals, however despised, with trickster tales, and that this kind of story had its own characteristics (such as the expectation that it would provoke laughter and delight) which could not be easily omitted. Jest-books often included stories of criminals outwitting officers of the law: in Wit and Mirth (1628), many stories deal with interactions between justices of the Johnson, A World of Wonders. A Masse of Murthers. A Covie of Cosonages, sig. B2v. Johnson, A World of Wonders, sig. B3v. 41  Anonymous, The Cheating Solliciter Cheated: Being a True and Perfect Relation of the Life and Death of Richard Farr, pp. 12–13. 39  40 

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peace and criminals, where the criminal is presented as witty. A short jest about a ‘pilfering knave’ reads: A Iustice of the Peace, being angry with a pilfering Knave, said, Sirrah, if thou dost not mend thy manners, thou wilt be shortly hanged, or else I will bee hanged for thée. The bold knave replyed, I thanke your worship for that kind offer, and I beséech your worship not to bee out of the way when I shall have occasion so use you.42

The criminal here cleverly uses wordplay and in so doing has the last word against the justice. This witty story in which a criminal is portrayed as a trickster shows how rogue pamphlets echo the formula as well as the content of jest-books. This analysis highlights the extent to which criminals’ activities could be portrayed as ‘tricks’ or ‘pranks’ and appreciated for the wit exhibited and the laughter elicited. Something similar is also evident in Randle Cotgrave’s dictionary defition of ‘drolerie’ (from the French drole, meaning something funny) in 1611: ‘Rye, waggerie, good roguerie; a merrie pranke, a pleasant, and knauish part; good-fellowship.’43 This definition combines terms relating to laughter, pranks, but also ‘good roguery’ and ‘good fellowship’. We will talk extensively about ‘good fellowship’ in the last part of this chapter, but it is worth considering here that ‘roguery’ was related to laughter, pranks, and good company. Even though on many occasions authors emphasised that criminals were harmful to the Commonwealth, they tended to present them as tricksters, and by consequence witty, funny, and admirable. Crime, Deceit, and Urban Economy For as long as London City doth endure, In it a knave, as well as fool, to find you shall be sure.44

This pamphlet play about rogues in the 1650s claims that London was a city of fools and knaves, and probably relied on both groups for its survival. This description of ‘knave’ does not encompass only criminals, but also large swaths of London dwellers who took advantage of the ‘simplicity’ of countrymen visiting London. This is a common theme in a wide range of literature relating to the city.45 Even though the trickster theme has a long pedigree (as we have seen), in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries such stories became more topical, by focusing on London. John Taylor, Wit and Mirth, Chargeably Collected out of Tauernes, Ordinaries, Innes, Bowling Greenes, and Allyes, Alehouses, Tobacco Shops, Highwaies, and Water-Passages (1628), sig. B4v. 43  Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (1611), sig. Fsi. 44  Edmund Prestwich, The Hectors: Or The False Challenge (1656), p. 58. 45  Brian Gibbons, Jacobean City Comedy: A Study of Satiric Plays by Jonson, Marston and Middleton (1968); Lawrence Venuti, Our Halcyon Dayes: English Prerevolutionary Texts and Postmodern Culture (Madison, WI, 1989); Martin Butler, Theatre and Crisis, 1632–1642 (Cambridge, 1984). 42 

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One of the most characteristic elements of rogue pamphlets was their distinctly urban character, their focus on practices and attitudes relating to the city. The target audience for these pamphlets was arguably London dwellers, since such an audience would be familiar with the names of London places and practices as well as inclined to laugh at the folly of those ‘simple’ victims who come from the country. For example, the pamphlet The Art of Living in London (1642) highlights the dangers that urban cheats pose: let every man beware of play and gaming, as Cards, especially Dice, at Ordinaries and other places: for in the Citie there are many, who when they live onely by cheating, are so cunning, that they will so strip a young Heire, or Novice, but lately come to towne, and Wood-cocke like so pull his wings, that hee shall in a short time never be able to flye over ten Acres of his owne Land.

This passage focuses on confidence tricksters, but throughout the pamphlet there is no clear distinction between criminals and other members of the urban community, since the author also advises the reader to avoid creditors, companions, usurers, and entertainers, and to leave the city as quickly as his job is done, because ‘the Citie is like a quick-sand the longer you stand upon it the deeper you sinke’.46 Rogue pamphlets can be viewed as part of the literature that negotiated urban change, because they partook of the general debate about the changing nature of London. Indeed, rogue pamphlets reveal broader ways of conceptualising early modern London society and illustrate that contemporaries were not ignorant of how urban change was affecting social relations. Paul Griffiths views rogue literature as one aspect of the ‘new fictions of urban settlement’ that helped people cope with change. However, he considers that they depict ‘tales of two cities’, one of law-abiding citizens and one of ‘roughneck thieves’.47 Apart from the objection that a lot of the thieves described are refined, and anything but ‘roughneck’, it is also difficult to view rogue pamphlets as creating an absolute dividing line between ‘respectable’ society and the rogues. What is characteristic is how often these pamphlets show that deceit is an integral part of life in the city, by focusing on urban and market-related vices, such as usury, deceit in trades, the corruption of officers, the greed of landlords who charge unreasonable rents and similar offences or vices. Peter Lake in his assertion that, in the mid-sixteenth century, ‘social reality had fallen increasingly out of line with the pronouncements of many of the preachers and moralists’, aptly expresses this inertia of contemporary morality compared with the changing social background.48 Even though Lake picks up the idea that

H. Pecham, The Art of Living in London (1642), sigs A3; A2r. Griffiths, Lost Londons, pp. 4, 137–8. 48  Lake, ‘From Troynouvant to Heliogabulus’s Rome and Back’, p. 248. Joad Raymond views the means of moralising in rogue pamphlets as quite distinct from Puritan tracts and sermons 46  47 

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a lot of the economic activities which were being criticised in the rogue literature were symptomatic of an early capitalistic outlook and were being practised by a far larger part of society than just criminals, he nonetheless views rogue pamphlets as an attempt to relegate morally dubious economic activities to the margins.49 Lake implies that rogues were considered as a marginalised Other, on whom the vices of ‘respectable’ society were projected. Similarly, Steve Mentz argues that rogue pamphlets ‘give access to urban indirection while shielding [the readers] from its moral stain’.50 These scholars suggest that the pamphlets’ treatment of trickery, which culminated in the punishment of the victims for their greed, prevented the full realisation that deceit was integral to urban life, thus letting readers appreciate the pamphlets, without needing to worry about their social implications.51 However, rogue pamphlets presented a sophisticated treatment of the issue of trade and wealth, which paralleled other writings about the city. Below, I will show that rogue pamphlets were part of the literature of the city, much of which was ambivalent towards the development of trade and capitalist practices. Even though such practices were praised as supporting the greatness of the city, the capitalist ethos which generated – or required – deceit was satirised. In this context, roguery was viewed as part of a whole range of deceitful practices which took place in London, and not examined in isolation. This is evident not only in rogue pamphlets, but also in ballads describing London. Finally, these pamphlets acknowledged that, even though trickery was inherent (if not always welcome) in urban life, justice was selective: law enforcement tended to punish the poor severely for small crimes, while laws against other practices harmful to the commonwealth, but committed by members of ‘respectable’ society were not enforced with equal severity. Rogue pamphlets, as we will see below, satirised the underhandedness of urban society and the attempts to gain wealth by immoral practices. Nonetheless, this was not a wholehearted critique, because of the underlying admiration for the positive aspects of the ‘witty’ city. No matter how much writers satirised the corruption of the city, they still showed admiration and love for it. This tendency is exemplified in The Belman of London (1608), where Dekker describes how he was disgusted by the city and decided to leave it and retire to the countryside. After a brief moment waxing lyrical about the beauty of the countryside he realises that this image is not real, and so he returns repentant to the city: ‘I had heard of no sinne in the Cittie but I met it in the village; nor any Vice in the tradesman, which was not in the

railing against social abuses, Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, p. 19. 49  Lake, ‘From Troynouvant to Heliogabulus’s Rome and Back’. Lake makes similar points in more recent works, by claiming that crime pamphlets contained inversion by scapegoating the criminals: Lake and Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat, p. 129. 50  Mentz, ‘Magic Books: Cony-Catching and the Romance of Early Modern London’, p. 241. 51  Lake and Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat, p. 129, more generally pp. 100–46. 65

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ploughman.’52 Most of the writers of these pamphlets are city creatures and in their critique of the city they do not repudiate what the city stands for. The ambivalent and confused treatment of the term ‘wit’ is possibly the best example to illustrate the problem of appraising social change. Rogue pamphlets repeatedly described rogues as ‘witty’ or ‘living by their wits’, but this characterisation could be extremely double-edged, and alternated from being seen as a virtue to being condemned as an utterly immoral attribute.53 When Middleton exclaims ‘how many such Gallants doe I knowe, that live onely uppon the revenewe of their wittes’,54 the language he uses obfuscates whether he is being critical or playful. Rowlands shows his admiration of quick-witted cony-catchers when he comments: ‘Thus everie daie they have new inventions for their villanies, and as often as fashions alter, so often do they alter their stratagems, studying as much how to compasse a poore mans purse, as the Prince of Parma did to win a towne.’55 The pamphlet The Witty Rogue Arraigned, Condemned, and Executed. Or, The History of That Incomparable Thief Richard Hainam (1656) probably said it best: ‘it so pleaseth the Almighty wise Creator to disperse his blessings, to some Wit, and to others Vertue’.56 Even though the author contrasts wit and virtue (suggesting that wit leads to vice), he also implies that both are good qualities. Wit, as Karen Helfand Bix has maintained, is seen as a quintessentially urban characteristic, important in most trades that wish to make a profit.57 Consequently, rogue pamphlets maintained an ambivalent view on metropolitan society and the business practices this generated. Such ambivalence was related to the changes in London’s economy, which had not yet produced a language which could justify the attainment of wealth. As Peter Lake has stated, in this period there was an apparent ‘lack of a morally unambiguous, univocally affirmative language with which to describe and praise the pursuit, attainment and display of commercial wealth’. Laura Caroline Stevenson has also commented that ‘social fact changes more quickly than vocabulary and ideology, and so men frequently find themselves describing observations of the present in the rhetoric of the past’.58 She has shown that this was evident in texts praising London for its wealth, while at the same time castigating the abuses generated by it. Ian Dekker, The Belman of London, sig. E2v. Robert Greene, The Defence of Conny Catching (1592), sig. A4v; Anonymous, A Notable and Pleasant History of the Famous Renowned Knights of the Blade, Commonly Called Hectors, p. 1. 54  Middleton, The Blacke Booke, sig. C3r. 55  Rowlands, Greenes Ghost Haunting Coniecatchers, sig. C3r. 56  E.S., The Witty Rogue Arraigned, Condemned, and Executed. Or, The History of That Incomparable Thief Richard Hainam, p. 3. 57  Karen Helfand Bix, ‘“Masters of Their Occupation”: Labor and Fellowship in the ConnyCatching Pamphlets’, in Rogues and Early Modern English Culture, pp. 171–92 (p. 176). Helfand Bix also argues that rogue pamphlets showed ambivalence towards the market on p. 172. 58  Lake, ‘From Troynouvant to Heliogabulus’s Rome and Back’, p. 224; Laura Caroline Stevenson, Praise and Paradox: Merchants and Craftsmen in Elizabethan Popular Literature, Past and Present Publications (Cambridge, 1984), p. 6. 52  53 

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Archer has argued that, even though preachers often challenged the celebration of wealth, other writings about the city valorised honest trading.59 Adam Zucker makes a similar statement about city comedies in the early seventeenth century, which were ‘interested in exploring, glamorizing, and, at times, bitterly repudiating their own organizing social and economic conditions’.60 Consequently, what was at stake in rogue pamphlets was not wealth per se, but how it was gained and employed. Whereas the attainment of wealth was not necessarily viewed as a negative practice, deceit in trade or other urban practices was condemned. Authors employed the conventional satire of the different estates but modified it in order to focus on the vices of the city, chief among them being dishonesty.61 This condemnation of deceit was all the more stringent when it was directed against the rich and powerful, who were supposed to be an asset to the commonwealth. Pamphleteers found more reprehensible those who did not need to resort to crime but ended up behaving deceitfully. Rogue pamphlets emphasised continuously that cony-catching was just a part of urban deception, and not even the most grievous part. John Taylor sarcastically commented: ‘For should I hate a Theefe, Theeves are so Common,/ I well could neither love my selfe or no man.’ In this satire, Taylor equated thievery with underhandedness and claimed that it was practised by all: ‘For all estates and functions great and small,/ Are for the most part Thieves in general.’62 This also recalls Greene’s aphorism about London life, ‘hee who cannot dissemble, cannot live’.63 A beggar in The Belman of London managed very well to voice this sense of the universality of sin: ‘Alas, alas, silly Animalles, if all men should have that which they deserve, wee should doe nothing but play the executioners and tormenters one of an other.’64 Even victims of highway robbers ‘cosen both the theeves and country too’ by doubling the amount of money that was supposedly stolen from them; they did so knowing that according to the laws on highway robbery, if the robbers were not caught, the hundred had to recompense them. In addition, they are not against using what is effectively disguise to gain more: not only do they lie

Ian Archer, ‘Material Londoners?’, in Material London, ca. 1600, ed. Lena Cowen Orlin (Philadelphia, PA, 2000), p. 175. 60  Adam Zucker, The Places of Wit in Early Modern English Comedy (Cambridge, 2011), p. 55. Other scholars have also identified the tendency of city comedies to expose the misconducts of all social groups: Gibbons, Jacobean City Comedy, pp. 118–19; Venuti, Our Halcyon Dayes, pp. 130–6; Butler, Theatre and Crisis, 1632–1642, pp. 141–80. 61  For an analysis of the traditional satire of estates, see Sandra Clark, The Elizabethan Pamphleteers: Popular Moralistic Pamphlets 1580–1640 (London, 1983), pp. 121–63. Helen Pierce analyses texts and images satirising monopolists, which are similar in terms of language to rogue pamphlets: Helen Pierce, Unseemly Pictures: Graphic Satire and Politics in Early Modern England (New Haven, CT and London, 2008), p. 75. 62  John Taylor, An Arrant Thiefe (1622), sigs A3v, B3v. 63  Greene, The Defence of Conny Catching, sig. C3r. 64  Dekker, The Belman of London, sig. C2v. 59 

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about the numbers of the robbers, but to make it more believable, they ‘cut and slash [their] harmless clothes’ to claim that they fought the highway men.65 If we look more broadly at pamphlets and ballads that emphasised urban depravity, it is evident that crime was not distinguished from other immoral activities. In Pierce Penilesse (1592), a model for many rogue discoveries, Nashe criticises severely urban vice in general, and not just criminal practices.66 The same structure of an exposition of vices is reflected in Rowlands’s Diogines’ Lanthorne (1607), which is framed by Diogines’ quest to find an honest man in Athens (in reality London). This quest is doomed to failure, since the only thing he finds everywhere he looks is human immorality, described in the same way as in Nashe’s pamphlet.67 Thomas Dekker’s Lanthorne and Candle-Light (1608) was clearly connected to Rowlands’s text, employing a title that echoes it, as well as using the same woodcut in the first edition of the pamphlet.68 The employment of a similar title-page is meant to show the continuity between the two texts: Lanthorne and Candle-Light (1608) turns Diogines’ quest on its head, by looking for criminals rather than honest men. Nonetheless, both reach the same conclusion, that there are no honest people to be found in the city. Richard Johnson, in Looke on Me London: I Am an Honest English-Man, Ripping vp the Bowels of Mischiefe, Luring in Thy Sub-Vrbs and Precincts (1613) follows a similar line of praising the city, while also presenting the ‘mischiefe’ taking place in it. Johnson characterises London as ‘the capitall citty of Christendome, a place of much honour and reputation, as well in respect of reverent Government, as sumptuous Building and Riches’ but he also acknowledges that in ‘this good Citty are many alectives [inducements] to unthriftinesse, by which meanes… [the son] (for want of government) many times spends his whole substance, to the utter undoing of his posterity, and great shame of his kindred’. Johnson considers criminals such as ‘the gallant shifter’, ‘needy Shifters, Theeves, Cutpurses’ and ‘Saint Nicholas Clearkes’ (highwaymen) as part of the problems of the city.69 This becomes particularly evident when, after describing how the prodigality of gentlemen destroys them and their companion, Johnson talks about the ‘Covetousnesse and Usury… of the Citizen’: here, the author explicitly mentions brokers, stating that ‘there is such deceite coloured with cleanly shifts, as many gentlemen are for a trifle shifted out of their livings’.70 The use of terms Clavell, A Recantation of an Ill Led Life, sig. D6r. More about this pamphlet is in Chapter 3. Nashe, Pierce Penilesse His Supplication to the Divell. 67  Rowlands, Diogines’ Lanthorne. 68  Dekker, Lanthorne and Candle-Light. Or, The Bell-Mans Second Nights-Walke. The printer kept the figure of Diogines, but cut off the barrel, and put a bell in his right arm, to personalise the image. 69  Richard Johnson, Looke on Me London: I Am an Honest English-Man, Ripping vp the Bowels of Mischiefe, Luring in Thy Sub-Vrbs and Precincts (1613), sig. Br. This pamphlet plagiarised various parts from George Whetstone, A Mirrour for Magistrates of Cities and a Touchstone of the Time (1584). See Richard Proudfoot, ‘Johnson, Richard (Fl. 1592–1622), Writer’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 12 January 2019, . 70  Johnson, Looke on Me London, sigs B3v–B4r. 65  66 

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commonly used for rogues (shift and deceit) to speak about a lawful occupation suggests that legality and morality could diverge, and, by consequence, the world of the criminal and the citizen align. City comedies make the same point that deceit is integral in urban life and that citizens are confidence tricksters as well. In Middleton’s Michaelmas Term, a play about how citizens trick gentlemen out of their estate (a topos in city comedy more broadly), Quomodo, a city merchant, is the chief cozener. The tricks he employs are the same as those of confidence tricksters (see next chapter about the use of deceit and feigning familiarity), and he even boasts ‘Admire me, all you students at Inns of Cozenage’, suggesting that he considers his actions as worthy ‘shifts’.71 This is true in other comedies as well which deal with the world of the citizens and urban deceit.72 In ballads depicting London, likewise, criminal practices are considered as part and parcel of the city. In some, cheaters and cutpurses are described as part of the urban scene, the same as merchants of luxurious items and providers of entertainment.73 More importantly, however, other ballads show how deception is by no means limited to criminals, but endemic to London. In Here Is an Item for You. Or, The Countrimans Bill of Charges, for His Comming up to London Declared by a Whistle (1630), a countryman is cozened by various city types, such as an Innkeeper (who brings him half-filled jugs of ale), a ‘Pick-purse’, a cozener, a lawyer, and a stableman.74 Turners Dish of Lentten Stuffe (1612) complained that all trades in London used deceit, such as millers, weavers, tailors (‘They cannot worke but they must steale’), watermen, and others. Even though this ballad did not mention cony-catchers, the woodcut which accompanied it was taken from The Groundworke of Conny-Catching (1592).75 The recycling of images, as we have seen, could be a way to avoid additional costs; nonetheless, it could imply that these tradesmen were the real cony-catchers. The clearest example was Knavery in all trades, or, here’s an age would make a man mad (1632), where the author continuously laments how ‘All honesty is decay’d’: For none can thrive at this day, but such as their mindes doe give?

Thomas Middleton, A Mad World, My Masters; Michaelmas Term; A Trick to Catch the Old One; No Wit, No Help like a Woman’s (Oxford and New York, 1995), p. 99. 72  Gibbons, Jacobean City Comedy, p. 17. 73  Anonymous, [Dice, wine and women.] Or the unfortunate gallant gull’d at London. To the tune of Shall I wrastle in despaire, in The Pepys Ballads, ed. Geoffrey Day (Cambridge, 1987), I, pp. 200–1; Anonymous, Roome for Companie, Heere Comes Good Fellowes (1617). 74  Anonymous, Here Is an Item for You. Or, The Countrimans Bill of Charges, for His Comming up to London Declared by a Whistle (1630). 75  W. Turner, Turners Dish of Lentten Stuffe, or, A Galymaufery to the Tune of Watton Townes End (1612); Harman, The Groundworke of Conny-Catching. 71 

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To over-reach and deceive, and doing of others wrong, All they that such courses leave, may sing the Begger-Boyes Song... One tradesman deceaveth another, and sellers will conycatch buyers76

In this ballad, the usual connection between vagrancy and dishonesty is turned upside-down since it is ‘plain-dealing’ which beggars those who practise it. Merchants, not criminals, are described as cony-catchers. Rogue pamphlets repeatedly articulate the paradox that, while deception is a central characteristic of urban living, only the rogues are punished for their actions, when others, far more deserving of censure, hide their actions beneath a veneer of respectability.77 This was the reason given in Barnabe Rich’s Greenes Newes Both from Heaven and Hell (1593) for not accepting Greene into heaven: ‘heaven is no habitation for any man that can looke with one eye and wincke with the other’. He explains: I have heard of you, you have beene a busie fellowe with your penne, it was you that writ the Bookes of Conycatching, but sirra, could you finde out the base abuses of a company of petty varlets that lived by pilfering cosonages, and could you not as well have discryed the subtill and fraudelent practises of great Conny-catchers, such as rides upon footeclothes, and sometime in Coatches, and walkes the stréetes in long gownes and velvet coates.78

Rich identifies those as lawyers, landlords, and clergymen, showing that the wealthy were even more harmful to the commonwealth. The criticism of Greene was unfair, since he was aware of these issues: Cuthbert Cony-Catcher, the narrator of The Defence of Conny Catching, reveals the problem of too easily condemning rogues for their actions: ‘If witte in this age be counted a great patrimony and subtletie an inseparable accident to all estates, why should you bee so spitefull maister R.G. to poore Conny-catchers above the rest, sith they are the simplest soules in shifting to live in this over wise world?’79 This passage highlights the significance of wit in urban practices, but paradoxically also calls criminals ‘the simplest soules’, presumably because they are viewed as more

Martin Parker, Knavery in all trades, or, here’s an age would make a man mad (1632), in Day, The Pepys Ballads, pp. 166–7. Parker specifically mentions tailors, victuallers, tapsters, and cooks. 77  Andrea McKenzie analyses the same tendency in eighteenth-century sources: Andrea McKenzie, ‘“This Death Some Strong and Stout Hearted Man Doth Choose”: The Practice of Peine Forte et Dure in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century England’, Law and History Review, 23 (2005), 299. 78  Rich, Greenes Newes Both from Heaven and Hell, sigs B4v–Cv. 79  Greene, The Defence of Conny Catching, sig. A4v. The exact same critique is levelled by Martin Mark-all against the Belman: Rid, Martin Mark-All, sig. B2v. 76 

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straightforward than other estates in their deceit. This is a way of lessening the crime of the rogues, and a critique of the economic practices in London which are judged as immoral and unfair. A Notable Discouery of Coosenage includes ‘A pleasant discoverie of the Coosenage of Colliers’. Greene explains: ‘it is a deceit that Colliers abuse the common-welth withall, in having unlawfull sackes, yet take it for a pettie kinde of craft or mysterie, as prejudiciall to the poore, as any’.80 The same feelings are expressed about citizens lending money with interest; these are condemned as far more deserving of punishment than rogues or ‘poor thieves’. Mynshull targets usurers: ‘the gallowes on which the poore theefe hangeth is most fit for thee, he robbeth one man, thou whole families, he is a felon to man onely, thou art a felon to God and man’.81 Similarly, Dekker exposes the hypocrisy of urban society: ‘A Bankrout, that is to say, a Banker-out: A Citizen that deales in mony, or had mony in Banke, or in stocke […] If a Rogue cut a purse, hee is hanged: if pilfer, hée is burnt in the hand: You are worse then Rogues; for you cut many purses: Nay, you cut many mens throats, you steale from the husband, his wealth: from the wife her dowry: from children their portions.’82 This discourse was so naturalised that it continued after 1640. In the ballad The High-way Hector (1640s), the highway robber argues that his robbing is equivalent to the practices of city merchants, since both are cheats: My trade is as lawful if taken in one sense, As many that measure their wares by their conscience, For ‘tis in the conscience no viler a vice To pinch them in padding [highway robbery] as cheat ‘em in price: I think when I rob a precise city Brother, ‘Tis cheat upon cheat, and one cheat cheats another83

The same equation of highwaymen with another common urban type, lawyers, is evident in the satire The Last Will and Testament of James Hynd, High-Way Lawyer

Greene, A Notable Discouery of Coosenage, sig. Er. Mynshul, Certaine Characters and Essayes of Prison and Prisoners, sig. B2r. 82  Thomas Dekker, A Strange Horse-Race at the End of Which, Comes in the Catch-Poles Masque. And after That the Bankrouts Banquet: Which Done, the Diuell, Falling Sicke, Makes His Last Will and Testament, This Present Yeare. 1613 (1613), sigs G4v–H1r. Even though ‘bankrout’ means bankrupt, Dekker here inverts its meaning, by using it for the ‘Citizen that deales in mony’: ‘Bankrupt, N.’, in OED Online (Oxford), accessed 12 January 2019, . 83  Anonymous, The High-Way Hector (1640s). This ballad will be analysed further in Chapter 4. 80  81 

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(1651). Hind bequeaths ‘all his fallacies, frauds’ to ‘the present Gowne-men, who fight at Barriers, at the Upper Bench, Chancerie, and where-ever else Littleton or Ployden is mentioned’.84 Presenting highwaymen as robbing the rich (and possibly giving to the poor) was another way to show that lawyers were worse than criminals. Hind, echoing Robin Hood, claimed that ‘this likewise is a supportment to me, that I have taken from the rich, and given to the poor; for nothing doth more impoverish the Cottage-keeper, then the rich Farmer, and full-fed Lawyer: Eut [sic] truly I could wish, that thing was as little used in England amongst Lawyers, as the eating of Swines-flesh was amongst the Jews: → They were the men I chiefly aimed at.’85 Here, Hind not only thinks that targeting the rich can exonerate him, but he also suggests that rich farmers and lawyers are the real enemies of commoners. The joke against lawyers was probably taken from an earlier pamphlet Ratseis Ghost (1605). Ratsey the highwayman robs a lawyer but justifies his action by saying that ‘there is no pittye to be had of thee, nor such as thou art: thou art worse then I, that take it by the highway, for let me meet with a poor man, and take his money, if I perceive him indigent, and needy I give it him again, and somwhat back to boot, but you picke everye poore mannes pocket with your trickes and quillets’. Nonetheless, Ratsey proves better than the lawyer, giving him some money back, ‘upon condition that lying were as little used in England amongst Lawyers, as the eating of Swines flesh was amongst the Jewes’.86 Here, indignation against lawyers’ practices is expressed with a joke against them, since telling the truth is portrayed as an impossible condition for them. Citizens more broadly were also portrayed as grasping, and thus deserving of being robbed: in the pamphlet play An Excellent Comedy, Called, The Prince of Priggs (1651), Hind and his crew of highwaymen are disguised as beggars and ask for charity from three wealthy citizens. The citizens decline with the pretence that: Truly friends the times are so hard, and we so burthend, that verily, yea and nay, we are scarce able to furnish our wives with a competent number of silke gownes, lawn smocks, gold laces, beaver hats, silver hilted fans, Flanders laces and other necessaries, without which, all honest men know we cannot subsist.

Anonymous, The Last Will and Testament of James Hynd, High-Way Lawyer (1651), pp. 1–2. Hind, The Declaration of Captain James Hind, p. 6. The italics are used in the original and the arrow symbolises a manicule (which was apparently meant to place emphasis on Hind’s targets). It is interesting that the myth of Robin Hood as someone who stole from the rich and gave to the poor was established in the sixteenth century: J.C. Holt, ‘Hood, Robin (Supp. Fl. Late 12th–13th Cent.), Legendary Outlaw Hero’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 12 January 2019, . 86  Anonymous, Ratseis Ghost. Or The Second Part of His Madde Prankes and Robberies (1605), sig. D4–D4v. Note the use of ‘tricks’ again for the lawyers’ practices. 84  85 

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Hind, angry at their greed, calls them ‘dogs’ and ‘counterfeiting Coxcombs’ and robs them.87 Accusing them of ‘counterfeiting’ is most likely connected with their lack of charity: they pretended that they did not have enough money (showing a very different standard of ‘subsistence’) but the robbers proved that this was not the case and punished them. The Catterpillers of This Nation Anatomized (1659), which claims to be ‘a brief yet notable discovery of house-breakers, pick-pockets’, still begins with the commonplace ‘Knavery of late is so epidemically practised, as that there is hardly a livelihood to be had without; ‘tis honesty now that beggars men’.88 One of The Wandring Whore Continued (1660) pamphlets also makes the same point, when the highwayman Gusman states ‘Should we once leave our old Custome of Cheating… we must leave off to live, but hang Conscience and honesty, ‘tis absurd policy, dishonest actions are proper with other Persons, in other places, and for our profit, dishonsty [sic] with Riches is honesty, honesty with Poverty is dishonesty, all people know that to be as true as that St. George killed the Dragon.’89 Even the highwayman Du Vall received a similar treatment. In The Ladies Answer to That Busie-Body, Who Wrote the Life and Death of Du Vall (1670), the victims of the highwayman are viewed as cheaters: ‘Du Vall a little Wealth did onely take,/ Which those who lost it, got perchance by Cheat.’90 This almost reflexive assumption that highwaymen were not worse than their victims is repeated in To the Memory of the Most Renowned Du-Vall (1671), where Du Vall is depicted as stealing ‘all that by cheating they had gain’d before’.91 No explanation is given for equating victims with highwaymen, suggesting that this was a common way of conceptualising the actions of such robbers. These examples serve to show that rogue pamphlets continuously mocked the hypocrisy of early modern society, which criticised and punished rogues severely for using deceit, while also employing similar practices for enrichment. Dekker had succinctly articulated this: ‘God helpe the Poore, The rich can shift.’92 ‘To shift’ here means to practise fraud, and is often connected to illegal actions, which was used by John Taylor: ‘To Sharke or Shift, or Cony-catch for mony.’93 From the use in rogue pamphlets it is evident that, while both rich and poor shift, the rich are able to do so with impunity. Karen Helfand Bix argues that even though the The Defence of Conny Catching flirts with radicalism, in the end it just does not go far S, An Excellent Comedy, Called, The Prince of Priggs, p. 13. Anonymous, The Catterpillers of This Nation Anatomized, p. 1. Which sounds exactly like the earlier ballad Martin Parker, Knavery in all trades (1632), mentioned on p. 69. 89  Anonymous, The Wandring Whore Continued a Dialogue between Magdalena a Crafty Bawd, Julietta an Exquisite Whore, Francion a Lascivious Gallant, and Gusman a Pimping Hector, part 2, p. 11. 90  Cellier, The Ladies Answer to That Busie-Body, Who Wrote the Life and Death of Du Vall. 91  Butler, To the Memory of the Most Renowned Du-Vall: A Pindarick Ode, p. 7. 92  Thomas Dekker, Worke for Armorours: Or, The Peace Is Broken (1609), title-page. 93  John Taylor, Taylors Revenge, or, The Rymer William Fennor Firkt, Feritted, and Finely Fetcht Ouer the Coales (1615), sig. A5r. 87 

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enough, because ‘the pamphleteers refuse any single opposition between the values and practices of commerce and moral decency’.94 This however is not a less radical position. It shows that pamphleteers were not opting for a completely traditional satire of contemporary society, revolving around the loss of charity and the metamorphosis of the city. Even though this kind of critique can be seen in rogue pamphlets, it coexisted with more positive portrayals of the city and of its witty nature. They navigated change in London, while still attempting to correct the abuses inherent in this transformation. According to J.F. Merritt, ambivalence was a dominant characteristic of writings about the capital, because of the parallel existence of positive perspectives of urban culture and urban change with older negative discourses about urban vice. This is how she explains the existence of ‘morally ambiguous low-life pamphlets depicting crime and commerce as intertwined in a sink of corruption’.95 This ambivalence was often connected to the portrayal of wit in these texts: in both the treatment of the city and the criminals, these pamphlets focus on wit; however, this analysis has suggested that it was often easier to accept wit and trickery from criminals, rather than supposedly respectable but nevertheless morally corrupt citizens. Nonetheless, most writers showed ambivalence towards the activities of the citizens of London, even when they were based on deceit. They tacitly acknowledged that this kind of wit was what made the city great, something that is often portrayed in the negative comparison of city people with country bumpkins in many ballads and pamphlets. By consequence, rogue pamphlets allowed thinking about the changing circumstances in London in multifaceted ways, which helped to put the failings of the criminals in perspective and thus relativise their seriousness. Inverting the Law: Mocking Justice and Its Agents

As we have seen, laughter was employed to express admiration or at least ambivalence about trickery. In addition, I have explored how the texts could also satirise the economic practices of the city. In this way, laughter was used as a corrective or satire: for Castiglione, laughter’s aim was ‘to scoff and mocke at vices’ with the intention to correct someone.96 As we have seen, the Martin Marprelate pamphlets used satire particularly effectively, presenting jest-book style stories in order to ridicule the ecclesiastical hierarchy and advocate reforms.97 In rogue

Helfand Bix, ‘“Masters of Their Occupation”: Labor and Fellowship in the Conny-Catching Pamphlets’, pp. 189–90. 95  J.F. Merritt, ‘Introduction’, in Imagining Early Modern London: Perceptions and Portrayals of the City from Stow to Strype, 1598–1720, ed. J.F. Merritt (Cambridge, 2001), p. 17. 96  Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (1994), pp. 155–6, quoted in Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics: Volume 3: Hobbes and Civil Science (Cambridge, 2002), p. 145. 97  Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, p. 34. 94 

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pamphlets, whereas it is clear that authors used this kind of laughter to deride the hypocrisy of urban society, it was most commonly directed at misbehaving officers of the law. By mocking the failings of the administrators of justice and focusing on inappropriate trickery, authors completely inverted the criminal pamphlet. By highlighting the contradiction that those who administered justice were often those who subverted it, these pamphlets made such officers the object of ridicule.98 That justice was selective, only catching criminals who did not have enough money to bribe the agents of the law, was a commonplace in rogue pamphlets. Time and again, rogue pamphlets presented the inversion of justice, by focusing on the practices of officers who accepted bribes in order to let malefactors walk away. In his first cony-catching pamphlet, Greene bragged that he would uncover the ‘Arte of Cros-biting’, and explained that ‘I meane not cros-biters at dice… nor when a nip, which the common people call a Cut-purse, hath a cros-bite by some bribing officer, who threatning to carrie him to prison, takes awaie all the monie and lets him slip without anie punishment.’99 Greene goes on to explain a different practice, crossbiting as a term denoting ‘cozenage by whores’.100 By including ‘bribing officers’ in his taxonomy of criminals, Greene turned the execution of justice upside down and cast doubt on how far the ‘honourable and worshipfull of the land’ could be counted upon to serve the law. Additionally, pamphlets often showed that those who had enough money to bribe the agents of policing could escape punishment, something which subverted the meaning of law enforcement. John Taylor articulated this in rhyme: So Rorers, rascals, Banquerouts politicke With mony, or with friends will finde a tricke, Their Jaylor to corrupt, and at their will They walk abroad, and take their pleasure still: Whilst naked vertue, beggarly, despis’d, dungeond up... Whil’st craft and cousenage walke at will abroad.101

Sandra Clark commented on how Elizabethan pamphlets used specific satirical forms such as the dream, the dialogue, the traveller from the otherworld: Clark, The Elizabethan Pamphleteers. 99  Greene, A Notable Discouery of Coosenage, sig. A4v. Note: the 1592 edition, printed by Thomas Scarlet, has an erroneous address To the Reader. This quotation is from the 1591 edition, printed by John Wolfe. 100  Greene, A Notable Discouery of Coosenage, sig. C4r. In this case, the bribing officer probably took the place of the pimp, who extorted money from the whore’s clients. 101  John Taylor, The Praise and Vertue of a Jayle, and Jaylers (1623), sigs B5v–B6r. Other examples of officers of the law who accept bribes can be found in Dekker, Lanthorne and Candle-Light. Or, The Bell-Mans Second Nights-Walke, sig. Hr; Anonymous, The Catterpillers of This Nation Anatomized, p. 40. 98 

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What is interesting here as well is that virtue is placed with the poor prisoners, while ‘craft and cousenage’ are associated with those of a higher-class profile. Here their trickery, however, is not considered witty, but reprehensible. Even worse, some officers could use their position to blackmail innocent people, by serving false warrants and asking for money in return for not arresting them. Cuthbert Cony-catcher is a criminal who takes issue with Greene’s exposés of criminal practices. His main point – which Greene also seems to accept – is that there are far worse criminals in ‘respectable’ society than the ones Greene discovers. In one passage, Cuthbert accuses officers of the law of being the worst kind of criminals: ‘for the occasion of most mischiefe, of greatest nipping and foysting, and of al vilanies, comes through the extorting bribery of some coossening and counterfaite keepers and companions that carry unlawful warrants about them to take up men’.102 Again, the language normally used for criminals (nipping, foisting, cozening are cant expressions) is here employed for those engaged in law enforcement. Middleton in The Blacke Booke (1604) narrated a trick catchpoles (petty officers of justice) performed, in order to get bribes from both the victim and the criminal: ‘[you] receive double Fée both from the Creditor and the Debter, swearing by the post of your office to shoulder-clap the party, the first time he lights upon the Limetwigs of your liberty, when for a litle Usurers Oyle, you allowe him day by day frée passage to walke by the wicked precinct of your Nose’. Middleton’s characterisation of the catchpoles’ tricks as ‘[a] most wittie, smooth, and damnable conueyance’ echoes similar descriptions of rogues’ tricks. These rogue pamphlets, as we have seen, provided a satirical portrayal of the vices of the city, even when their stated aim was to discover the practices of criminals. Middleton promised that his Blacke Booke would present ‘the mischieuous liues & pernicious practises of Villaines’, a category in which officers of the law were clearly included.103 The clearest satire of the immoral and deviant practices of officers of the law was The Blacke Dogge of Newgate (1596).104 This deserves to be analysed in detail since this pamphlet took the conventions of criminal discoveries and employed them to describe servants of the law. In addition, as we will see, it is very likely that this pamphlet set the tone for later depictions of prisons and their jailers. Luke Hutton, a highwayman incarcerated in Newgate prison, completely turned

Greene, The Defence of Conny Catching, sig. E2v. Middleton, The Blacke Booke, sigs Fr, A3r. 104  Hutton, The Blacke Dogge of Newgate. Interestingly, there was also a ballad: Anonymous, Luke Huttons Lamentation Which He Wrote the Day before His Death, Being Condemned to Be Hanged at Yorke This Last Assises for His Robberies and Trespasses Committed (1598). This had a very different message: there, the robber regrets his ways acknowledging that ‘I haue deserued long since to die’, and even claims that in Newgate ‘the keeper was gentle and kind’. He also states that he had been a jailor himself (albeit a bad one: he let all thieves escape). The specific mention of the keeper may be an attempt to counter the message of the pamphlet. 102  103 

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the tables on his keepers by publishing this pamphlet, addressed at the Lord Chief Justice of England and detailing the abuses in Newgate. The Blacke Dogge of Newgate left a lasting impression, since the name ‘Black Dog’ (the name given to the jailor by the author) stuck to the Keeper of Newgate. This was evident in Charles Courtney’s title-page, which showed a banner with a black dog hanging outside the prison, so as to make it clear that the prison depicted was Newgate.105 Furthermore, Middleton in The Blacke Booke used the term ‘black dog of Newgate’ to describe the catchpoles, when he narrated ‘your unmercifull dragging a Gentleman through Fleet-streete, to the utter confusion of his white Feather, and the lamentable spattring of his Pearle colour like Stockins, especially when some sixe of your balcke [sic] Dogges of Newgate are uppon him at once’.106 Geffray Mynshul used the same imagery, naming the gaoler of his prison (a debtors prison) as ‘a Cerberus a man in shew but a dogge in nature’, who asks for money from prisoners for even the most basic amenities.107 Even more interestingly, in Lanthorne and Candle-light (1608), a devil, infuriated with the Bellman’s uncovering of criminal practices, suggests sending ‘the Blackedogge of New-gate’ against the Bellman.108 It is perhaps telling that the black dog, the Gaoler of Newgate, has been turned into the Devil’s servant.109 Hutton’s The Blacke Dogge of Newgate (1596) appropriated the vehicle of the rogue pamphlet to censure the officers of Newgate. This was clear even on the title-page, which depicted a monstrous black dog, supposed to symbolise the Keeper of Newgate. In addition, the subtitle includes the motto ‘Time shall trie the trueth’, implying that Hutton felt that justice had failed to uncover the truth, so his only recourse for vindication was time. Half of The Blacke Dogge of Newgate is an extended poem relating the miserable circumstances in which prisoners were forced to live. In the pamphlet, the gaoler appears as the eponymous dog, corrupt and merciless, taking every last penny from his prisoners to give them even the most basic necessities (bread, clothes). The other half of the pamphlet however is more interesting for our purposes: this is a prose work titled ‘A Dialogue betwixt the Author and one Zawny, who was a Prisoner in Newgate, and perfectly acquainted with matters touching

Courtney, The Life, Apprehensio[n,] Arraignement, and Execution of Char[Les] Courtney. See image on this book’s cover. 106  Middleton, The Blacke Booke, sig. Fr. Emphasis mine. See also G.B. Shand, ‘The Black Book’, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, ed. Gary Taylor (Oxford, 2007), pp. 204–18 (p. 206). 107  Mynshul, Certaine Characters and Essayes of Prison and Prisoners, sigs C5r–C5v. 108  Dekker, Lanthorne and Candle-Light. Or, The Bell-Mans Second Nights-Walke, sig. C3v. 109  Even though it did not repeat the same stereotype, the title-page of Anonymous, Strange Newes from Newgate and the Old-Baily (1651) repeated the association of the Black Dog with Newgate prison: the title-page depicts a prison and a caption reads ‘The Black Dogg hath bewitched us’. See also the references in John Done, A Miscellania of Morall, Theologicall and Philosophicall Sentances (1650), sig. Gr; John Phillips, A Satyr against Hypocrites (1655), sig. Cr. 105 

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Plate 3  Luke Hutton, The Blacke Dogge of Newgate (1596), title-page.

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the discoverie of the superlative degree of Cunicatching: pithy, pleasant, and profitable for all the readers heereof.’110 Hutton was evidently acquainted with Greene’s cony-catching pamphlets, since he used the exact same language, but turned it on its head: in his pamphlet, the officers of Newgate and the informers they employed are described as the cony-catchers, whereas the cutpurses are ‘conys’, meaning their victims. The title imitated the ones of the cony-catching pamphlets, while stressing that the officers’ cony-catching is the highest degree of deceit. The similarities do not end there: the whole pamphlet is structured like a cony-catching pamphlet and the narration of the tricks these officers used in order to cheat their victims mirrored the rogue pamphlets, describing their tricks as ‘this next discoverie of their Cunny-catching’. In this case, however, their actions were more reprehensible, because they used their position and authority to cheat. In one example, the officers tried to extort money from an innocent man, threatening to imprison him. Even though he was not liable for punishment, his refusal to pay them resulted in his incarceration, and he was forced to bribe them to avoid staying in prison until his trial. In another case, one of these corrupt officers promised his help to a country man who had lost his purse (losing four pounds in total). However, his reason for helping was his own profit: acting on behalf of the victim, he rounded up twelve known cutpurses, even though he knew they were innocent, just to force them to bribe him to escape prison: They take at least a dosen Cutpurses: which when they have done, the Cunnicatcher begins to rayle mightely, swearing they shall some of them be hanged: but to Prison they shall all go, unles this money be had agayne… Now the Cutpurses, though they be all cleere of this matter, yet they begin to quake for feare, offering rather then they will goe to Prison, they will make up the money… To be shorte, no Cutpurse scapte their hands, but he paide a share, so that there was gathered the first day at the least ten pounds…111

Zawny’s aphorism, that he is ‘rather kept in to bribe them, then to answer any offence I have committed’, graphically shows that profit, and not justice, was the officers’ primary concern.112 Hutton successfully appropriated the form and language of cony-catching pamphlets to uncover the iniquity of those who were supposed to uphold the law. Even though the pamphlet follows the pattern of narrating the tricks of these officers, the intention is to rob them of any justification by equating them with criminals, or worse. If we consider the first part of the pamphlet, it becomes

Hutton, The Blacke Dogge of Newgate, sigs Cr, C2v, D2r. Hutton, sig. E3v. 112  Hutton, sig. D2v. Another pamphlet that also mocks an informer is Anonymous, The Life and Death of Griffin Flood Informer. In this pamphlet Flood – an unofficial, but crucial, agent of law enforcement – used his position to extort both criminals and innocent men and women. 110  111 

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clear that Hutton considers them as worse than the criminals incarcerated. This pamphlet, however, was not just an imitation of rogue pamphlets, but their direct descendent: Greene in The Defence of Conny Catching implied that he had another pamphlet ready to be published, ‘with a discovery of secret villanies, wherein you [Greene] meane to discourse at ful the nature of the stripping Law, which is the abuse offered by the Keepers of Newgate to poore prisoners, and some that belong to the Marshalsea’.113 Giving the name of a ‘Law’, which in these cony-catching pamphlets is linked with criminal practices,114 to the treatment of prisoners by their gaolers mockingly subverts the moral high ground they should have enjoyed and shows that criminal activities exist on both sides of the divide between law enforcers and thieves. Possibly due to the popularity of Hutton’s pamphlet (it was reprinted three times), other descriptions of prisons also highlighted how keepers abused their prisoners: Taylor’s satirical The Praise and Vertue of a Jayle, and Jaylers used the same themes of the jailor as a devil who mistreats the prisoners, and law enforcement as a lucrative business: [some] cal’d a Jaile a magazin of sin, An University of Villany, An Academy of foule blasphemy, A sinke of drunkennesse, a den of Theeves, A Treasury for Serjeants and for Shreeves, A Mint for Baylifes, Marshalls men and Jailors, Who live by losses of captiu’d bewailers: A Nurse of Roguery, and an earthly hell, Where Devils or Jaylers in mens shapes doe dwell.

Taylor ironically described jail as ‘a school of virtue’.115 The irony here is used to show that instead of being reformed, prisoners were fleeced out of their money by their keepers, and they became more depraved. Importantly, the fault lies with the keeper, not the prisoners.116 Wil: Bagnal’s Ghost. Or the Merry Devill of Gadmunton. In His Perambulation of the Prisons of London (1655) – partly a description of prisons and partly of specific Greene, The Defence of Conny Catching, sig. E2v. Dekker, The Belman of London: ‘their Knaueries gotten the names of Arts or Lawe’, sig. E3v. 115  Taylor, The Praise and Vertue of a Jayle, and Jaylers, sig. A7v. 116  Similar comments about how prisons were places where criminals became more degenerate because of the cruelty and corruption of the keepers are repeated in Clavell, A Recantation of an Ill Led Life and George Wither, Britain’s Remembrancer Containing a Narration of the Plague Lately Past; a Declaration of the Mischiefs Present; and a Prediction of Iudgments to Come; (If Repentance Prevent Not.) It Is Dedicated (for the Glory of God) to Posteritie; and, to These Times (If They Please) (1628), p. 201. Wither was a poet and satirist; this work was published without a licence, but was immediately popular: Michelle O’Callaghan, ‘Wither, George (1588–1667), Poet’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 12 January 2019, . 113  114 

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criminals – presented the character of a sergeant in equally unflattering terms. The sergeant here accepts bribes in order to provide succour to the prisoners (often in terms of slightly better conditions of imprisonment) and is only happy when he is arresting people. The author comments scoffingly ‘In what schooles of inhumanity they have been bred, I know not, but I conceive u’m [sic] to be in tuition to the fallen Angells, who with their own integrity have put off all love to mankind’ and fantasises that, when they meet their end, they ‘may find the mercy of the Superiour Jayle… where they shall feed upon the fragments and almes basket of old Nick, and have hot dyet for their cold charity.’117 Here the author not only derides the character of the sergeant, showing that he is cruel, greedy, and uncharitable, but also hopes that, in the end, such men will be judged by a superior form of justice, since temporal justice has failed. It may seem surprising that rogue pamphlets, which ostensibly aimed to uncover the practices of criminals, would include so many criticisms of the failings of law enforcers. By presenting them as criminals, and their practices as tricks, authors ridiculed their aspersions and showed the distance between theory and practice. The satire of law enforcement can be seen as an extension of the satire of city vice, but with an even less sympathetic undertone: the actions of the officers of the law are rarely described as witty, and they are not admirable or likeable. This is probably related to sympathy being reserved for witty tricksters, who use wit to gain the upper hand. Officers of the law are portrayed abusing their power rather than cleverly outwitting others. Here, the satirical impulse of the rogue pamphlets is clearer, since the aim is to correct vices enabled by privilege.118 There is another reason why such accounts of criminality were sympathetic towards rogues, however: this is because they were often portrayed as good fellows, as the next part will show. Good Fellowship

In 1628, Robin Good-fellow, his Mad Prankes and Merry Jests, Full of Honest Mirth, and Is a Fit Medicine for Melancholy was published.119 The title-page promises that this story would be ‘full of honest Mirth, and is a fit Medicine for Melancholy’, showing its intention to entertain the audience. Robin Good-fellow was well-known to contemporaries, and Shakespeare employed the type as Puck in A Midsommer Nights Dreame (1600). In the pamphlet, Robin Good-fellow is a fairy who lives his life playing (for the most part innocent) tricks, punishing

E. Gayton, Wil: Bagnal’s Ghost. Or the Merry Devill of Gadmunton. In His Perambulation of the Prisons of London (1655), p. 41. 118  Concerning satire in the early seventeenth century, see also Andrew McRae, Literature, Satire, and the Early Stuart State (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 85–113. 119  Anonymous, Robin Good-Fellow, His Mad Prankes and Merry Jests, Full of Honest Mirth, and Is a Fit Medicine for Melancholy (1628). Another edition was published in 1639. 117 

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the undeserving and helping those he deems worthy: ‘Robin always did helpe those that suffered wrong and never would hurt any but those that did wrong to others.’120 The story ‘How Robin served a Tapster for nicking his Pots’ exemplifies this. The tapster cheated his customers by using smaller pots than he ought and filling them with froth, thus spending less beer. Robin, ‘hating such knavery, put a tricke upon him’. He transformed himself into a brewer and asked the tapster for the twenty pounds that was owed to him. Robin gave the money received ‘to the poore of that parish’, earning the tapster’s praise for his generosity. When the real brewer asked for the money, the tapster, confused, brought the note Robin had given him as a receipt. To his surprise, this read: I Robin Good-fellow, true man and honest man, doee acknowledge to have received of Nicke and Froth the Cheating Tapster, the summe of twenty pound, which money I have bestowed (to the Tapsters content) among the poore of the Parish, out of whose pockets this aforesaid Tapster had picked the aforesaid summe; not after the manner of foisting, but after his excellent skill of bombasting, or a pint for a peny. If now thou wilt goe hang thy selfe, Then take thy Apron-strings. It doth me good when such foule birds Upon the Gallowes sings121

This follows the usual trope of the trickster tricked, where the trickery is excused – or even celebrated – because the victim deserves it. The note left even suggests that the Tapster’s actions should lead him to the Gallows. Robin here does not only act as a corrector of injustice (an injustice related to drinking, no less), but also shows charity towards the poor. This story follows a similar narrative to some of the rogue pamphlets, as we have seen. The connection between the tricks of Robin Good-fellow and the rogues becomes even more evident in the ballad The Mad-Merry Pranks of Robbin Good-Fellow (1625).122 Interestingly, this edition of the ballad featured the same woodcut from Thomas Harman’s, The Groundworke of Conny-Catching (1592), which, as we have seen, showed a rabbit engaged in various criminal activities (associated with Greene’s cony-catching pamphlets). This could imply that these publications had similarities with the cony-catching pamphlets and I argue that this relates to Robin’s portrayal as a trickster and a good fellow.123

Anonymous, Robin Good-Fellow, sig. C3v. Anonymous, Robin Good-Fellow, sigs D3r–D4r. 122  Anonymous, The Mad-Merry Pranks of Robbin Good-Fellow (1625). 123  A similar allusion to this spirit in connection with criminals is made in Dekker, The Belman of London, sig. G4r when talking about fences, those who receive stolen goods ‘by bills of sale (made in the name of Robin-goodfellow and his crew) get the goods of honest Citizens into their hands’. 120 

121 

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Both the Robin Good-fellow pamphlet and the rogue pamphlets suggest that criminals and the expected audience shared conventions of good fellowship. Robin himself draws attention to this connection between honesty, good fellowship, drinking, and eating: ‘I love true lovers, honest men, good-fellowes, good housewives, good meate, good drinke, and all things that good is.’124 ‘Honesty’ is an interesting term to use for a trickster who often deceives his victims, but it is clear that the intention behind the trick (the expectation that this will lead to the correction of a behaviour) can turn condemnation into admiration.125 In addition, behaving as a good fellow could create a bond of sympathy between criminal and audience. According to Mark Hailwood, good fellowship is a ‘celebratory idiom, one that emphasised merriment, liberality, and affectionate social bonds’ and focuses particularly on drinking rituals.126 Historians and literary scholars have looked at printed works on drinking and found that while, on the one hand, there is a tendency by moralists to condemn drinking, on the other hand there are many works which valorise drinking as a recreational activity for the educated and elite, as well as more ephemeral texts (broadside ballads in Hailwood’s analysis) which focus on good fellowship.127 What Hailwood finds in ballads is that ‘good fellowship was an activity hedged about with demands, rules and expectations’. The expectations highlighted were a willingness to participate, by paying for drinks (here, liberality was praised); an ability to consume considerable quantities of drink; a present-centred prodigality; and an expression of ‘a jovial, “merry” disposition’.128 ‘These expectations functioned as a series of “entry requirements”, and underpinned a “politics of participation” that determined who should be included in, and excluded from, a drinking company.’129 Hailwood also finds similar expectations of good fellowship in other sources such as legal records, diaries, and depositions, showing that this was not just a literary topos. Anonymous, Robin Good-Fellow, sig. B3v. More broadly about ideas of property theft by the fairies in order to legitimise stealing from the rich, see Mary Ellen Lamb, ‘Taken by the Fairies: Fairy Practices and the Production of Popular Culture in A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 51:3 (2000), pp. 291–2. 126  Mark Hailwood, Alehouses and Good Fellowship in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 2014), p. 113. 127  Interestingly also, Alexandra Shepard analyses how alehouses could be presented in moralistic texts as ‘anti-societies’ and alehouse keepers as ‘anti-ministers’, showing how broadly the language of anti-society could be used: Alexandra Shepard, ‘“Swil-Bols and Tos-Pots”: Drink Culture and Male Bonding in England, c.1560–1640’, in Love, Friendship and Faith in Europe, 1300-1800, ed. Laura Gowing, Michael Hunter, and Miri Rubin (Basingstoke, 2005), p. 116. 128  Hailwood, Alehouses and Good Fellowship in Early Modern England, p. 147. 129  ‘These ballads reveal that alehouse culture was informed by an idiom of good fellowship –a characteristic mode and set of conventions-that configured sociable and recreational drinking as a positive activity’ (p. 168). The quotations are from Phil Withington, ‘Company and Sociability in Early Modern England’, Social History, 32:3 (2007), pp. 292–3, 296, 302. 124  125 

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These ideas surrounding good fellowship and who is included in a drinking company are also prevalent in crime pamphlets, and they show how criminals could often be perceived as ‘good fellows’ and drinking buddies. One common way to describe the life of a criminal was to explore how an otherwise fine young man had fallen into bad company, spent a lot of money drinking and – due to lack of means – ended up in a life of crime. However, this is often portrayed as a pleasant life and the criminal as a good fellow. The burglar Richard Hannam was said to be ‘living in London at a very great height for a time, kept company with the best, and spent his money freely; for he had perfectly learned the old proverb, Lightly come, lightly go’.130 This kind of life ended up at the gallows, but in the meantime, Hannam is portrayed as keeping the best company and showing liberality. Good fellowship was sometimes viewed as a particular vice of criminals, who had to steal to maintain their lifestyle of liberal drinking and merrymaking. Greene has a (fictional) repentant courtesan say about her former life: ‘for I so accustomably use my selfe to all kinde of vice, that I accounted swearing no sinne, whordome, why I smile at that, and could prophanely saie, that it was a sin which God laught at, gluttony I held good fellowship, & wrath honor and resolution’.131 Randle Cotgrave’s dictionary definition of ‘drolerie’ mentioned earlier also connected ‘good fellowship’ and ‘roguery’.132 From the 1650s good fellowship is more often mentioned in relation with criminality, and this may have to do with the influence of a festive idiom of resistance for Royalists, something that will be analysed in Chapter 4. James Hind embodied ideas of good fellowship: a pamphlet about his life called him ‘a Master in the Art of Theevery, as the cunningest and wisest of the Company… and to palliate all these, he is a fine companion, facetious and witty’.133 Here, Hind’s description as witty and a good companion are expressly meant to mitigate condemnation of his actions. Hind also furnishes us with one of the best examples of the extent to which thieves could be considered good fellows and tricksters, in the story ‘How Hind putting on a Bears skin, attempted to rob a Committee man at Oxford.’ According to the story, when Hind went to Oxford, he met at an inn ‘half a score of Worcester-shire Gentlemen’. Among them was a: covetous Committee-man, that fearing his neighbors would tipple hard, and so he should be drawn to great expense) [sic] bespoke a shoulder of Mutton for his mans supper and his own, contriving it so, that the remainder (with a flaggon of Beer) should serve then on the morrow for their dinner; at which the rest of his Neighbors seems to be much discontented, and mightily inveigh’d against him.

130  131  132  133 

Anonymous, Hannam’s Last Farewell to the World, p. 5. Greene, A Disputation between a HeeConny-Catcher and a SheeConny-Catcher, sig. F2r. See p. 63. Anonymous, A Second Discovery of Hind’s Exploits, p. 2. 84

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The reason for their anger was that the man had a lot of money on him – they knew that he carried £200 – but was unwilling to drink with them. One of the gentlemen even exclaimed ‘Hang him old Usuring Dog’, combining greed with usury, as was common.134 Hind decided that this was an opportunity to ply his trade and punish the committee man for his miserly ways. Thus, he bought a bear skin, dressed up like a bear, and entered the committee man’s room. The committee man, terrified, ran down and cried that he had seen ‘either the Devil, or a Bear’. At that, all ‘the Country-men laughed’. When he returned to his room, he realised his money was stolen, and accused the innkeeper. The innkeeper, however, answered that this was not his fault, since the committee man had not given the money to his safekeeping. Consequently, he suggested ‘there was no way for him, but to go to Lillis, and enquire which of his Devils was abroad that night, for certainly one of them must have it’, again poking fun at the committee man. The next morning, before Hind left, he left some verses for the committee man: Those that forsake their friends to save their purse, May they be serv’d as thou hast been, or worse; Good company hereafter ne’re decline, But love good fellowship; lest that the Coin, For which thou carp’st, and takest so much care, Be again taken from thee, by the Bear135

This story highlights some of the previous ideas about how the funny stories included in the pamphlets often directed laughter against the victim rather than the criminal. In addition, the main failing of the victim, for which he is derided by onlookers and punished by Hind, is his shunning of ‘good company’ for love of money. Hind is not the only criminal to be thus portrayed, nor is this a post-1640 phenomenon. We saw earlier the two thieves who asked the victim to spend twelve pence at the alehouse. Similarly, Gamaliel Ratsey, a highwayman who is most likely a real person as well, also showed a willingness to abide by the rules of good fellowship. The story ‘A pretie conceit past upon Ratsey by a fellow that he rob’d of ten pound’ shows Ratsey being beaten by his victim. Ratsey accosted a traveller and asked him to deliver his money. The victim, quick-witted, threw his purse over a fence, and while Ratsey was busy retrieving it, he jumped on Ratsey’s horse and escaped with 100 marks (roughly 70 pounds) of Ratsey’s money. Here, again, the trick backfired. What is more interesting for our purposes, however, is Ratsey’s reaction: when he narrated this story later, he acknowledged with good humour that he was beaten:

Anonymous, A Pill to Purge Melancholy: Or Merry Newes from Newgate: Wherein Is Set Forth, the Pleasant Jests, Witty Conceits, and Excellent Couzenages, of Captain James Hind, p. 14. 135  Anonymous, A Pill to Purge Melancholy, pp. 15–16. 134 

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if I could see the man himself, quoth Ratsey, I would give him a gallon of wine; there is all the ill I owe him, for in my life I never had a prancke passt upon me, nor did I ever receive such foile at mine owne weapon before.136

This suggests that Ratsey bore no hard feelings for being duped and wished to show his appreciation for the trick by sharing a drink. Thus, he employed the merry disposition and willingness to pay for a drink expected of a good fellow. Conclusion

This chapter has shown that laughter was an important element of rogue pamphlets, and that it could work in various ways. Trickster tales, as I have explored, provided an important context for the reading of these criminal pamphlets. The trickster figure, who elicits laughter and admiration for his/ her witty adjustment to situations and the mastery of their surroundings, was an important component of the figure of the criminal-as-rogue. Adam Zucker has argued that ‘wit is never the preserve of the wealthy, and it permits status to accrue with groups or individuals – women, servants, the untitled or unmoneyed – normally distant from centers of economic or political control’.137 This can partly explain the privileged position of criminals as tricksters in these narratives. Even though neither their social status nor their ‘trade’ would elicit admiration, their portrayal as witty added significantly to their status in the narrative. The reader response expected in these tales, laughing at the criminal’s victims, emphasised the potentially subversive role of laughter, which ‘could deflate the pretensions of rank and social hierarchy’.138 Thus, instead of being condemned as criminals, rogues were admired for their wit, while their victims were ridiculed. Laughter was expected as an audience response since such tales of trickery had a long tradition of doing just that. Rogue pamphlets often used inversion to drive their message home, but this was expected to effect the correction of vices through the use of satire, such as the trickery of urban society or law enforcers. Here, it is clear that trickery was – perhaps surprisingly – more accepted when performed by criminals rather than members of the urban community or law enforcers. Even if pamphlets were ambivalent when describing the city, they were far more clearly against the miscarriage of justice. In the pamphlets, inversion does not end with the re-establishment of social order, but with the affirmation of values shared by the audience. This does not only relate to trickery, but also to ideas of good fellowship, which was an important value for both elite and plebeian audiences.

Anonymous, Ratseis Ghost. Or The Second Part of His Madde Prankes and Robberies, sigs B3v–B4v. 137  Zucker, The Places of Wit in Early Modern English Comedy, pp. 10–11. Also, for Andrew McRae, ‘wit legitimises transgression’, McRae, Literature, Satire, and the Early Stuart State, p. 88. 138  Thomas, ‘The Place of Laughter in Tudor and Stuart England’, pp. 71–81. 136 

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These are evident in these texts and they often make it clear that criminals are ‘good fellows’, ready to participate in convivial rituals. The use of this merry laughter in the pamphlets created an imaginary convivial space, where the criminal could coexist with other members of society on equal footing. This approach to laughter agrees with Mary Douglas, who has argued that ‘Laughter and jokes, since they attack classification and hierarchy, are obviously apt symbols for expressing community in this sense of unhierarchised, undifferentiated social relations.’ Community here is associated with ‘good fellowship, spontaneity, warm contact’.139 Alexandra Shepard also provides a similar argument, showing how the ‘rituals of male drink culture’ marked male bonds which served to ‘undermine the hierarchical and patrilinear relations between men founded on social status, age and marital status’.140 This sense of inclusivity could be enhanced if such texts were read out loud in a convivial context, enhancing the laughter and the sense of undermining hierarchies. This runs counter to Skinner’s view regarding Renaissance laughter: Skinner, exploring the insights of humanist scholars, assumes that laughter is always about contempt. Reading Castiglione and Burton, he argues that laughter was connected to laughing at something ridiculous with the intent to correct this particular behaviour. When quoting from Hobbes, he also acknowledges that humanists could think of other kinds of laughter, such as laughing ‘without offence… at absurdityes and infirmityes abstracted from persons, and where all the Company may laugh together’. However, Skinner claims that ‘such laughter will still be an expression of our scorn and contempt, but instead of mocking other people to their faces we join together in ridiculing some ludicrous feature of the world and its ways’.141 This chapter has shown that there are various kinds of laughter, and even though there is an impulse to correct, this is not the only one. By consequence, even though these texts were not always sympathetic towards criminals, they allowed different impulses (such as condemnation, anger, laughter, or admiration) to coexist without necessarily valorising one of them. What this chapter has shown is that laughter turned criminals into pranksters. As Mark Knights and Adam Morton have argued, in this period ‘pranksters often laughed at the stupidity of someone or tricked someone for the entertainment of others – but also created communities of laughter in more or less harmless fun’.142 It is interesting that even though rogues were not seen as ‘harmless’ by any stretch of the imagina-

Mary Douglas, ‘The Social Control of Cognition: Some Factors in Joke Perception’, Man, 3:3 (1968), p. 370. 140  Shepard, ‘“Swil-Bols and Tos-Pots”: Drink Culture and Male Bonding in England, c.1560– 1640’, p. 112. This often excluded women. 141  Skinner, Visions of Politics, Volume 3, p. 147. The first is a quote from Thomas Hobbes, Elements of Law (1650). 142  Knights and Morton, ‘Introduction’, in The Power of Laughter and Satire in Early Modern Britain, p. 9. 139 

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tion, the description of their actions as ‘pranks’ and the laughter they elicited connected criminals to trickery and good fellowship. These characteristics, and the generic instability of rogue pamphlets between satire and jest-book, meant that laughter’s function was to include criminals rather than portray them as Other, worthy of condemnation.

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3 Trust, Sociability, and Criminal Networks

A ‘pleasant tale’ in the The Third and Last Part of Conny-Catching (1592) narrates how ‘an honest substantiall Citizen was made a Connie, and simplie entertained a knaue that carried awaie his goods verie politickly’. In this tale, a cony-catcher promised others of his ‘profession’ that he would perform an impressive feat of deception. True to his word, he spent a fortnight watching a citizen’s house, in order to learn the name of one of the maids, as well as where she was from and her family relations in the country. Thus prepared, he stopped the maid in the street, ‘and kissing her sayd. Coosen Margeret, I am verye glad to sée you well, my unckle your father, and all your friends in the Countrey are in good health God be praised.’ The maid, who had not been back in the country for eleven years, had no reason to mistrust his words. Her ‘cousin’ further claimed that her father had asked him to bring ‘a gammon of bacon and a cheese’ to her masters, as a way to entreat them to let her visit her family at Whitsuntide. Having staged this encounter carefully, the cony-catcher was also introduced to the mistress of the house, who, impressed with his good manners and out of love for her maid, invited her ‘cousin’ to dinner the next day. The ‘wilye Treacher’, as Greene describes him, was all too willing to do so. On the next day, the cony-catcher was greatly entertained: not only was the dinner scrumptious, but he was also shown around the rich citizen’s shop. At dinner, he cleverly stretched the conversation until it was late at night. Having intimated that his lodging was outside the City, in St Giles in the Fields, he received an invitation from his hosts to spend the night there. This was his aim all along. At night, when everyone else was asleep, he stole away plate and expensive fabrics. Leaving the house, he met three or four of his companions outside, who ‘lurked therabouts for the purpose’ of helping him to carry this loot to a ‘theefe receiver’ (someone who fenced stolen goods). Even though the cony-catchers enjoyed their good fortune, for the other actors of this story, the end was tragic: the citizen, discovering: how his kinde courtesie was thus trecherouslye requited: blames the poore maide, as innocent herein as himselfe, and imprisoning her, thinking so to regaine his owne: griefe with ill cherishing there shortens her life: And thus ensueth one hard hap upon 89

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another, to the great griefe both of maister and mistresse, when the trueth was knowne, that they so wronged their honest servant.1

The end belied the description of this tale in the title as ‘pleasant’. It is a case of misplaced trust, since the master and mistress should have trusted their servant, and not the cony-catcher. This story is common in various rogue pamphlets, but also in legal records, which emphasise how criminals perform familiarity and friendship, in order to draw their victims in and exploit their trust. This chapter will focus on the ways in which trust and sociability are negotiated in rogue pamphlets and trial records in order to show that such narratives were informed by a multifaceted understanding of the city. They suggest that London was viewed as both a city of danger and alienation, but also as a place where friendship and trust could flourish. These narratives of friendship and deception, trust and betrayal, bring into focus a social dynamic which allows us to re-examine central themes of the history of social relations in early modern London. It is a commonplace in early modern English studies to talk about the growth of London in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. London in 1509 had a population of 60,000 but by 1700, with almost 500,000 denizens, it was bigger than most European cities. This development has been conceptualised as the growth of the metropolis, and the prevalent historiographical narrative revolves around the crisis-stability debate. The narrative of crisis and disorder emphasises how London’s population explosion created social tensions, crime, and anonymity, while the historiography of stability stresses that London society managed to retain a sense of community and neighbourliness.2 This is actually a debate about the quality of urban life and the modern city (or how far early modern London can be characterised as one), which has Greene, The Third and Last Part of Conny-Catching, sigs B3r–B4v. Note the repeated use of ‘treachery’. 2  See A. Beier, ‘Social Problems in Elizabethan London’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 9:2 (1978), 203–21; M.J. Power, ‘A “Crisis” Reconsidered: Social and Demographic Dislocation in London in the 1590s’, The London Journal, 12:2 (1986), 134–45; M.J. Power, ‘London and the Control of the “Crisis” of the 1590s’, History, 70:230 (1985), 371–85; Frank Freeman Foster, The Politics of Stability: A Portrait of the Rulers in Elizabethan London (London, 1977); Steve Lee Rappaport, Worlds within Worlds: Structures of Life in Sixteenth-Century London (Cambridge and New York, 1989); Valerie Pearl, ‘Change and Stability in SeventeenthCentury London’, The London Journal, 5:1 (1979), 3–34; Ian W. Archer, The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge and New York, 1991); Griffiths, Lost Londons; Jeremy Boulton, Neighbourhood and Society: A London Suburb in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge and New York, 1987); J.F. Merritt, The Social World of Early Modern Westminster: Abbey, Court and Community, 1525–1640 (Manchester, 2005). See also the criticism of the language of crisis in London studies in Paul Griffiths and M.S.R. Jenner, ‘Introduction’, in Londinopolis: Essays in the Cultural and Social History of Early Modern London, ed. Paul Griffiths and Mark S.R. Jenner (Manchester and New York, 2000), p. 6. 1 

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characteristics of an anomic society that Durkheim predicted. Durkheim used anomie to talk about a society where ‘there are no moral constraints on the individual’s limitless desires’. This society is more common in ‘times of upheaval, when the force of moral regulation is weakened… and normative constraints on behaviour cease to be effective’. The concept has been used to analyse city life, highlighting the state of flux in which cities operate and the tensions inherent in this state. These tensions were a result of migrating populations, a growing individualism, detachment from close-knit communities, and the establishment of new cultural goals (for example, the pursuit of wealth) when there are few legitimate means to attain them.3 This analysis is very close to the way that historians of crisis envision early modern London as a place where population increase led to poverty and anonymity, while the pursuit of wealth, which allowed the enrichment of a part of the population, also brought social tensions and crime. This was especially the case among those who could not benefit from the changes. Paul Griffiths encapsulates this in arguing that ‘London’s growth led to more disorder, overcrowded areas, smog, and concern’.4 Evidently, historians focusing on order challenge this notion by emphasising the ties which bound individuals, but also the opportunities available for individuals to play a role in civic affairs (actively, through office holding or passively, through participation in civic activities). Both approaches though show that this is the arena in which this debate is fought. Crime is often analysed by historians focusing on disorder, as it highlights the issues inherent in urban living. Anomie literally translates as ‘absence of law’, so the narrative of individualism, distrust, and disruption of community values works well in the context of crime. Historians of the order approach tend to either avoid the subject or emphasise the ways in which officials dealt with crime.5 Most of these analyses are macro-historic. However, if we look at the textures of social relations, and zoom in on particular cases, it will become evident that these narratives throw open questions of trust. In this chapter, I argue that sources relating to property crime (both rogue pamphlets and trial records) allow us to consider issues of trust, sociability, and community. In obvious ways, both legal records and pamphlets present tales of distrust: criminals performing familiarity, when in reality they are ready to fleece their victims of their money through gaming John Tierney, Criminology: Theory and Context, 3rd ed. (Harlow, 2010), pp. 90–103. My overview combines the insights of Durkeim with Merton’s Strain Theory. For examples of how ‘anomie’ is relevant to early modern London, see reviews of Boulton’s Neighbourhood and Society: Martin Ingram, ‘Review: Neighbourhood and Society: A London Suburb in the Seventeenth Century: Jeremy Boulton’, History of European Ideas, 10:2 (1989), 262–3; Robert Ashton, ‘Review: Neighbourhood and Society: A London Suburb in the Seventeenth Century, Jeremy Boulton’, The Economic History Review, 41:4 (1988), 638–40. 4  Griffiths, Lost Londons, p. 8 (regarding ideas of ‘dangerous growth’, see pp. 47–66). Regarding London’s anonymity, see also Patricia Fumerton, ‘London’s Vagrant Economy: Making Space for “Low” Subjectivity’, in Material London, ca. 1600, p. 215. 5  A point made by Ian Archer as well; Archer, The Pursuit of Stability, p. 16. 3 

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or robbery; networks of criminals lurking everywhere, some of whom may be friends or even kin. Nonetheless, reading those against the grain we can also notice how often they incorporate other narratives, of sociability, trust, and attempts to establish communities or friendships. These sources show that deceitful performances of sociability abound, but do not only stem from criminals, suggesting that distrust is justified in an urban setting. Equally, one of the most surprising findings is how often people were willing to extend trust and make friends, even with people who were strangers or suspected (and even known) criminals. This fits with research on trust, which argues that trust is a necessary component of living in any community, however big or small this is.6 Craig Muldrew has shown how in the early modern period credit was conceived in social terms, as ‘the personal attribute of trustworthiness, or the sum of trust in society’.7 In this way, a reputation in the community of being ‘of good credit’ was translated into the ability to borrow or have bonds recognised and accepted. In a society where coins were rare, most economic transactions took place through lending and promising to pay later. Thus, everyone had to extend trust in order to make economic transactions. This not only made assessing who was trustworthy extremely significant, but also – and perhaps paradoxically – made sociability and neighbourliness crucial for economic survival. In Muldrew’s words: as households became more dependent on one another for their security through chains of obligations, the combination of competition and dependence meant that they increasingly had to try to find a balance between hospitality, neighbourliness and charity on the one hand, and thrift and profit on the other, because both were needed to keep credit alive and maintain the financial security of the household and commonwealth at one and the same time.

This shows how necessary trust was in order to maintain a reputation for good credit, but also how ‘economic trust was interpreted in terms as emotive as other forms of human interaction, such as neighbourliness, friendship, and marriage’.8 Contemporaries often combined trust and credit. Thomas Wilson, in A Christian Dictionarie (1612), defines trust as ‘the credit which one of us puts in another, in our mutuall worldly dealings’.9 In a later seventeenth-century sermon, Robert South argued that ‘The great instrument and engine for the carrying on of the commerce and mutual intercourses of the world is trust, without which Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power: Two Works (Chichester and New York, 1979); Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Oxford, 1990). 7  Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 1998), p. 134. 8  Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation, pp. 158, 125. 9  Thomas Wilson, A Christian Dictionarie, Opening the Signification of the Chiefe Wordes Dispersed Generally through Holie Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, Tending to Increase Christian Knowledge (1612), p. 497. 6 

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there can be no correspondence maintained either between societies or particular persons.’ South also engaged with the issue of distrust, presenting an imaginary society which lived by the maxim ‘to trust nobody: whether in so doing they deal honestly and ingenuously they seem not much to care, being contented that it is safe’.10 Here, South contrasts dealing honestly with others and safety, suggesting that even though mistrusting may be safer, it leads to unfair interactions with others. Consequently, trust was essential for communal life. What happens then, when this community grows exponentially, with newcomers arriving all the time and increasing social polarisation, as historians have shown to be the case for London?11 Here, Anthony Giddens’s work on trust in modern cities can be illuminating. Giddens has argued that modern cities are not impersonal, but that they present an ‘intersection of intimacy and impersonality’ and that ‘in relations of intimacy of the modern type, trust is always ambivalent, and the possibility of severance is more or less ever present’.12 Even though it is doubtful that Giddens had early modern London in mind (Giddens distinguishes between modern and pre-modern contexts, but early modern London does not fit either category), this is a useful way to consider the ways in which metropolitan crime intersects with notions of trust. In a city full of strangers, people were aware of the risk involved in trusting others, while at the same time found it impossible – and undesirable – to trust no one. This chapter will focus on this ambivalence of trust in the urban environment. Continuing the themes established in the previous chapter, it will consider the ways in which rogue pamphlets engage with ideas of a criminal underworld, London life, and good fellowship/sociability through a different prism: the ways in which rogue pamphlets deal with trust and performing sociability in the metropolitan context. In this chapter, I use both rogue pamphlets and court records (from Middlesex and Westminster Sessions of the Peace) in order to consider how they represent this precarious balance between distrust and sociability.13 I

‘A discourse upon proverbs XXVIII.26. He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool’, in Robert South, Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions (1823), IV, pp. 487–8. This is also mentioned by Muldrew in The Economy of Obligation, p. 185. 11  Keith Wrightson, ‘The “Decline of Neighbourliness” Revisited’, in Local Identities in Late Medieval and Early Modern England, ed. Norman L. Jones and D.R. Woolf (Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 19–49; Griffiths, Lost Londons; Boulton, Neighbourhood and Society, pp. 228–61. 12  Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, pp. 142–3. 13  Since my main focus is on how these stories engage with trust in the community, I focus on the Middlesex and Westminster Sessions of the Peace. Bridewell records are used often by scholars interested in crime, but these records tend to focus on vagrancy while I have approached the term ‘rogue’ more broadly, as relevant to crimes against property which often involve some element of deceit. In addition, Bridewell records isolate crime from the community, as vagrants were sent there from various parts of London. In many occasions in the Middlesex and Westminster Sessions, both defendant and accuser had a place in the community, which made a difference in the way they were perceived by the jury. See Robert B. 10 

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will use both pamphlets and trial materials, not as an attempt to contrast ‘reality’ and ‘representations’ but because viewing them both as narratives about crime in the metropolis allows us to understand how contemporaries thought about London more broadly.14 Since legal records are often used to show the problematic nature of social relations in early modern London, using them here will show that these records presented a more nuanced view of social interactions in the city. In particular, this chapter will show how these crime stories focus on performances of sociability, often revolving around drinking.15 The issue on which these narratives hinge is whether this performance is based on genuine feeling, and, by consequence, whether trust in individuals was justified. Thus, they often place emphasis on credit as a way to assess trustworthiness. The first section presents sources about gaming, showing that they exhibit concerns about exploiting trust, but also how these were underpinned by a narrative of sociability and familiarity. Then, the next section focuses on theft and highway robbery, in which contemporaries (and historians) assumed the existence of a network of criminals, as can be seen from the story which started this chapter. The analysis will focus on specific cases to consider how these crimes could be framed in different ways, as suggesting an underworld – thus a place that could be distrusted automatically – or described in more positive ways as bonds of sociability and friendship. Gaming

Trust was a thorny subject in this period. Muldrew has argued that Hobbes considers that ‘in the broader arena of society, with innumerable relations between many people, mistrust and fear of other people’s potential dishonesty was a much stronger factor than any form of natural affinity between men, because of the impossibility of judging the goodness or wickedness of everyone a man negotiated with’.16 If Hobbes despairs of human ability to gauge anyone’s intentions, this was even more the case with newcomers to London, who had few acquaintances and a need to establish new interpersonal relations. This need was often exploited by confidence tricksters, who took familiar acquaintance with Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment Petty Crime and the Law in London and Rural Middlesex, c. 1660–1725 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 8–16; Martine Van Elk, ‘“She Would Tell None Other Tale”: Narrative Strategies in the Bridewell Court Books and the Rogue Literature of the Early Modern Period’, Early Modern Culture. An Electronic Seminar, 7, . Paul Griffiths has examined an impressive array of primary sources about metropolitan crime, including the Westminster Quarter Sessions. But his main focus was Bridewell, and this has affected the angle through which he examined crime in London: Griffiths, Lost Londons. 14  See the Introduction for more details about the fact–fiction approach to rogue pamphlets. 15  Judith P. Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York and London, 1997); Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Harmondsworth, 1971). 16  Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation, p. 124. 94

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those newly arrived at London, and invited them to play cards or dice, where invariably the countrymen lost their money. Legal prosecutions for cheating at games often showed concern for the exploitation of countrymen.17 Time and again, indictments in the Middlesex and Westminster Sessions use a rhetoric of trust betrayed and evoke the frightening vision of groups of criminals lurking in wait to deceive innocent victims. Indictments in Middlesex suggest that, no sooner had newcomers arrived at London, but they were met with confidence tricksters. In April 1615, in Middlesex, ‘William Bareley [Barley] of East Smithfield, William Cornishe of Newington, co. Surrey, chandler, and Thomas Frithe of the same, haberdasher’ were indicted because they ‘together with other malefactors lay in wait in the highways and common places with intention to deceive and defraud honest travellers of their goods and money by false arts and games’. These three stopped two millers who were travelling towards London and led them ‘to the house of Richard Warner at East Smithfield aforesaid and seduced them to play at cards there’. They were accused of cheating at cards.18 This was clearly a standardised form of drawing up an indictment for this kind of offence, as the main characteristics (lying in wait on the highway, leading them to a house where they were ‘seduced’ to play cards) were repeated in 1616 for other criminals.19 A variation of this theme was to lure men to a tavern in order to cheat them at cards: in 1630, the decision of the grand jury in a case of cozenage read ‘at a tavern commonly called the Queen’s Head at Eastsmithfield co. Midd. on the said day, Peter Cornish, John Hopkins and Richard Sandes, all three late of Eastsmithfield aforesaid yomen, knavish fellows ever intent on cheating the king’s lieges by unlawful arts and games, lured one Cornelius Quarris into the said tavern and there cheated him of twenty-eight pounds at a game of cards’.20 The standardised form of these documents should not obscure the fact that they all present the criminals as an insidious group, lurking in highways and places of sociability in order to approach their victim and deceive them. The language of seduction is also notable, which figuratively connects gaming with sexual danger. There is a sense of betrayal arising from the contrast between ‘honest travellers’ and ‘malefactors’ or ‘knavish fellows’. The term used to describe illegal deceit Even though cheating at games was not a statutory offence before 1664, Nicholas Tosney has shown that prosecutions predated this legislation: Nicholas Barry Tosney, ‘Gaming in England, c. 1540–1760’ (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of York, 2008), p. 203. 18  William Le Hardy (ed.), County of Middlesex. Calendar to the Sessions Records: New Series, 1616–18 (1941), 4, ‘Sessions, 1616: 3 and 4 December’, pp. 42–84. British History Online, accessed 19 August 2018, . 19  William Le Hardy (ed.), in County of Middlesex. Calendar to the Sessions Records: New Series, 1615–16, 3, ‘Sessions, 1616: 14 and 15 March’, pp. 172–91, accessed 17 May 2018, . 20  John Cordy Jeaffreson (ed.), Middlesex County Records: 1625–67 (1888), 3, ‘Middlesex Sessions Rolls: 1630’, pp. 30–7. British History Online, accessed 29 August 2018, . 17 

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was ‘cosenage’ (both in legal records and pamphlets), which derives from ‘cosen’ or ‘cousin’.21 As one of the fictional cardsharps explains, those of his profession invert the use of words, making them mean the opposite: for example, anyone who falls in their trap and plays cards with them ‘we call them all by the name of a Cosen, seeming to make as much of them as if they were of our owne kindred’, when, in reality, they view them as victims to be exploited.22 It is clear thus, that at the heart of ‘cosenage’ was the faking of familiarity. The same narrative of trust betrayed is evident in rogue pamphlets which deal with gaming. Greene’s A Notable Discouery of Coosenage (1591) describes how cony-catchers lure their victim to play cards. First, the victim (a countryman) is met by the Taker Up. This man seems very loquacious and friendly, discussing various subjects and feigning familiarity: ere your talke break off, hee will be your Countrey man at least, and per adventure eyther of kinne, aly, or some stale sib to you, if your reach far surmount not his. In case hee bring to passe that you bee glad of his acquaintance, then doth hee carry you to the Tavernes.

In the tavern, they are also joined by the Verser, who has the appearance of a landed gentleman. The last person to appear is the Barnard ‘like some aged Farmer of the Countrey, a stranger unto you all’, who seems drunk and asks all of them if he can sit with them and drink. The Verser tells the victim in confidence to accept, ‘to laugh at [the Barnard’s] folly’. Of course, in reality the folly belongs to the victim, who agrees to play at cards but ends up losing his money.23 In this tale, the deception revolves around trust and sociability. The Taker Up finds a countryman and pretends to be from the same county, or even possibly distantly related. He then invites him to a tavern, a space of drinking but also of sociability: establishing ties of friendship was easier when drinking together. The Barnard is then presented as ‘the stranger’, the one who does not belong to the group. Being drunk, the Barnard also fails to uphold the conventions

According to the OED, the initial etymology is unclear, but it ‘has generally been associated with cousin n., and compared with French cousiner, explained by Cotgrave, 1611, as “to clayme kindred for aduantage, or particular ends; as he, who to saue charges in trauelling, goes from house to house, as cosin to the owner of euerie one”; the quotation following from Mihil Mumchance corroborates this. ‘Cozen, V.’, in OED Online (Oxford), accessed 13 January 2019, . 22  Anonymous, Mihil Mumchance, sig. Cv. 23  Greene, A Notable Discouery of Coosenage, sigs A3v–A4r. This example is taken from Walker, A Manifest Detection of the Moste Vyle and Detestable vse of Diceplay (1555), sig. D3v. The earlier pamphlet makes similar points about drinking, feigning friendship, and playing cards, but Greene also narrated new tricks, as we will see. 21 

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of conviviality, which expect men to drink, but also hold their drink.24 These characteristics make the Barnard seem like the odd man out, something further stressed by the conspiratorial whisper to the victim. The Barnard exemplifies the country bumpkin type, exaggerating the rural/urban divide on which the cony-catchers play. This is a carefully calculated performance, aimed at making the victim feel part of the group. Its artificiality is fully and painfully exposed only at the end, with the loss of the victim’s money. A different but related trick is described later in the same pamphlet, where Greene emphasises how the aim of cony-catchers is to ‘draw in any person familiarly to drinke with him’. In order to draw countrymen, they often pretend to be from the same county. If this trick does not work initially, they ask the victim his name and where he is from, and then another one of the crew (who has received this information from the others) stops him in the street saying ‘What goodman Barton? How fares all our friends about you? You are wel met, I have a pint of wine for you, you are welcome to Towne.’ Even though the victim does not recognise him, the fact that he knows the cony’s neighbours in the country establishes a connection between the two men and allows them to form an acquaintance. Going into the tavern, they end up playing cards for a quart of wine ‘respecting more the sport then the losse’, as the cony-catchers claim. So far, this story is very similar to the previous one, where much of the trick depends on pretending to be familiar with the victim and exploiting his need to find friends in the city. The cony-catchers ‘feigne a kind friendship to the cony’ and pretend that playing cards is just a by-product of these rituals of sociability rather than their main aim.25 However, the victim is not as guiltless as readers are led to believe: when the cony-catchers teach the victim how to cheat, the cony (the victim) is elated at the prospect of using the tricks he learned back in the country, exclaiming ‘Ile domineere with this amongst my neighbors’. The fact that the cony is serious about cheating his neighbours becomes abundantly clear when another man appears (the Barnackle) who wants to play cards. The victim, thinking that he is on the side of the cheaters, has no compunction about playing for money and acting as their accomplice. This particular case shows the ambivalence of these narratives, as the victim enthusiastically sides with the perpetrators. Adam Hansen has plausibly argued that the greed of the victims makes them culpable, and thus deserving to be tricked.26 However, there is another aspect to this case, which heaps further condemnation upon the cony: he is also proven to be a bad neighbour, willing to use the tricks he learned on his neighbours in the country. Initially, he frames this Michelle O’Callaghan, The English Wits: Literature and Sociability in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2007), p. 78. 25  Greene, A Notable Discouery of Coosenage, sigs Br, B2r–B3r, B4r. 26  Adam Hansen, ‘“Sin City and the Urban Condom”: Rogues, Writing, and the Early Modern Urban Environment’, in Rogues and Early Modern English Culture, pp. 221–2. 24 

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as a harmless jest, saying that he will use it to ‘win many a pot of ale’ from his neighbours, but his readiness to fleece the Barnackle of his money leaves the reader wondering whether he would do the same to his neighbours.27 The cony-catchers may be pretending friendship while in reality they are plotting to scam the cony, but the latter is more than ready to betray his neighbours’ trust. This suggests that friendship can be betrayed by people whom one would be expected to trust far more than casual acquaintances met on a London street. This story could be read as the corrupting influence of the city, but the speed with which the cony becomes (or at least believes he has become) a cony-catcher belies such an analysis: the tricks may be urban but covetousness and a willingness to cheat are not restricted to the city. This ambivalence in the treatment of the city also chimes with the analysis of rogue pamphlets in Chapter 2.28 Mihil Mumchance (1597) also highlights that sometimes one’s friends can be more harmful than criminals. The ‘Cheator’ (a man who cheats at cards), after destroying a country gentleman’s fortune, seeks to persuade him to become his accomplice. Many of the arguments used to persuade the poor gentleman revolve around friendship and its fickleness: the Cheator argues that unless the young man learns to cheat at cards, he will receive no support from anyone: ‘your friends being as I have heard many in numbers, and all of worship, shall conceave such inward greefe of your unthriftiness, that not one will vouchsafe a gentle plaster to quench the malice of this fretting corrasine, that penury hath applied’. However, if the young man follows in his steps, ‘you shall neyther need to ruune [sic] to your freends for succour, and all men shall bee glad to use you for a companion’. Friendship here, even among those ‘of worship’, seems to depend on money, since as soon as the young gentleman loses it, his friends are ready to abandon him, while money – however ill-gotten – is sufficient to make him appear as a ‘good companion’. Equally, the young man is willing to exploit his friends for his own benefit: the Cheator argues (and the young man agrees) that ‘better it is that each of them smart a little, then you to live in want’. The tricks described here echo the ones mentioned earlier, and they are also based on familiarity and pretending friendship. The Cheator instructs the young man to orchestrate seemingly chance meetings with his friends (who are ‘rich and full of mony’), and then to lure them to a tavern to play cards.29 The friends the poor gentleman seeks to deceive are from his county, which again shows that in London countrymen had to rely on pre-existing links from their county of origin. This, however, could be used against them by individuals more interested in money than friendship.

Greene, A Notable Discouery of Coosenage, sig. B4r. This emphasis on covetousness mirrors moralists’ tracts about gaming, which focused on how gaming encouraged idleness and covetousness: Tosney, ‘Gaming in England, c. 1540– 1760’, pp. 253–5. 29  Anonymous, Mihil Mumchance, sigs B3v–B4r. Even though this text is a reprint of Walker, A Manifest Detection of the Moste Vyle and Detestable vse of Diceplay (1555) it adds new tricks. 27 

28 

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The connection between newcomers to London, feigning friendship, and cheating, is also evident in Middleton’s play Michaelmas Term. Shortyard (a cozener) stops Easy (a gentleman from Essex who has just arrived at London) in the street, and, in a manner reminiscent of the pamphlets mentioned before, asks him if he knows ‘Master Alsup there [in Essex]?’. Easy is delighted that they have a common acquaintance in the country, and this is a sufficient introduction for the two men, who sit together, drinking to the health of ‘Mister Alsup, sir, to whose remembrance I could love to drink till I were past remembrance’. Drinking is accompanied by playing dice, and Easy (naturally) loses his money. Shortyard, pretending to be his friend, is happy to lend him money so that he can continue playing. Easy perceives this as proof of their friendship, when in reality Shortyard’s end goal is to make Easy enter into a bond, and eventually to lose all his money and estate.30 As Andrew Gordon has argued, Middleton’s plays often highlight that ‘the discourse of friendship is an art of feigning’, a way of exploiting ideas of friendship for personal gain.31 This is not restricted to criminals: as this chapter shows, friendship could be enacted by individuals on both sides of the crime/ order divide, casting doubt as to how far such a divide existed. So far, we have seen how indictments and pamphlets deal with cheating at cards. Rogue pamphlets are more ambivalent than legal records, since they also highlight how friendship could be faked, but this is not only true for criminals, but for their victims as well. At the same time, we can see from the numbers of cases of cheating but also from the mixed responses in literature and moralistic texts as well, that gaming was part of a convivial exchange, which required trust to be extended and involved an element of risk. People time and again were willing to trust others and, even though sometimes this trust could be abused, this did not stop them from trying to form bonds with others through drinking and gaming. This balance between trust, sociability, and betrayal is portrayed differentely in one of the few cases where we have a deposition of two cozeners, Henry Coates and John Bell. Their narrative reads very much like the descriptions of cheating in rogue pamphlets: Henry Coates said that: he met with a countryman, whose name he knows not, and asked him if he would go drink a pot of beer, having in his company one John Bell. The countryman was content, and went with them into a house in King Street, and called for two pots of ale in a private room in the house; this examinate, bringing a pair of cards with him into the house, asked the other two whether they would play for a pot of ale. They did so, and after for money, and he, this examinate lost his money to his companion, John Bell, which was some 3s and the countryman lost 30s.

Middleton, A Mad World, My Masters; Michaelmas Term; A Trick to Catch the Old One; No Wit, No Help like a Woman’s, pp. 82–6, 94–9. 31  Andrew Gordon, Writing Early Modern London: Memory, Text and Community (Basingstoke, 2013), p. 165. 30 

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John Bell said the same, adding that they took ‘familiar acquaintance’ with the countryman.32 This case can be emplotted as the same story of trust and familiarity betrayed, where some London men lure a countryman to a victualling house by pretending familiarity, and there cheat him out of his money. Equally though, the suspects try to present it as an innocent encounter which leads to drinking and playing cards, suggesting a willingness to trust and form relations with others. These texts were predicated on an abuse of trust (feigning friendship or familiarity) but they also show willingness to trust. We can think about them as narratives of expectations betrayed, but they also show the existence of these expectations. It is reasonable to assume that on other occasions, when things did not go catastrophically wrong, so as to lead to a case of cozenage, people met strangers and formed a bond with them by drinking together and playing games. Giddens considers that in ‘modern contexts of action’ (here, cities) the twin practices of displacement and re-embedding take place: on the one hand, people are displaced from their local context, and placed in an alien one. On the other, re-embedding allows the ‘recreation of locality’, by which people recreate the familiar.33 This is often artificially created: in cities – early modern London here – this recreation of the locality is achieved through links with people hailing from the same place. This intricate balance, between trusting and distrusting, creating emotive bonds and exploiting them, is presented in these sources. This ambivalence, a sense that there is too much to lose, but also so much to gain by trusting others is prevalent. Emphasising only how these sources represent mistrust misses all these positive associations. These narratives also highlight the blurred lines between criminals and citizens/countrymen, something that will become clearer in the next sections.34 Criminal Networks and Affective Bonds

Previous examples presented cases of sociability among strangers, often those who had just arrived at London. However, in many occasions, sociability was also underpinned by ties of neighbourliness, and – as this section will show – this is an important context for crime stories, as they were narrated in pamphlets and before courts of law. This section aims to combine the historiography of London’s neighbourliness and that of crime. Scholars of crime, as we have seen, found pamphlet depictions of a criminal underworld in London grossly exaggerated. However, studies focusing on prostitution or on Bridewell’s records for cases of networking among criminals (especially in the case of recidivists)

LMA, WJ/SR/15/96, 111, 153 Examination 8 April, 1 Charles I (1626). Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, p. 142. 34  Griffiths mentions this blurring of the lines between citizens and rogues in relation to archival sources, but thinks that rogue pamphlets provided a clear distinction between citizens and criminals: Griffiths, Lost Londons, p. 171. 32  33 

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have sought to show that some forms of criminal organisation do appear in the archival record.35 Ian Archer has also used nominative linkage, looking at recidivism and names appearing together to suggest that there was an element of association between criminals.36 At the same time, scholars working on London have shown that neighbourly ties were significant in the early modern metropolis. Ian Archer has argued that the rhetoric of neighbourliness was ever-present, and this was helped by the small size of intra-mural parishes, which made them meaningful units of identity. But it was not just the city of London: similar neighbourly feelings and bonds were also found in the suburbs: Jeremy Boulton has demonstrated that neighbourly relationships were the most important sources of support in Southwark. Even in Westminster, the most fashionable suburb of London, with a high concentration of nobility and gentry, neighbourly bonds were important. Julia Merritt has suggested that the lack of a clear civic identity for the whole of Westminster meant that the role of its individual parishes was strengthened, and, by consequence, their sense of identity.37 The remainder of this chapter focuses on cases of robbery and theft in order to show that these could also be narrated from different perspectives, as either stories of trust and friendship or of criminal networking. In this section, the potential for divergent narratives will become clearer: as we will see, justices of the peace attempted to present the accused as members of a criminal gang and thus part of the ‘criminal underworld’ by appropriating the official discourse on such criminals. Rogue pamphlets followed the same logic, presenting friendship as fickle and suspicious, but they did not limit their critique to criminals, blurring the lines between law-abiding citizens and criminals. On the other hand, deponents acknowledged the existence of networks but depicted them in a different way: as ties of sociability and trust. For this reason, they emphasised the familiar setting in which their interaction with other suspects took place, often revolving around drinking, visiting friends or courting. This section will focus less on the criminals themselves, and more on those accused as accomplices. The challenge these individuals faced was to show that their relationship with the criminal was not suspicious. They had to account for trusting the criminals without admitting that they were working with them. In order to do so, they

Paul Griffiths, ‘The Structure of Prostitution in Elizabethan London’, Continuity and Change, 8:1 (1993), 39–63; Gustav Ungerer, ‘Prostitution in Late Elizabethan London: The Case of Mary Newborough’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, 15 (2003), pp. 138–223. 36  Archer, The Pursuit of Stability, pp. 204–12. 37  Boulton, Neighbourhood and Society; Jeremy Boulton, ‘The Poor Among the Rich: Paupers and the Parish, in the West End, 1600–1724’, in Londinopolis, pp. 195–223; Merritt, The Social World of Early Modern Westminster; M.J. Power, ‘The East and the West in Early-Modern London’, in Wealth and Power in Tudor England: Essays Presented to S. T. Bindoff, ed. E.W. Ives, R.J. Knecht, and J.J. Scarisbrick (London, 1978), p. 174. 35 

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focused on their credit, but also on portraying their encounters with criminals as sociable occasions, and their interactions as friendship. Highway Robbery, Fear, and Neighbourliness

Highway robbery was considered to be a crime which required a network of criminals, not only because numbers were needed to overwhelm their victims, but also because networks of connections allowed highwaymen to be informed about potential victims, or provided them with places to hide after robberies and to fence the stolen goods.38 Legislation and records of indictment for highway robbery emphasised the need for distrust, presenting networks of criminals ready to accost travellers. In trials about highwaymen these characteristics were highlighted: four men were apprehended in ‘Figgs Lane a common robbing place’, suspected to be highwaymen, because they ‘had beene lurking & loitering for the space of three houres together as was observed by the constable & inhabitants’. The same practice is described in The Devils Cabinet Broke Open (1657): ‘they retire and lie in wait in some by-place most advantageous and least suspitious, which yeilds the eie the prospect of the road, to strictly view the booties’.39 People congregating with no evident intent were suspicious, and their numbers were another indication that they were part of a criminal gang. In many cases of highway robbery, those who ‘knowing the said… [the criminal’s name] received and conforted them’ were also implicated, suggesting that knowing a criminal and providing support to them could also bring the full force of the law against such individuals.40 For example, Sylvester Stanbrigg, a victualler who had offered them lodging at his house was presented to the Middlesex Quarter Sessions suspected as accessory to their robberies.41 Evidently, magistrates expected the existence of a criminal network and considered that rooting out such practices involved punishing those who assisted criminals.

This will become evident in the analysis of Clavell’s text. See also J.A. Sharpe, Crime in Early Modern England, 1550–1750, 2nd ed. (New York, 1998), pp. 152–4. 39  Anonymous, The Devils Cabinet Broke Open: Or A New Discovery of the High-Way Thieves, p. 8. 40  See the cases of Robert Arnolde, Lawrence Morris, Abraham Symons, John Johnson in ‘Middlesex Sessions Rolls: 1592’, in John Cordy Jeaffreson (ed.), Middlesex County Records: Volume 1, 1550–1603 (1886), pp. 202–11. British History Online, accessed 22 June 2018, ; Peter Bettesworthe, John Millward, and Thomas Kyndesley, in John Cordy Jeaffreson (ed.), Middlesex County Records: Volume 1, 1550–1603, ‘Middlesex Sessions Rolls: 1598’ (1886), pp. 242–51. British History Online, accessed 22 June 2018, ; Francis Chafie, Oswald Medcalfe, and Cuthbert Lockwood, in John Cordy Jeaffreson (ed.), Middlesex County Records: Volume 2, 1603–25, ‘Middlesex Sessions Rolls: 1616’ (1887), pp. 119–26. British History Online, accessed 22 June 2018, . 41  LMA, MJ/SR/1090/116, 117. 38 

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The case revolving around John Clavell is an indicative example of a narrative of trust and distrust. Clavell, a highwayman and a gentleman, was no stranger to crime: when studying at Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1621, he stole gold and silver plate. He was issued with a royal pardon, procured probably through the help of friends at court. Leaving college and moving to London did not end his criminal career, and he became a highwayman in 1625. Again, he seems to have been a less-than-effective robber, as he was arrested in the same year and sentenced to die. Following the pattern of being extremely fortunate in his misfortune, he escaped death through the general amnesty issued in 1626 for Charles I’s coronation.42 Clavell spent his time in prison writing A Recantation of an Ill Led Life, in which – as we have seen – he sought to show his repentance for his previous life by presenting the tricks highwaymen use to rob their victims. Ostensibly, the aim of the pamphlet was to warn readers and to instruct them on how to avoid being robbed. At the same time, it is clear that Clavell was trying to clear his name, by making a full repentance and showing that he wanted nothing further to do with this ‘criminal underworld’. To do so, it was convenient to present it as a distinct world, which Clavell was repudiating completely, even though, as we will see later, this text was also more ambivalent than Clavell pretended. As we have seen in Chapter 1, the pamphlet did very well, going through four editions between 1628 and 1634 and a prose adaptation in 1657 (The Devils Cabinet Broke Open: Or A New Discovery of the High-Way Thieves). Consequently, we can see that this was a quite well-read and influential text by the standards of this period. Clavell’s pamphlet is a discovery of the practices of highwaymen, but also embedded in it are issues of friendship, trust, and sociability. It will become clear that for Clavell – or at least his penitent authorial persona – any relationship between individuals was shot through with deceit and distrust. Clavell provides advice to those who travel on how to avoid being accosted by highwaymen, but much of this advice aims to increase the readers’ distrust of everyone, which verges on paranoia. Clavell criticises those who, before traveling somewhere, ‘your neighbours, kinsmen, or your friends, you bid/ to sup, or breake their fasts, only to drinke/ healths to your good return’. These friendly interactions are, according to Clavell, shrouded in suspicion, as those invited may ‘plot with theeves, bid them prepare/ Such a prize comes, whereof he takes a share’.43 Even though the people invited are friends, neighbours, or family, these bonds are seen as meaningless when the temptation of money appears. Those leaving on a journey should be equally wary on the road, as anyone is a potential robber. Clavell seeks to dissuade travelers from getting a guard, Alastair Bellany, ‘Clavell, John (1601–1643), Highwayman and Writer’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 13 January 2019, . For a different take on Clavell’s Recantation, see Gillian Spraggs, Outlaws and Highwaymen: The Cult of the Robber in England from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (2001), pp. 147–62. 43  Clavell, A Recantation of an Ill Led Life, p. 30. 42 

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as he may be working with the criminals, and plot with them to rob his master. Similarly, Clavell advises that, while on the road: You shall meet Store of good company for you to keepe; Associate with none, unlesse with those That you finde rather willing for to loose Then have your company.

To Clavell’s eyes, this ‘good company’ is completely misnamed. Here again meeting strangers who are friendly should not be considered as a happy coincidence, but, on the contrary, should be greeted with suspicion. Travellers are not safe anywhere: innkeepers are likely to give information to thieves, as it is more profitable for them, since thieves will ‘spend full thrice as much in wine and beare/ As you in those, and all your other cheare.’44 The image Clavell is painting of travelling is extremely bleak. Travelers can be beset by criminals anywhere, in their house or neighbourhood, on the road, in the inns along the way. Clavell is presenting all kinds of association as suspicious and potentially deceitful, to the extent that it seems best to avoid all of them. Trust here is very likely to be betrayed, even by those closest to the victims. Naturally, in presenting a web of criminals and their accomplices that is frighteningly extensive, the pamphlet blurs the line between criminals and non-criminals and shows again the fickleness of friendship (as anyone is potentially an accomplice). Clavell goes further than this, seeming to present criminals as more honest than others. At the beginning of his description of his wild days, the now penitent Clavell mocks his former self-justification for choosing a highwayman’s life. Clavell used to maintain: That my ungodly and worst way of gaining Was more legitimate, and farre more fit Then borrowing, and thus I argu’d it. Who, in the way of loane, takes from his friend Whom he finds kinde, and ready for to lend, The maine of his estate, with an intent (Premeditated basely) fraudulent: Betrayes a trust, and in performance slacke, Breakes both his word, his own, and his friends backe, Who finds no remedy; but who hath lost His purse, repayd is at the Countries cost, Besides the theefe says not he will repay, Nor is’t expected from him, and yet they

Clavell, A Recantation of an Ill Led Life, p. 31, emphasis mine. Here, the portrayal of thieves as ‘good fellows’ who spend money in alehouses and inns for ‘good cheer’ is presented as problematic, rather than indicative of companionship, as we saw in the previous chapter. 44 

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That borrow, will a thousand oaths let fly, And wish they may be damn’d eternally If that they faile, and thus the purse they fill, Make light their oaths, and load their soules with ill.

In this, Clavell’s former persona (and, we can assume, other highwaymen) frames himself as a good friend, who maintains his credit and honesty by not betraying his friends’ trust. Even though Clavell now rejects this excuse, by saying that ‘hee’s not free/ from ill, that would by ill excused bee’, it is interesting that the ill of highway robbery is equated with deceiving one’s friends.45 Both are acts that hurt their victims financially, but the latter also entails exploiting their friends’ trust. This is similar to arguments presented in Chapter 2 that criminals are not the worst deceivers. Nonetheless, the argument here hinges on trust and friendship. The same contested stories of a criminal network or bonds of sociability are evident in Clavell’s case in the Westminster Sessions records. This is a good example of how questions from the examining magistrates focused on the criminal network, while those accused strove to explain that their relationship with the robber, and their support towards the criminal, did not indicate that they were his accomplices. The examinates had a difficult task. Clavell had a reputation for being a highwayman, which begged the question as to why they still chose to interact with him. As we will see, however, the suspects tried to focus on friendship and to defend their credit, occasionally even managing to mobilise their neighbourhood to their defence. In 1625, a warrant was issued for John Clavell, Anthony, his servant and John Weatherley, alias Tapps. Even though Clavell initially escaped arrest, he was soon captured and accused of ‘sundry felonies and robberies upon the King’s highway’.46 What is more relevant for the purposes of this chapter is the discovery of a network of Clavell’s associates at the time of his arrest and how some of them described their relationship with him. Eight men were arraigned with Clavell: William Helligi, William Kingstone, Samuel Cox, John Weatherley, alias Tapps,

Clavell, A Recantation of an Ill Led Life, p. 3. Calendar of prisoners of the Westminster Quarter Sessions, 5 January 1626, LMA WJ/SR/ NS/14/189. He was charged ‘for sundry felonies and robberies upon the King’s highway’ at the Westminster Sessions: stealing ‘by force and arms’ a bay gelding, price £7 from Richar Tuttle, LMA WJ/SR/NS LMA WJ/SR/NS /14/171, stealing ‘by force and arms’ a dark grey horse, value £50 from Ulicke Burke, LMA WJ/SR/NS/14/172. By an ‘Inquisition at Aylesbury on 7 March 1625 it was found that John Clavell, late of Beaconsfield, gent., with Thomas Morris alias Price, labourer, on 8 Nov 1624 with force and arms on the king’s highway at Beaconsfield attacked Robert Bardolph, servant of Edward Lenton, esq. and robbed him’, and that ‘John Clavell gent, late of Edgware, Anthony Compas, yeoman, and Thomas Jefferies, yeoman on 3 Dec 1624 assaulted an unknown man on the king’s highway in Edgware and robbed him of 19s 4d.’ From John Henry Pyle Pafford, John Clavell, 1601–43: Highwayman, Author, Lawyer, Doctor: With a Reprint of His Poem, A Recantation of an Ill Led Life, 1634 (Oxford, 1993), pp. 25–6. 45  46 

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Anthony Compas, Thomas Brown, ‘one Jefferies’, ‘one Mr Vahon’, and Thomas Morris alias Price.47 Others were obliged to appear at the sessions for aiding Clavell: Hugh Peachie was accused of ‘rescuing John Clavell, gentleman, known to be a notorious robber by the highway’, while Cornelius Hudson was charged for ‘harbouring’ Clavell.48 These were legal terms, establishing suspicious connections and guilt. From the records for the Westminster Quarter Sessions we can reconstruct what happened when, on the first day of January 1625, Edward James, Clerk of the King’s prison of Newgate, attempted to arrest Clavell, executing a warrant issued by Sir Ralph Crewe (Chief Justice of the King’s Bench) ‘to apprehend the bodies of the said John Weatherley, alias Tapps, John Clavell and Anthony and them to bring before the next Justice of the peace in the Countie where they or any of them shalbe apprehended there to be examined concerninge the premise and their desperate course of lief and bad behaviour and then to be committed to the gaole of the County wherein they shalbe apprehended’.49 Edward James had information that Clavell could be found at St Margaret’s and went to arrest him, since he was ‘vehemently suspected to be a highway robber’, suggesting that he had a reputation as a criminal.50 Even though James found Clavell, William Hellegi (his servant) ‘resisted the officer, by means whereof Clavell escaped’. In the end Hellegi and Jan Samuel Cox were arrested for assisting Clavell in robberies, and Clavell himself followed a few days later, being indicted on 5 January.51 When William Hellegi (Clavell’s servant) was examined, his position was difficult. He had resisted the officer Edward James, and had been accused as Clavell’s accomplice. Hellegi, however, claimed that he had ‘known [Clavell] about three or four years’ when he was ‘serving one Captain Banfield’. Thus, he established his acquaintance with Clavell in a professional capacity. Their professional relationship took a new turn when he was recommended to Clavell’s service by his former master: ‘he was, upon Wednesday 21 December, sent for by the said Clavell through the mediation of one Captain Banfield to become the said Clavell’s servant’. Hellegi had to admit that he knew of Clavell’s reputation: Being also asked what he has seen, heard, known, or believes touching Clavell’s course of life, and whether Clavell were addicted to felonies, and to commit robberies, answer that for his own part he has not been aiding or assisting to him in any such action, yet confesses that Clavell has been reputed a villain and robber.

LMA WJ/SR/NS/14/144,145,146,147; WJ/SR/NS/14/189. Inquisition at Aylesbury on 7 March 1625 and Inquisition in Buckingham on 18 July 1625: Pafford, John Clavell, 1601–1643, pp. 25–6. 48  LMA, WJ/SR/NS/14/63,148. 49  LMA, WJ/SR/NS/14/183. 50  LMA, WJ/SR/NS/14/183. 51  LMA WJ/SR/NS/14/189. 47 

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This seems to be a focal point of the magistrates’ questioning. The implication was that since he knew that Clavell was a highwayman, the only logical reason for working for him was to be his accomplice.52 To this, Hellegi provided two lines of defence: one was that he was sent to Clavell by a person of some credit, and also that their relationship was professional: Clavell had known him as a servant, and he had promised him ‘£5 yearly wages and a livery’. This suggested that Hellegi was a servant, rather than a companion. This could throw Hellegi’s resistance against the officers trying to arrest Clavell in a different light, as it was his duty as a servant to protect his master.53 This would be particularly effective if he could argue that he had not realised why Clavell was accosted. What was probably equally effective was the certificate provided by Hellegi’s neighbours. Hellegi asked his neighbours to ‘justify his truthfulness and manner of life since they all had known him as, he hopes, their true and honest neighbour’, and he signed the request as ‘their loving neighbour’. The emphasis on the language of neighbourliness is characteristic, implying not only a duty to support Hellegi, but also the emotive bonds between the suspected criminal and his community.54 Hellegi’s request was successful. A certificate was provided in the Sessions of October 1626, where six of his neighbours (one of them a constable of Gray’s Inn Lane) testified that ‘I never could find but that he hath carried himself very orderly and well, and has been always ready to go upon our command at all times to assist us in our watches and wards, and for his being absent from his house, I never found but he was resident about his house always since Michaelmas.’55 Here, his neighbours not only provided an alibi for Hellegi, but importantly, commented on Hellegi’s demeanour and the fact that he fulfilled his neighbourly duties eagerly as a way to show that he was a ‘true and honest neighbour’. This was an affirmation of his neighbours’ trust in him and of Hellegi’s credit. Cornelius Hudson, a cordwainer from St Clement Danes, was suspected of being ‘a harbourer’ of Clavell. Hudson admitted that he had known Clavell for seven years and often invited him to his house. He also confessed sending a letter to John Clavell, when he was in the prison of Newgate, but claimed ‘that he neither had any such society with him as either to know of the said Clavell’s robberies by the highway, or that he was in any way a persuader of him so to do’. ‘Society’ in contemporary parlance meant ‘fellowship, company’, words which

LMA WJ/SR/NS/15/45, 132,133, emphasis mine. He was also asked if he had a horse and whether he had left his house in the last few months, which suggests that they were trying to establish whether he was also a highwayman. 53  Of course, there was a thin line between protecting his master and participating in illegal activities, which would not be excused: see Lake and Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat, pp. 81–2. 54  LMA WJ/SR/NS/15/45, 132,133. 55  LMA WJ/SR/NS/17/1. 52 

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imply friendship.56 Hudson sought to separate his friendship with Clavell from any imputation that his relationship was of a suspicious kind. His denial proved hollow, as in the process of the examination he admitted that ‘Clavell and Vahon being at this examinate’s house, did deliver in this examinate’s hearing these speeches one to another, that they had taken a cloak-bag from a fellow, in which there was a goose and a cheese, and said they thought it had been a better booty because the fellow struggled so, and cut Vahon’s nose’. This admission implied that Hudson knew what these men were up to, and his continuing support of Clavell, over the space of seven years, would easily suggest to his examiners that he was aiding and abetting him. Hudson, however, when asked whether he knew that Clavell and his associates were robbers by the highway, answered ‘not to his knowledge but by common bruet [sic]’ – meaning by common fame.57 Hudson focused on the fact that Clavell just stayed in his house, that he knew nothing about their crimes (with the one exception already mentioned) and that he met with one of Clavell’s accomplices only once in a convivial space: he claimed that the only time he had seen one of Clavell’s accomplices, Tapps, it was when he was ‘in Milford Lane in an ale-house with Clavell’, portraying the encounter as a convivial one. Clavell himself claimed that his relationship with Hudson was financial and familiar: ‘I went to Cornelius Hudson in the Strand to whom I had previously been indebted. But Banks [a goldsmith who attempted to have Clavell arrested] followed and tried to stop Hudson giving me credit.’58 The fact that Hudson was willing to lend money to Clavell implied a relationship of trust (economic and otherwise) between the two of them. Clavell’s printed work paints a picture of sinister association, with highwaymen having accomplices everywhere. A similar line is followed by the magistrates who pursued and recorded this case: they viewed those who knew Clavell in the same light, as accomplices or ‘harbourers’. In this, they were helped by the fact that Clavell had a reputation as a highwayman. The magistrates’ insistence on this point (asking Hudson about it at least twice, as we saw), coupled with the emphasis on the aid these men provided to Clavell, indicates that the authorities considered these elements as sufficient proof of the suspects’ participation in Clavell’s criminal network as accessories, or even accomplices. Neither of these men, however, described their association in such terms, but, on the contrary, attempted to reconstruct the purported criminal association as

Robert Cowdrey, A Table Alphabeticall Contayning and Teaching the True Writing and Vnderstanding of Hard Vsuall English Wordes, Borrowed from the Hebrew, Greeke, Latine, or French (1604), sig. H8v. 57  This probably is from the word ‘bruit’ which in this period meant ‘fame’: ‘Bruit, N.’, in OED Online (Oxford), accessed 13 January 2019, < www.oed.com.libproxy.york.ac.uk/view/ Entry/23915>. 58  From Clavell’s Chancery Bill 9 May 1629 (PRO. C2/Chas I/C91/54) in Pafford, John Clavell, 1601–43, p. 285. 56 

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bonds of loyalty. Hudson and Hellegi presented themselves as friend and dutiful servant respectively, and the latter even managed to find members of his neighbourhood to speak up on his behalf. Their attempts to exonerate themselves also resulted in casting Clavell in a different light, as a friend and a good employer. A shorter story of three men accused of highway robbery also featured this unsteady mix of suspicion and sociability. A search made at the White Hart Inn in Westminster in August 1634 for a group of suspected highwaymen led to the arrest of two men (George Clay and Francis Salter) and the escape of others. George Clay distanced himself from the others, claiming that ‘he had no great acquaintance with any of them’, with the exception of one named Weldin, who had employed him. Clay insisted that Weldin was innocent, arguing that ‘Weldin went not out at all with [the others]’ and thus was not a highwayman. In addition, he presented his ‘rescuing’ of Weldin (meaning that he resisted the officers trying to perform an arrest) as an act of friendship, and not a challenge to the agents of law enforcement: when the constable had come to the inn pursuing the criminals, Clay ‘conceived it had been some matter against his friend Weldin which caused him to answer the officer and others that he would make good and answer anything for his aforesaid friend, whereupon the said Bonnar slipped away, but for his part he did not in anyway rescue him’.59 Clay throughout presented himself only in association with his friend, Weldin, and his actions as predicated on this friendship, again showing the different ways in which the events could be emplotted as criminal association or bonds of friendship. Theft and Networking

As we have seen, highway robbery may have taken place around London, but the accusations focused on the connections these men had within London. This becomes clearer in cases of theft and receiving stolen goods, where we find the same attempts to present relationships with criminals as either criminal networks or sociable encounters. As we saw in the Introduction, proclamations and official letters assumed that thieves worked together and belonged to specific professions, an assumption often made in rogue pamphlets as well.60 This is also evident in the pamphlet The Araignment of Iohn Selman (1612), which narrates the trial of John Selman, a pickpocket who snuck into the King’s Chapel in Whitehall on Christmas Eve. A question by Francis Bacon, then the king’s Solicitor, shows that officers of the law viewed this crime as one which required a criminal network: Bacon asked Selman to reveal ‘those of your faculty and fraternity, who are still ready to enter into the presence Chamber of the King’.61 The focus of this section will be on a particular case in the Westminster Sessions, regarding the network around Richard Rose. This case is indicative of the ways in LMA WJ/SR/NS/40/9. Greene, A Notable Discouery of Coosenage; Dekker, The Belman of London. But most discoveries of criminals also had the tendency to present criminals as part of a ‘fraternity’. 61  Anonymous, The Araignment of Iohn Selman, p. 13. 59  60 

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which different narrators viewed relations with criminals (or attempted to present them) as either criminal networking or accounts of trust and sociability. In this respect, it continues the discussions present in rogue pamphlets and legislative sources. Rose was the porter of Sir Robert Naunton, the Master of the Wards at the time, who lived close to Charing Cross in Westminster.62 The old age of his master (he was seventy-one years old) may explain how Rose slowly stole a series of expensive objects from his master’s house over the course of a year, managing to remain undetected. However, this could also be an instance of a more general failing of managing the household: in 1627 Naunton complained to Westminster Justices of the Peace that one of his servants had left employment without permission, taking the livery with him.63 Rose was finally suspected of those thefts in July 1634 and he ran away. Goldsmiths in the area were asked about the missing jewels, and a search conducted at the house of one of his acquaintances (Eustace Thomson) yielded a jewel belonging to Naunton. After that, the case quickly unravelled, implicating no fewer than ten people. This case is an excellent example of the wide-ranging nature of accusations and the different narratives which were presented, revolving around trust, credit, and sociability. It is clear that justices of the peace started by asking goldsmiths in Westminster questions, often quite pointed, about whether they had been approached by anyone willing to sell the stolen jewels.64 Many of the jewels taken were quite characteristic: according to the Bill from the Middlesex Sessions, these included ‘a jewel called A True Lovers Knot inameled black with one or two diamonds worth six pounds thirteen shillings and eight pence, a gold ring worth forty shillings, a Cluster of Nutts with rubies of gold worth thirteen pounds six shillings and eight pence, a Golden Fly sett with rubies diamonds and sapphires worth ten pounds’.65 Joan Lincolne of St Martin’s in the Fields, wife of a goldsmith, was approached. According to her examination, Rose came to her husband’s house, asking ‘to sell on pawn a small jewel like a Fly’. But even though Rose came twice, ‘she refused utterly to do’ so. It seems that the fact that Rose had come at night-time made Lincolne suspicious.66 Given that Lincolne was brought in front of a JP for examination, even though she did not possess any of the stolen goods, nor (as far as we know) was she implicated by any of the other examinates, it seems likely that justices were trying to track down the stolen goods by interrogating goldsmiths in the area. Goldsmiths found with stolen goods ran into trouble with the law. It was commonplace that brokers (those who bought stolen goods) were allowing theft

Roy E. Schreiber, ‘Naunton, Sir Robert (1563–1635), Politician’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 13 January 2019, . 63  Merritt, The Social World of Early Modern Westminster, p. 176. 64  A common practice, as Paul Griffiths has shown: Paul Griffiths, ‘Politics Made Visible: Order, Residence and Uniformity in Cheapside, 1600–45’, in Londinopolis, pp. 176–96. 65  John Cordy Jeaffreson, ed., Middlesex County Records (1888), III, pp. 53–4. 66  LMA WJ/SR/NS/40/23. 62 

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to run rampant. This is evident in a ‘Letter of Admonicion’ from the king to the Common Council of London in 1611. In this, the king sternly commented that London has become ‘the chief place in all the kingdome to foster and cover such lewde people [thieves], whoe are the more encouraged and imbouldened therein by the libertie of soe manie Receavers and Concealers, whoe doe buy (though it be of knowne thieves) theire stolene purchase’.67 Thus, receivers and concealers of stolen goods were viewed as culpable. Greene also makes a similar point about brokers, when he states ‘too many such are there in London, the maisters whereof beare countenance of honest substantiall men, but all their living is gotten in this order, the end of such (though they scape awhile) will be sailing westward in a Cart to Tiborn’.68 The question posed by magistrates about whether those examined knew that the accused had a reputation as a thief or robber, as well as the king’s emphasis on those who buy from ‘knowne thieves’ shows the link between local reputation and guilt. In the authorities’ eyes, anyone who bought from one reputed to be a thief was intentionally performing an illegal act and claims of ignorance were more than likely to be mendacious. For goldsmiths, maintaining their credit as honest traders was paramount, not only to avoid legal prosecution, but also to be trusted to do any financial transactions. Ceri Sullivan has shown that ‘credit, the merchant’s good name, is the product of an elaborate rhetoric to create belief in his word’; if this is lost the merchant loses their ability to work, since most transactions were done on credit. Thus, goldsmiths had to avoid any imputation that they had knowingly worked with thieves. This can be seen in the depositions of goldsmiths in this case, who attempted to defend their credit by showing why they had trusted the sellers of these jewels.69 John Hall, a goldsmith in St Clement Danes, was approached by Sir Maurice Drummer (probably a JP) about whether he had the Fly jewel. Hall was forced to admit that he had received it from Rose. This evidently led to uncomfortable questions, about why Hall had taken the jewel from a servant, who was unlikely to have possessed it lawfully. Hall tried to justify his trust: he maintained that he had asked Rose where he had found the jewel, and when Rose’s answer was not entirely satisfactory (he claimed he found it ‘in the boot of a coach’), Hall said that ‘it was not a thing fitting for him to sell and that he should bring some person of credit who he did know to justify the sale’.70 Here, a ‘person of credit’ (suggesting economic trust, but also a reputation in the community for honesty and fair dealing) would lend authority to this transaction.

LMA, Remembrancia, III, fol. 31. Emphasis mine. Greene, The Third and Last Part of Conny-Catching, sig. Cv. See also S.E., The Discouerie of the Knights of the Poste, sig. B2v. 69  Ceri Sullivan, The Rhetoric of Credit; Merchants in Early Modern Writing (Madison, WI, 2002), p. 43. 70  LMA WJ/SR/NS/40/1. 67 

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The goldsmith Peter Preswike was also questioned in this case: he bought some of the stolen goods, not from Rose, but from Robert Dodson. Dodson, living in Hartshorn Lane in St Bride’s (not in Westminster, but close to it), seemed to act as a middleman for gentlemen who wished to pawn off their jewels (probably when they were in need of cash), so his credit must have been better than Rose’s. Dodson and his wife were used repeatedly by Rose for the selling of his master’s jewellery, as the jeweller John Lawrence also bought from him. Repeated financial interactions took place between Dodson, Preswike, and Lawrence: Preswike, after buying the jewel, ‘afterwards finding it not to be so much worth he arrested the said Dodson for it, and it being referred to compromise, one Mr John Lawrence, a jeweller dwelling in Philip Lane, did arbitrate betwixt them, that he should pay the said Dodson for it only the sum of £18.10s or thereabouts’.71 This passage suggests that there were legal procedures involved, leading to informal arbitration which ended without anyone the wiser that the goods moved around were stolen. The emphasis on the procedure here may have been used to bolster Preswicke’s status and prove his innocence: showing that this was a legitimate transaction which had gone through arbitration suggested that no suspicious activity has taken place. This procedure shows that Preswicke knew Dodson, as he found him again in order to go through the arbitration process. So far, I have focused on goldsmiths and jewellers, who were accused or suspected of receiving stolen goods. The line of defence for them was to defend their professionalism by explaining why they had trusted the seller: this could be either done by asking for a person of credit to verify the item’s provenance or buying from someone they knew. Consequently, they stressed that their trust was contingent on neighbourly or familiar ties, implying that this justified their decision to buy goods which were later proven to be stolen. This was more clearly the case with the six persons accused of actively helping Rose: Elizabeth Lovett, Eustace Thomson and his wife Joan, Willmott Dodson, Margaret Tiffeny, Dinah Ackersley. In most of those cases, the accused tried to establish their personal connection with Rose: Dinah Ackersley knew Rose because when she lived close to Naunton’s house, Naunton’s servants (with Rose among them) ‘often went thither to drink… [and] sometimes she drank with them and him’. Nonetheless, Ackersley denied any other ‘familiarity’ with him or even seeing him since she was married. From the context, the term ‘familiarity’ was used by the JPs in a negative fashion, to establish whether those examined had (possibly illegal) dealings with Rose. In doing so, they subverted the meaning of the word to make it sound suspicious.72 Joan Thomson, however, contested this usage and presented a very different LMA WJ/SR/NS/40/22. John Laurence was also implicated for receiving jewellery from Rose. 72  Perhaps ironically, they follow the same practice of inverting the use of words as the cony-catchers. 71 

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interpretation of ‘familiarity’. When initially asked, she said that ‘she did know Richard Rose… but had no familiarity or acquaintance with him, but sometimes drank with him, when she came to see her sister Dinah Ackersley’ at Soho. Here, a casual act of sociability is assumed, acquaintances sharing a drink in an alehouse. However, this was clearly not the full story: when Joan Thomson and her husband went to St James Fair (in July), they met Rose: who would needs have them to go to a cook’s there and drink, so they drank 8d, 6d whereof the said Richard Rose was trusted in the house, and so they went up to the Soahow where the said Richard borrowed of her husband 12d and bid him go to a house there, and he would come to them presently. So he went away and came within a short time to them and brought an 11s piece, and there changed it, and paid to her husband his 12d and also for the beer.73

Here, we see an invitation for drink extended and accepted, and Rose portrayed as of sufficiently good credit to be trusted in the house (a word that implies friendship here) and to borrow money from them; returning the money suggested that Rose was trustworthy, but also a ‘good fellow’, paying for the lubricant of sociability, the beer.74 Her husband’s examination also focused on drinking and settling their accounts: ‘they went together to Covent Garden and there drank, and from thence to Piccadilly where the said Richard parted from them and presently came again and paid the said 12d’. At least Eustace Thomson mentions the reason for this examination: the Amberheart jewel stolen from Naunton was ‘found’ by his wife in their chamber and, not knowing to whom it belonged, Edward sold it to the goldsmith William Thomson to whom he was ‘acquainted’. Eustace Thomson claimed that he did not know ‘how the said jewel came there unless the said Richard did come to his lodging when his wife and he were abroad and left it there by casualty’. Even though this is a threadbare excuse, Thomson again constructs his relationship with Rose as a friendly one, as he could be allowed into their lodgings even in their absence.75 Continuing this thread, Margaret Tiffeny, who used to go to Mrs Wilmott Dodson’s house to learn needlework, narrated a series of meetings between herself, Rose and Mrs Dodson as friendly. Mrs Dodson, the wife of Robert Dodson whom we saw earlier selling jewellery for Rose, seemed to also be involved in these transactions. Tiffeny mentioned meeting Rose four times in Dodson’s company, twice in her house (one of those times Rose ‘delivered to her a round jewel to sell for him’) and once in Cheapside where ‘he delivered to Mrs Dodson three rings to sell for him, so she sold them and brought £7 or £10 to the Tavern

LMA WJ/SR/NS/40/4. Emphasis mine. It is interesting that Rose is portrayed as a ‘good fellow’. See the previous chapter for more on good fellowship. 75  LMA WJ/SR/NS/40/5. 73  74 

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where they stayed for her’, again emphasising the link to sociability. However, meeting at Dodson’s house seemed to establish a friendly relationship between Rose and Tiffeny: Rose ‘bought a little cloth to make him two falling bands with’ which Tiffeny made. Clearly, they were sufficiently acquainted that ‘Rose came to her husband’s house, with a stranger with him, and drank a bottle of beer’. Finally, ‘on Saturday before his flying away, in the evening he came to her house and desired to borrow a purse of her to put gold in’. Margaret mentions six meetings in total with Rose, initially as common acquaintances but then on a more personal level: Rose visited her in her husband’s house and asked her to lend him a purse. All the interactions are presented here as friendship, with small economic transactions, lending, and drinking taking place.76 Dodson’s servant, Dorothy Weekes, established that Rose knew Mrs Dodson of old, since he first came to the house ‘some years ago’. Mrs Dodson, in particular (maybe to reassure her inquisitive servant) had encouraged her maid to give ‘the said Rose entertainment as a suitor to her’. In this story, Weekes justifies her interaction with Rose as necessitated by her duty to her mistress, but also allows the possibility of a romantic entanglement. It is quite clear that when the theft of Naunton’s jewels was discovered, Westminster justices cast their net wide in order to find the missing jewels, as well as Rose and his accomplices. They asked goldsmiths for the stolen goods, and were effective in finding many of them as well as those who sold them. Examining the suspects, JPs insisted on ‘familiarity’ with Rose as incriminating evidence. However, many of those who answered span a different story: a story of personal bonds, forged by spatial proximity, friendship, small financial interactions (borrowing small sums or items), but mostly revolving around convivial drinking. In doing so, they refuted the idea of criminal networking which was foisted on them by the local JPs. To an extent, they seem to have been successful: the only other person committed to Newgate prison was Willmott Dodson (Mrs Dodson) ‘for being accessory’. This is not a story about truth, however: it does not matter whether those suspected as accessories were telling the truth (in some cases, it seems extremely unlikely). What matters is how what was seen as a network of semi-organised crime could also be presented in emotive terms by those entangled in this case. A less detailed case in 1623 also shows the same contested narratives. James Arde was accused of acting as a middleman between Georg Bissett and the goldsmith Harris in Fleet Street, selling to him various silver pieces and getting 12d for his labour. Arde, born in Scotland and having lived in France for fourteen years, attempted to portray his actions as a friendly service. In order to do so, he laid emphasis on his relationship with Georg Bisset, claiming that he had become acquainted with him because they lodged in the same house in Westminster. Given that both of them were from Scotland, their common background may

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have also helped in forging a connection. The first time that Arde helped Bisset sell some jewel was also described in the context of conviviality: being at the ordinary in Westminster called the king’s arms by the Broken Cross, the said Bissett took out of his pockett one peece of silver plate about the quantity of an ounce,... and this examinate asked the said Bissett why he did carry the same in his pockett, who answered this examinate, he carried it to sell it: and demaunded of him if he would goe with him, which he did; and that was into Fleet Street to a Goldsmith, with whome this examinate was acquainted in France.77

Drinking comes up repeatedly in these stories and it must have been thought to cast the relationship between these men or women in a different light. In addition, even in a lodging in Westminster, people tended to talk to those they knew, and these interactions built bonds of trust. It took a lot for these to break down: Arde eventually ‘mistrusted’ Bisset and Robert Napper when he heard of stolen goods from the king’s chamber which were similar to the ones he had seen in their possession. Arde claims that ‘as he suspected them, forsook their company’.78 We see here how Arde effectively explains the reasons for trusting them initially based on sociability and cohabitation, as well as personal bonds, either due to a common country of origin or from living in the same country. Additionally, he attempts to show that he had standards of trust, since as soon as this trust was broken, he removed himself from their company. Conclusion

In conclusion, the cases of alleged criminal association (even in London) could stem from the magistrates’ worries (or rhetoric) that criminals were all the more dangerous because they were organised. This does not imply that such concerns were entirely unfounded. As we have seen, some criminals acknowledged their working together with others. It would be equally one-sided, however, to ignore the different interpretations of roguery that authorities and criminals (or others associated with them) put forward. By juxtaposing trial records with rogue pamphlets, it is evident that in both sets of records no single voice dominates the narrative. Even though the official discourse was prevalent, and influential, other voices could be discerned. These differences, I would argue, stem from the different aims of the narrators. London magistrates presented insidious crime networks, showing how interactions between individuals could be suspicious. This rhetoric could be an expedient way to show that magistrates were effective in cracking down

LMA WJ/SR/NS/8/127. Note the mention that the goldsmith was his acquaintance as well. 78  LMA WJ/SR/NS/8/127. 77 

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on crime; highlighting the danger while also claiming that they rooted out criminal networks showed the effectiveness of law enforcement. As we saw in the Introduction, London magistrates felt they had to defend their reputation for law enforcement, as the king often complained about the lawlessness of the metropolis. Defendants, trying to exculpate themselves, created stories of trust and friendly association, focusing on sites of conviviality (the house, the tavern, the fair). This was a performance of friendship, played before the magistrates. Even though it is impossible to establish whether this performance reflected genuine feelings, it was still a plausible one. Rogue pamphlets were polyphonic, critiquing the performance of friendship by criminals, but also showing that friendship was extremely fickle in London’s social world more broadly. If we also consider the findings of the previous chapter, rogue pamphlets often presented criminals as better friends and companions than others. This chapter has shown that the existence of organised networks of crime depended on the eye of the beholder and could be a site of debate, where the authorities’ story clashed with that of the accused. Much of this clash focused on the contested usage of words denoting association, such as ‘society’ or ‘familiarity’. Whether such words would be translated as friendly interaction or criminal association would determine guilt or innocence, so they were fiercely fought over. If we pay more attention to the multiplicity of voices existing in both rogue pamphlets and relevant trial records, we can see that their differences are often a question of different rhetorical strategies and aims. Consequently, Chapters 2 and 3 have shown that the distinction often made between rogue pamphlets and trial records (that rogue pamphlets depict an organised underworld whereas archival evidence shows that this was not the case) needs to be qualified by considering the multivocal nature of both kinds of records. More broadly, however, this chapter shows the nature of interpersonal relationships and trust in early modern London. People came to London with their past and their connections; these could be exploited, or used for underhanded purposes, but equally they formed the basis of establishing new communities. In both rogue pamphlets and trial records, the importance of prior links is highlighted. Physical propinquity could also foster new relationships; people were used to assessing trustworthiness continuously, by focusing on credit and reputation. The fact that they were willing to trust others, even if they were criminals (potentially or otherwise) suggests that trust in the early modern metropolis was not necessarily a lost cause.

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4 Turning Cavaliers into Rogues: Crime and Polemic in the Interregnum

In 1649, the king was decapitated as a criminal. This dramatic action threw definitions of legality in complete disarray. But it was not the first time: from the beginning of the war between Parliament and the king, the two pillars of government were pitted against each other. This situation produced a debate over definitions of legality: what was lawful in a country where the king was fighting against Parliament? Recently, much of the scholarship on the 1640s and the 1650s has focused on this war of words raging in this period, as both sides (and also other sides, such as the Scottish) attempted to claim the moral high ground, to persuade their audience that their rationale for this war was the correct one. The shift in print production from bigger volumes to smaller, cheaper items – usually pamphlets, newsbooks, and petitions – has been credited in influential revisionist accounts with allowing the emergence of a public sphere in the mid-seventeenth century, in dialogue with Jürgen Habermas’s definition of it as a slightly later, and decisively bourgeois, phenomenon.1 Cheap print interacted with the shifting political climate of the Civil Wars and the Interregnum, commenting upon and influencing events, and thus becoming an essential part of the increasingly public dialogue about political issues. This opening up of political debates to a broader public was not an unprecedented phenomenon, but before the

Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, 1989); Halasz, The Marketplace of Print; David Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England (Princeton, NJ, 2000); Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper; Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain; Richard Cust, ‘News and Politics in Early Seventeenth-Century England’, Past & Present, 112 (1986), 60–90; Charles John Sommerville, The News Revolution in England; Cultural Dynamics of Daily Information (New York, 1996); Joseph Frank, The Beginnings of the English Newspaper; 1620–1660 (Cambridge, MA, 1961); Ethan Shagan, ‘Constructing Discord: Ideology, Propaganda, and English Responses to the Irish Rebellion of 1641’, Journal of British Studies, 36:1 (1997), 4–34. The list is by no means exhaustive. 1 

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1640s such appeals to a broader public had been limited to specific instances or ‘pamphlet moments’.2 Even though in such accounts rogue pamphlets occasionally feature, they are not examined as a part of the political discourse. Thus, in The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, which treats various genres of cheap printed material with an emphasis on the 1640s, rogue (and crime) pamphlets are referred to, but not analysed.3 Despite the proliferating interest in pamphlets, petitions, and newsbooks for their potential to engage with a varied readership and propagate particular viewpoints in this period, rogue pamphlets are rarely included in such analyses.4 As we have seen, there has been significant interest in the polemical use of crime pamphlets in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as well as in the 1680s and 1690s, either by the state or particular interest groups.5 This chapter will complement this scholarship by analysing how rogue pamphlets fared in the different cultural contexts of the 1640s and 1650s. This chapter has two aims: the first is to further support the contention made throughout the book, that rogue pamphlets continue to be produced throughout the 1590–1670 period. Even though rogue pamphlets in the 1640s and 1650s engage with events and shifts in public debate, many elements of earlier pamphlets are clearly visible in their form, content, and narrative strategies. The second aim is more ambitious: this chapter argues that exactly because issues of legality were so significant in this period, accounts of crime were an ideal vehicle to debate them. As I will show, in the 1640s, publications supporting Parliament sought to cast Royalists as robbers. In the early 1650s, however, Royalists reclaimed the title for their benefit, using rogue pamphlets (particularly, but not exclusively relating to James Hind) as a way to draw a distinction between what Bernard Capp has characterised as the Royalist ethos of ‘“good fellowship” and festive traditions’ and ‘the puritan ethos of godly discipline and moral reformation, reinforced by

Jason Peacey, ‘Pamphlets’, in The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, p. 459; Peter Lake and Steven C.A. Pincus, The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2007). 3  Joad Raymond, ed., The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture. 4  For example, Hind is described as ‘a Robin Hood figure, a patriot hero, whose exploits were a gesture of merry resistance to the Commonwealth’ or ‘the common man’s hero’ against Parliament: Nigel Smith, Literature and Revolution in England, 1640–1660 (New Haven, CT, 1994), p. 49; Jerome Friedman, Miracles and the Pulp Press during the English Revolution: The Battle of the Frogs and Fairford’s Flies (London, 1993), p. 204. 5  Sharpe, ‘Last Dying Speeches’; Lake, ‘Puritanism, Arminianism and a Shropshire AxeMurder’; Lake and Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat; Peter Lake, ‘Popular Form, Puritan Content? Two Puritan Appropriations of the Murder Pamphlet from Mid-SeventeenthCentury London’, in Religion, Culture, and Society in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Honour of Patrick Collinson, ed. Anthony Fletcher and Peter Roberts (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 313–34; Loveman, ‘“Eminent Cheats”: Rogue Narratives in the Literature of the Exclusion Crisis’; Weil, ‘“If I Did Say so I Lyed”: Elizabeth Cellier and the Construction of Credibility in the Popish Plot Crisis’. 2 

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humanist values of civility, sobriety, and good order’. Capp has argued that the period of the Civil War and Interregnum saw the culmination of the conflict between these two different worldviews, something that he describes persuasively as ‘culture wars’.6 Capp’s claim that an important part of this conflict was a ‘culture war’, played out by representations and attempts to sway the public to one worldview, can be substantiated in the case of the rogue pamphlets of the Civil War and Interregnum.7 Nonetheless, as Capp acknowledges, this Cavalier propaganda could be highly divisive and could provoke criticism rather than foster allegiance.8 The implied association of Cavaliers with criminals could backfire; this can be seen in the creation of a new category of urban criminal, the hector, whose gentleman-like behaviour and rakishness could be employed rhetorically against Cavaliers. As this chapter will show, due to a combination of parliamentary propaganda against Royalists and the attitude of many of the king’s followers expressed in successive pamphlets, the image of the hector and that of the Cavalier coalesced and came to be used by both sides. Even though this was the case, the fact that pamphlets about hectors appeared as rogue pamphlets meant that the ambivalence of the genre could extend to hectors and was thus difficult to be used as straightforward critique against them. Consequently, this analysis will show how definitions of crime were debated and could be appropriated by either side. However, due to some of the inherent characteristics of the rogue pamphlet, it was easier for it to be used in favour of the criminal: as we saw in Chapter 2, the narration of clever tricks and the presentation of criminals as ‘good fellows’ stopped criminals from appearing unlikeable. This explains why rogue pamphlets were more often used by the Royalist side. By analysing the ways in which pamphleteers painted Royalists as robbers, the Royalist gloss put on pamphlets about Hind and other criminals, and finally the pamphlets about hectors, this chapter will show that there was a far greater degree of overlap between rogue pamphlets and appeals to public opinion in the 1640s and 1650s than has been hitherto thought. 1640s: Royalists as Robbers

The early 1640s, when the war with the king was in full force, witnessed a massive outpour of cheap print intent on bolstering the legitimacy of the Parliamentary side in their fight against the king.9 One way of doing this was to portray the king’s B.S. Capp, England’s Culture Wars: Puritan Reformation and Its Enemies in the Interregnum, 1649–1660 (Oxford, 2012), p. 3. See also Derek Hirst, ‘The Failure of Godly Rule in the English Republic’, Past & Present, 132 (1991), 33–66; Fiona McCall, ‘Continuing Civil War by Other Means: Loyalist Mockery of the Interregnum Church’, in The Power of Laughter and Satire in Early Modern Britain, pp. 84–106. 7  Capp, England’s Culture Wars, p. 78. 8  Capp, England’s Culture Wars, p. 83. 9  Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, pp. 202–75. 6 

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followers as robbers. The initial impetus to use the term robber in polemic can be found in Parliamentarian tracts in the 1640s. Especially when London was in danger in 1642, there was a clear attempt by those supportive of the Parliament’s cause to present the king’s followers as robbers. Thus, The Last Newes from the Kings Majesties Army Now at Maidenhead in 1642 warned Londoners that they should defend the city, lest ‘the Cavaliers having once entred London, (which God avert) should attempt the like rapine and mischiefe, by plundering and pillaging them as lately they have done others. Prince Robert (they say) is become a notable Robber.’10 Prince Rupert, the Commander of the king’s cavalry, was commonly portrayed in such polemical texts as ‘the Prince of Robbers’.11 Mark Stoyle has shown how in 1641 and early 1642 there was a concerted campaign by pamphleteers sympathetic towards Parliament to erode the king’s authority, with significant emphasis on Prince Rupert.12 It is clear that this association of Rupert’s name with robbery was meant to further discredit him. However, in associating Royalists with robbery, pamphleteers made a broader point about legality. Driving the point home, The Oxonian Antippodes, or, The Oxford Anty-Parliament (1644) claimed that those who ‘take up Armes in defence of this Anti-Parliament’ were ‘Papists and Irish Rebels, Patentees and Serving-men, broken Tradesmen, Proctors and Officiates, Stage-players, Fidlers, and Highway men, and a great many of ignorant Welchmen’. In this ignominious company, the pamphlet commented that ‘The High-way men they will fight in this cause, for that the king alloweth his Souldiers good store of plunder, and then they shall not need to feare hanging for robbing their neighbours.’13 In these pamphlets, the king’s followers are presented as dangerous robbers who have no qualms about stealing from their neighbours. Additionally – and interestingly – this text turns this around by presenting Anonymous, The Last Newes from the Kings Majesties Army Now at Maidenhead: Containing Many Remarkable Passages, with Prince Robert His Intentions. Also Matters Worthy of Observation in and about the Cities of London and Westminster, with Severall Proceedings of Both Houses of Parliament to This Present 11. of November (1642). 11  John Vicars, Gods Arke Overtopping the Worlds Waves, or The Third Part of the Parliamentary Chronicle (1645). 12  Mark Stoyle, The Black Legend of Prince Rupert’s Dog: Witchcraft and Propaganda during the English Civil War (Exeter, 2011)2011, pp. 31–2. Such language was not limited to print: one of the letters of Nehemiah Wharton from the autumn of 1642 refers to ‘Prince Rober’ instead of Prince Rupert: Henry Ellis, ‘Letters from a Subaltern Officer of the Earl of Essex’s Army, Written in the Summer and Autumn of 1642; Detailing the Early Movements of That Portion of the Parliament Forces Which Was Formed by the Volunteers of the Metropolis; and Their Further Movements When Amalgamated with the Rest of Earl of Essex’s Troops in a Letter to the Viscount Mahon, President’, Archaeologia, 35 (1853), 310–34. I am grateful to Ian Atherton for this reference. 13  John Brandon, The Oxonian Antippodes, or, The Oxford Anty-Parliament (1644). Royalists, and especially the forces of Henry Hastings, Lord Loughborough, in the Midlands, were viewed as ‘rob-carriers’ in various publications: Perfect Diurnall of Some Passages in Parliament, issue 14, 16 October 1643, p. 112; Perfect Diurnall of Some Passages in Parliament, issue 60, 16 September 1644. I am grateful to Ian Atherton for this reference. 10 

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highwaymen as king’s followers. This implies that their allegiance is opportunistic, something that also applies to the other categories of the king’s followers presented here. Thus, not only are the king’s followers criminals, but their allegiance is predicated upon personal gain rather than principle. The reason behind the tendency to portray the king’s followers as robbers becomes evident in the Answer to a Letter Written out of the Country, to Master John Pym, Esquire, One of the Worthy Members of the House of Commons (1643). The author answers accusations directed at Parliament due to the decision to fight against the king: 4 You say there is a guilt that gnawes us, for that it is employed against our lawfull King. To which I answer, that were it employed against His Majesty it would do so. I could heartily wish that Justice might have its course to try whether the Earle of Newcastle, &c. or the Parliaments forces are employed against His Majesty, that so all those robbers, plunderers, and spoilers of this kingdome, and good people may be brought to punishment: and where can this be done more perfectly, then where the fountaine of Law is, in the High Court of Parliament?14

This last mention highlights that the main issue at stake is legality. This is why the author uses three terms relating to the law. Even though the author accepts that Charles I is the ‘lawfull King’ he deflects the accusation of treason by claiming that Parliament is not fighting against him. This was a long-standing justification for rebels, but the author is more ambitious than previous rebels: he argues that ‘the fountaine of Law’ is the Parliament, which implies that this is also the final arbiter of what is lawful. To further strengthen his position, the author contrasts the Parliament’s forces with ‘robbers, plunderers, and spoilers of this kingdome, and good people’. Those supporting Parliament understood that they were open to accusations of illegality. In particular, Jerome De Groot argues that ‘Cavalier writings on Roundheads continually emphasized their lawlessness and the illegality of their cause.’15 In the texts I am analysing here, the opposite attempt is being made, to present the king’s followers as robbers, in order to highlight their opponents’ lack of legitimacy and justify the Parliament’s opposition. This connection between the king’s followers and robbers is evident in the satirical text The Brothers of the Blade (1641); this pamphlet described the meeting of two soldiers who, by their own admission, used to be criminals (they characterised themselves ‘as arrant Rogues as Newgate harbour’d’) and planned to resume their criminal lives as soon as they were out of the army.16 The ‘Corporal Anonymous, Answer to a Letter Written out of the Country, to Master John Pym, Esquire, One of the Worthy Members of the House of Commons (1643). 15  Jerome De Groot, Royalist Identities (Basingstoke, 2004), p. 21. 16  Anonymous, The Brothers of the Blade: Answerable to the Sisters of the Scaberd (1641), p. 2. The sexual innuendo evident in the title was retained in later publications. The title was probably derived from Richard Brome’s play The Weeding of the Covent-Garden, performed in 1632/3, which mentions ‘The Fraternity of the Blade and Batoon’, a gang of men drinking, swearing, 14 

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Dam-mee’ intended to get by as a ‘gentleman usher’ (a pimp) and a confidence trickster. ‘Serjeant Slice-man’, who was previously a pickpocket and a highwayman, planned to go back to robbing travelers on the highway. He believed that this occupation would allow him to ‘maintaine a souldiers name’, since to his eyes cheating or theft were ‘base’. The ‘Corporal Dam-mee’ had fought in the king’s army, and his intention to go back to confidence tricks and procuring prostitutes showed the moral calibre of the king’s followers. This suggests that the pamphlet was intended as Parliamentary propaganda.17 This pamphlet contained many of the elements that would be picked up later in the depiction of highwaymen and hectors, such as swearing, participating in the wars, and the connection of highwaymen and other urban criminals with Royalism. Satirical pamphlets routinely exploited this association between Royalists, crime and swearing, to the extent that the latter could be considered a trademark of the king’s followers. The Souldiers Language (1644) narrated the story of two soldiers who, having just met, try to discern whether they belonged to the same side (that of the king). The recognition is only achieved when one of them says ‘God damne me, but Ile run my Rapier thorow thee, if thou stand vexing me thus’, prompting the other to immediately exclaim ‘I think by thy speeches, thou art an honest good fellow’. This pamphlet also used the association of Royalists with rogues to criticise the king’s followers, commenting that ‘the King hath a great number of vacant and idle soldiers, that have little to do except it be to take a purse’.18 This narrative of legality and criminality could, however, be reversed. A ballad probably published in the 1640s, titled The High-Way Hector (c. 1642), used the criminal activities as a way to highlight the illegitimacy of the Parliament’s side. As we saw in Chapter 2, the hector (meaning highwayman here) argues that city traders are more dishonest than highwaymen. The implication that criminals were less deceitful and harmful to the commonwealth than traders and others who use deceit but are not labelled as criminals is not original; as we have seen, it is a topos in rogue pamphlets.19 However, part of the ballad is clearly politicised and topical:

and acting violently. This gang had its female equivalent, the ‘Sisters of the Scabberd’, which is evoked in the title of the pamphlet as well. Richard Brome, The Weeding of the Covent-Garden (1658). 17  Anonymous, The Brothers of the Blade: Answerable to the Sisters of the Scaberd, pp. 6–7. 18  Anonymous, The Souldiers Language. Or, A Discourse Between Two Souldiers, the One Coming from York, the Other from Bristol, Shewing How the Warres Go on, and How the Souldiers Carrie and Demean Themselves. With a Survey of What Forces the King Hath at Command, Both Forraigne, and Domestick (1644), sig. Ar, A3v. See also ‘An Act for the better preventing and suppressing of prophane swearing and cursing, and of the Laws and Statutes made against Drunkennesse, unlawful frequenting and keeping Tippling, and Gaming-houses, and also against wandring Rogues, Vagabonds’: A Perfect Account, issue 4, 29 January 1651, pp. 30–1. 19  See p. 71. 122

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Those Rogues that are brewing of war ‘gainst their King, Sincerely are doing the very same thing: with angles of zeal they study and labour, To plunder and steal from their very next neighbour Whilst we are obliged and bound by the Charters Of Paddington law not to smoak our own quarters.20

Here, the criminal’s actions are compared to those fighting against the king, and by consequence the latter become illegitimate. The hector returns the accusation of stealing from their neighbours to Parliamentarians, using the common trope of honesty among thieves. The point here is precisely that this is said by a criminal; even his actions pale in comparison. This is the only text that is written from the criminal’s perspective and it is interesting that this is the only pro-Royalist one (something also evident from one of the woodcuts accompanying the ballad, which depicts a Royalist – identified by his long hair and beard – on a horse).21 The other mentions were included in polemical texts which made a broader point (that Parliament’s opposition was just) while also presenting Royalists as robbers. What is interesting is that only two rogue pamphlets (to my knowledge) were produced in this period. An earlier one about Thomas Knowles – which will be discussed later – was published before the Civil War. I argue that this was not accidental: on the one hand, this was probably related to the fact that in this period a big part of the cheap print output was related to the war, and there was little space for other kinds. However, it is also likely that rogue pamphlets were too ambivalent and allowed for some sympathy at least for the criminal, so they were not a good vehicle for polemic against Royalists-as-robbers. Royalists in the 1650s would exploit this ambivalence. 1650s: Rogue Pamphlets and Royalist Robbers

In the 1650s, the issue of legality switched sides, as royalism became outlawed. The criminals James Hind, Thomas Knowles, and Richard Hannam, as well as William Hart, arrested in the 1650s, were portrayed as robbers, Royalists, and – depending on the publication – either as loyal subjects or enemies of the Commonwealth. Anonymous, The High-Way Hector. An example of the iconography and description of the Cavalier and Roundhead is available in the satirical pamphlet Anonymous, An Exact Description of a Roundhead and a Long-Head Shag-Poll (1642). See also De Groot, Royalist Identities, pp. 101–7. 20  21 

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Nevertheless, it will become clear that, even though some newsbooks made the point that the king’s followers were opportunistic robbers, most of the pamphlets about criminals as Royalists were written as polemic against the Commonwealth. This was particularly clear in George Horton’s case, a publisher who employed James Hind’s trial in order to present a Royalist message. After the battle at Worcester in 1651 and Charles II’s escape, significant public interest fell on the figure of James Hind. Titled ‘Scout-Master General’ of the king’s army, Hind was included in various reports about the war, in which he featured not only as a very active highwayman, but also as an important figure in the royalist war effort. Thus, Mercurius Politicus of December 1650 claimed that ‘Hind, the great Thief is come into Scotland, with 80 hors and doth much mischief’, which suggested that Hind had horsemen under his command.22 Many rumours appeared after Charles II’s defeat at Worcester, that Hind helped the pretender escape. A pro-parliamentary pamphlet titled The Declaration of Major Gen. Massey (1651), stated that it was reported ‘by some of the prisoners taken’ (after the battle) that Charles II left ‘with Scoutmaster Gen. Hind, the grand Thief of England’.23 Similarly, The Charge and Articles of High-Treason Exhibited against the Earl of Derby (1651) included the Trumpeter of the King of Scots’ confession ‘That his Master, with the Duke of Buckingham, Scout-master Gen: Hind, the great Robber, and six more, made an escape’. According to this, Hind procured disguises and horses for the king.24 The Weekly Intelligencer was more cautious. It reported that ‘Others will tell you, that Hind the famous Robber whom they call his Scout-master Generall, did provide him with a Bark at Pensey in Sussex’, but commented on the untrustworthiness of the rumours about Charles’s escape (‘in this contrariety and contradiction of Reports we know not where to ground’).25 Regardless, it is clear that his case had roused great interest. Hind’s imprisonment and subsequent execution could have been an opportunity for the state to advertise its power, but this was not exploited by

Mercurius Politicus, issue 27, 5 December 1650, p. 451. Sir Edward Massey, The Declaration of Major Gen. Massey upon His Death-Bed at Leicester (1651), p. 3. The information contained in this pamphlet lacks credibility: it falsely reported the death of Massey, and imaginatively how Charles II tried to escape (and his lack of success in rallying countrymen to his cause). For details on Charles’s flight, see Harold Weber, ‘Representations of the King: Charles II and His Escape from Worcester’, Studies in Philology, 85:4 (1988), 489–509. 24  Anonymous, The Charge and Articles of High-Treason Exhibited against the Earl of Derby, at a Councel of War in the City of Chester, with His Tryal & Examination; His Speech at the Councel Table, and His Declaration and Propositions Touching the Surrender of the Isle of Man. Also, the Parliaments Resolution Concerning Major Gen. Massey: And the Examination and Confession of Mr. Sandwitch, the King of Scots Trumpeter, Who Was Taken at Hallifax in York-Shire, on Wednesday Last. With His Narrative and Declaration Touching His Master. Shewing the Manner How He Escaped from Hallifax Disguised (1651). Published by George Horton. 25  The Weekly Intelligencer of the Common-Wealth, issue 40, 30 September 1651, p. 308. 22  23 

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the Commonwealth.26 The state clearly wished to bury Hind in both a literal and figurative sense: even though Hind was initially charged with treason and imprisoned in Newgate, no indictment was drawn up against him. Rather, he was sent to Reading to be tried for manslaughter. Only when this did not suffice to have him executed (he was reprieved and then an Act of General Pardon was issued) was he finally tried for high treason.27 The state pursued Hind’s execution with a bloodthirstiness that seems surprising, something that was noted in A Perfect Account: ‘Capt. Hind the great robber having continued two Sessions in Newgate, and no indictment preferred against him there, is the next Circuit to go from Sizes to Sizes, in those Countries where it is thought he hath committed his chiefest pranks, where any one that he hath wronged may prefer their indictments against him.’28 It seems plausible to assume that the mention of Hind going ‘from Sizes to Sizes’ (meaning Assizes) was intended as a sarcastic remark on how the state was going out of its way to make an accusation stick. According to Barbara White, Hind’s removal from London and his trial for manslaughter were prompted by the authorities’ reluctance to turn him into a martyr for the Royalist cause, and this suggestion is substantiated by the cautious stance most newsbooks exhibited towards Hind.29 Mercurius Politicus, which was recognised as a ‘semi-official mouthpiece’, mentioned Hind only once, when he was arrested, explaining that news about Hind was included ‘because many odd reports have run up and down touching Hind, the notorious High-way-man, and his perambulation’.30 The Weekly Intelligencer chose another approach, framing Hind’s royalist statements when he was led to Newgate within a republican context and thus using them against the king’s cause: Although he was sufficiently laden with Irons before, and had money little enough about him, and look’t but heavy at his entrance, yet immediately after he cheered up, On the state using executions as a way of advertising its power, see Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 2nd Vintage Books ed. (New York, 1995), pp. 65–7; Sharpe, ‘Last Dying Speeches’. 27  State Papers, November 10 1651, December 15 1651, February 18 1652, July 21 1652: Mary Anne Everett Green, Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Interregnum, 1651–2, vol. 16 (1877), pp. 12, 63–4, 146, 340. 28  A Perfect Account, issue 54, 7 January 1652, p. 430. 29  Barbara White, ‘Hind, James (Bap. 1616, d. 1652), Highwayman and Royalist Soldier’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 14 January 2019, . 30  Mercurius Politicus, issue 75, 6 November 1651, p. 1204. Marchamont Nedham, the editor of Mercurius Politicus, was expected to propagate the establishment’s views, even if he did so while retaining some of his independence. See Jason Peacey, ‘The Management of Civil War Newspapers: Auteurs, Entrepreneurs and Editorial Control’, The Seventeenth Century 21:1 (2006), p. 115; Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper; Blair Worden, ‘“Wit in a Roundhead”: The Dilemma of Marchamont Nedham’, in Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England: Essays Presented to David Underdown, pp. 301–37. 26 

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and in full bowles began his healths to the King… However, amongst those numbers that thronged in to see him, there was not one would pledg [sic] him on that Account, his fellow prisoners only excepted, who were all of his Complexion: And when they are to suffer, the world is to take notice that they dye all true Subjects to the Scots King. A great honour for him.31

The last snide remark about the ‘honour’ of having a notorious robber as a follower (along with the characteristic stereotype of Royalist health-drinking) shows how Hind could be used as polemic against Royalists, but no other newsbook editor followed Collins’s example. Hind’s name kept cropping up in newsbooks until his execution in September 1652, but he was merely mentioned as a robber, and the reports consisted of the details of his trials.32 The only exception, apart from the anti-establishment newsbook A Faithfull Scout (explored below), was A Perfect Account of September 1652: this reported Hind’s dying speech and its clear Royalist sentiments but without any gloss from the editor or author.33 The regime had acknowledged that propaganda was useful, by hiring Nedham as the editor of Mercurius Politicus. Had they wished to turn Hind’s trial into a showcase of either its power or the pitiful status of the king’s followers, there would have been newsbooks or other publications following such a line. But the establishment’s silence on Hind’s case left him open to appropriation by those who wanted to criticise the Commonwealth. This opportunity was seized upon by the bookseller George Horton, who actively promoted and advertised Hind’s subscription to the royalist cause in order to criticise the Republican government. Horton was a prolific publisher in the 1650s, mostly of newsbooks and other news pamphlets. He ran into trouble with his publications in 1653, when he was one of the booksellers arrested for printing material the authorities found unpalatable.34 His earlier publications might have been slightly more circumspect but were equally subversive. Horton printed some of the newsbooks of Daniel Border, a newsbook editor who in 1651 and 1652 was becoming a nuisance for the Commonwealth with the newsbooks he was editing, The Faithfull Scout, The French Intelligencer, and The Weekly Intelligencer, issue 45, 11 November 1651, p. 346. Italics from the original. A Perfect Account, issue 55, 15 January 1652, p. 430; The Faithful Scout, issue 52, 9 January 1652, pp. 404–5; A Perfect Account, issue 56, 21 January, p. 448; The Faithful Scout, issue 53, 16 January 1652, p. 414; The French Intelligencer, issue 10, 20 January 1652; p. 70; The Faithful Scout, issue 56, 6 February 1652, p. 438; A Perfect Account, issue 62, 3 March 1652, p. 496; A Perfect Account, issue 87, 25 August 1652, p. 696; A Faithful Scout, issue 85, 27 August 1652, p. 665; A Perfect Account, issue 91, 22 September 1652, p. 728. 33  A Perfect Account, Issue 91, 22 September 1652, p. 728. 34  ‘1653 Oct 21; To apprehend Mrs. Clowes, Geo. Horton, John Perkins, Isaac Grey, and Thos. Spring, and bring them before Council to answer objections’: Mary Anne Everett Green, Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Interregnum, 1653–4 (1879), p. 440. In 1649 an ‘Act against Scandalous and Unlicensed Books’ was passed in order to control the press, so this arrest was probably related to such issues: see Joad Raymond, ‘News’, in The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, p. 390. 31 

32 

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The French Occurrences (the Intelligencer’s successor), to the extent that Border was questioned twice in 1652 about offensive articles and was probably briefly imprisoned.35 As we will see, Border in his newsbooks often reprinted subversive materials from pamphlets, some of which were published by Horton. In the three months that followed Hind’s arrest, the period during which most of the pamphlets about him circulated, the rest of Horton’s published material included news about the King of Scots (some of his declarations and letters from other European royal personages), and Leveller tracts and other texts relating to Lilburne.36 In these publications, Horton kept the king’s name in public view by showing the international support he received from significant political figures and emphasised radicals’ opposition to the Commonwealth.37 This seems to follow earlier Royalist moves, when in the late 1640s Royalist newsbooks praised Lilburne when it suited them, in order to criticise the establishment.38 At the same time, rumours in the 1650s about a possible alliance between Levellers and Royalists were running rampant, which may have also influenced such publications.39 A characteristic example of Horton’s publications in this period was The Speech of Collonel John Sares (1652). Sares (or Saer) was tried by a Council of War in Chester for high treason and sentenced to death.40 In Horton’s pamphlet it is Frank, The Beginnings of the English Newspaper, 1620–1660, pp. 227–8. G.K. Fortesque (ed.), Catalogue of the Pamphlets, Books, Newspapers, and Manuscripts Relating to the Civil War, the Commonwealth, and Restoration, Collected by George Thomason, 1640–1661 (London, 1908), I. Some examples, indicative of Horton’s publishing profile and preoccupations, include The perfect speech delivered on the scaffold by James Earl of Derby, immediately before his execution at Bolton in Lancashire, on Wednesday, October 15. 1651. Also, h[i]s declaration to the people; touching the grounds of his engagement: his prayer for his master the King: with his demonstration, of dying a Christian to God, and a souldier to Christ (1651); All is not gold that glisters: or, A warning-piece to England Being a prophecie, written by that famous and learned knight Sir Walter Rawleigh (1651); The Queen of Denmark’s letter to the King of Scots, now resident in the city of Paris (1651); The Levellers remonstrance, sent in a letter to his excellency the Lord Gen: Cromwel (1651). 37  In addition, none of Horton’s pamphlets in the period 1650–1654 was registered with the Stationers’ Company. This might be related to the fact that these publications were not considered important enough to be registered. Alternatively, however, it might suggest that, due to the oppositional tone of his publications, he opted to not register them in order to avoid attention. Stationers’ Company, A Transcript of the Registers of the Worshipful Company of Stationers, from 1640–1708 A.D., 1655–1675 (London, 1913), II. 38  Jason McElligott, Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England (Woodbridge, 2007), p. 64. In addition, Francis Wortley in a 1647 poem, while listing various Royalist inmates of Newgate and praising the king, included a stanza on Lilburne, depicting him positively: Francis Wortley, A Loyall Song of the Royall Feast, Kept by the Prisoners in the Towre in August Last (1647). See Jerome De Groot, ‘Prison Writing, Writing Prison during the 1640s and 1650s’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 72:2 (2009), p. 198. 39  David Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy in England, 1649–1660 (New Haven, CT, 1960). 40  Thomas Malbon, Memorials of the Civil War in Cheshire and the Adjacent Counties, Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, 19 (London and Redhill, 1889), p. 223. With thanks to Ian Atherton for this reference. 35  36 

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clear that the emphasis is on presenting Sares and his cause in a flattering light. This is evident from the title-page: apart from including details of the place and time of execution, the title-page promises to recount ‘his protestation, that if he had a head of hair as big a Absolon, and every hair as strong as Sampson, he would spend them all for the good and honour of his KING’ and characterises his dying speech as ‘triumphant’: ‘together with his tryumphant speech when the rope was put over his neck, saying; what a gallant mourning ribbon is this, which I wear for the true loyalty I bear to my king’.41 The prevalence of the king’s name (highlighted typographically with capital letters) as well as the inclusion of Royalist sentiments – ventriloquised for safety – is the same strategy as the one used in Horton’s pamphlets about Hind. A comparison between pamphlets about Hind published by Horton and by other booksellers shows the extent to which Horton’s were meant as anti-Commonwealth polemic. Horton showed a great interest in Hind, publishing six out of the thirteen pamphlets about him. Horton’s publications about Hind did not feature an author’s name, except for We Have Brought Our Hogs to a Fair Market (1652), where the editorial is signed by Horton himself. By focusing more on Horton’s role in the pamphlets we can see that Hind’s Royalism was repeatedly brought to the fore and that his reportage was anything but objective. This agrees with Jason Peacey’s analysis of the production of newsbooks, which highlights the role of publishers and their promotion of ‘distinct theoretical and tactical arguments’, through editorialising and the selection of material.42 Even though Ann Hughes has suggested that in other cases Horton was motivated by commercial considerations, I argue that Hind’s publications fit into his more polemical writing.43 Andrew Hardie, Tony McEnery, and Scott Songlin Piao, examining newsbooks from 1654, also suggested that newsbooks published by Horton could imply ideological commitment to Royalism; my research on Horton’s publications supports this claim.44 Where others focused on Hind’s robberies and toned down his Royalism, Horton’s pamphlets emphasised the latter. In The True and Perfect Relation of the Taking of Captain James Hind (1651), his Royalism shines through. There is a detailed description of Hind’s dialogue with the crowds visiting him in prison: when a gentleman from his hometown told him ‘Truly Countrey-man I am sorry to Anonymous, The Speech of Collonel John Sares, Delivered at the Place of Execution on the Tenth of This Instant Month at Chester (1652). 42  Peacey, ‘The Management of Civil War Newspapers’, p. 104. See also Mark Knights, ‘John Starkey and Ideological Networks in Late Seventeenth-Century England’, in News Networks in Seventeenth Century Britain and Europe, ed. Joad Raymond (London, 2006), 125–43. 43  Ann Hughes, ‘Gerrard Winstanley, News Culture, and Law Reform in the Early 1650s’, Prose Studies, 36:1 (2014), 63–76. 44  Andrew Hardie, Tony McEnery, and Scott Songlin Piao, ‘Historical Text Mining and Corpus-Based Approaches to the Newsbooks of the Commonwealth’, in The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe, ed. Brendan Maurice Dooley (Farnham, 2010), pp. 251–86. 41 

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see you in this place,’ he answered ‘That imprisonment was a confort to him, in suffering for so good and just a Cause, as adhering to the KING’. This gentleman’s refusal to drink a health to ‘my Master the King’ ‘moved Hind to passion, who said; the Devill take all Traytors: Had I a thousand lives, and at liberty, I would adventure them all for King Charles’. Here, Hind shifted the accusation of treason from himself to those who fought against the king, chief among them being the new regime’s representatives. Hind went on to say, ‘I value it not a three pence, to lose my life in so good a cause; and if it was to do again, I should do the like.’45 The main points of this story were narrated in The Weekly Intelligencer’s issue mentioned earlier.46 In this version, however, Hind’s statements in support of the king are quoted at length and given prominence, thus making them the focal point of this account. This emphasis on the pro-monarchical character of Hind’s declaration is underlined typographically by using capital letters for the king’s name. In addition, and as we saw in Chapter 2, the reaction of the audience is described in completely different terms: apparently when Hind said that he wished ‘that [ruining poor cottagers] were as little used in England amongst Lawyers, as the eating of Swines-flesh was amongst the Jews’, the pamphlet reports that ‘this expression caused much laughter, and many such witty Gingles would be often put forth’. Here, Hind is not presented as appealing to ‘his fellow prisoners’ but to the audience at large; this creates a very different impression as to how far the audience was on his side, in contrast to The Weekly Intelligencer’s. Barbara White views The True and Perfect Relation as ‘a journalist’s first-hand account of his words on this occasion’, which I think misses Horton’s gloss on Hind’s words.47 The emphasis on Hind’s connection to the Royalist cause was continued in The Humble Petition of James Hind (1651), published by Horton. The title is misleading: Hind’s petition, asking for more humane conditions during his imprisonment, covers just one page, while five are devoted to an account of the execution of thirty-one Royalists in Ireland. Even though Hind’s petition is neutral, the report of the long dying speech by the bishop of Clonmell in favour of the king had an obvious propaganda value, since he claimed that God willed ‘the establishing of the Royal Posterity in their just Rights and Liberties’. The assumption that this was not detached reportage, but on the contrary followed a partisan line, is further justified by the pamphlet’s attempt to cast the bishop

Anonymous, The True and Perfect Relation of the Taking of Captain James Hind (1651), pp. 3, 6. The Weekly Intelligencer, issue 45, 11 November 1651. See p. 126. Gillian Spraggs mentions Hind’s Royalism, but considers this as an attempt by Hind to craft his image: Spraggs, Outlaws and Highwaymen, p. 165. 47  White, ‘Hind, James (Bap. 1616, d. 1652), Highwayman and Royalist Soldier’. White uses the passage from The Weekly Intelligencer in order to suggest that the similarity ‘confirms that these pamphlets were at most elaborating rather than imposing on Hind a stance of defiant Royalism’. I do not disagree that Hind’s Royalism was genuine, but I think that this ‘elaboration’ was significant. 45  46 

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of Clonmell as a martyr, by stating that he was ‘the first that tasted of the Cup’ (of martyrdom).48 The pro-Royalist line was more glaringly apparent in the pamphlet We Have Brought Our Hogs to a Fair Market (1652).49 The title page advertised that it contained Hind’s orders ‘to all his royal gang’ as well as ‘the appearing of a strange vision on Munday morning last, with a crown upon his head’. It is interesting that highwaymen would be described as a ‘royal gang’, but apparently the text was trying to exculpate them, or at least to show that they could direct their activities towards deserving targets. Hind admonishes them to refrain from robbing anyone apart ‘from the Caterpillars of the Times, viz. Long-gown men, Committee-men, Excize-men, Sequestrators, and other Sacrilegious persons’. Using the term ‘caterpillars’, which was used for those who preyed upon society (quite often robbers, as we have seen), to characterise professions who were supposed to be pillars of the government is a deliberate use of inversion with links to the festive tradition of Robin Hood and to earlier depictions of rogues. Thus, the regime was discredited, since its bureaucracy was identified as the ‘real’ robbers, while highwaymen were presented as enforcers of moral justice.50 This was not an unusual line of argument against the government. Mercurius Politicus mentions a case in December 1655, when one Cornet Day got to the pulpit in the Allhallows church in London, and ‘he made it his business to rail against Government, calling the Governors a Company of Thieves and Robbers’.51 This again highlights how the term ‘robber’ could be used to contest definitions of legality. Lloyd Bowen has examined cases of seditious talk and slander from 1649 to 1660 and pointed out that the term ‘rogue’ was used often for political opponents. Bowen has argued that to brand someone a ‘rogue’ was to draw attention to their status outside the law and to their inferior social rank (since ‘rogue’ meant both criminal and vagrant), but at the same time this connected them with the rogue pamphlet tradition.52 Even more seditious was the description of a vision Hind had, which followed closely the pattern of political prophecies popular in this period.53 The pamphlet alleged that, while Hind was in prison, ‘there appeared a Vision, in the likeness and portraicture of the late King Charles, with a Crown upon his head, saying,

Anonymous, The Humble Petition of James Hind, p. 5. G.H., We Have Brought Our Hogs to a Fair Market: Or, Strange Newes from New-Gate (1652). Horton signed the editiorial on this one, as I have said earlier. 50  On inversion and the ‘alternative popular vocabulary’, see David Underdown, A Freeborn People: Politics and the Nation in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford and New York, 1996), p. 93. 51  Mercurius Politicus, issue 288, 13 December 1655, p. 5836. 52  Lloyd Bowen, ‘Seditious Speech and Popular Royalism, 1649–1660’, in Royalists and Royalism during the Interregnum, ed. Jason McElligott and David L. Smith (Manchester and New York, 2010), p. 55. 53  Tim Thornton, Prophecy, Politics and the People in Early Modern England (Woodbridge and Rochester, NY, 2006). 48  49 

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Repent, repent, and the King of Kings will have mercy on a Thief’.54 Such an overt play upon the idea of king as Christ-like evoked Charles I’s image from Eikon Basilike (1649) and was clearly intended as part of the same drive to praise the deceased king.55 The effect was further enhanced by the inclusion in the same page of a small image of the king. Parts of this pamphlet (and, importantly, both of the comments mentioned here) were reprinted in two consecutive issues of The Faithful Scout, the newsbook edited by Border, who apparently followed Horton’s initiative in using Hind as a way to criticise the Commonwealth.56 Unlike Horton’s pamphlets, most other cheap texts which appeared after Hind’s arrest focused on his status as a robber, ignoring his Royalism. Works such as The Last Will and Testament of James Hynd (1651), A Pill to Purge Melancholy (1652), The English Gusman (1652), and Wit for Mony (1652) narrated generic stories of deceit and robbery, presenting Hind in a long tradition of rogue heroes. The only hints of Hind’s Royalism were mentions of his travels to Ireland and Holland and occasional references to his service in the army, but not with the same pro-Royalist tenacity of Horton’s pamphlets. For example, The English Gusman (1652) reprinted passages from Horton’s pamphlets, such as The True and Perfect Relation of the Taking of Captain James Hind (1651) and The Humble Petition of James Hind (1651), but at the same time had no problem cynically stating that Hind’s reason for getting a post with the Royalist army was so as to continue robbing: ‘he got many mad lads together and did many robberies with authority’, an argument echoing depictions of Royalists as opportunistic highwaymen in the previous decade.57 A Second Discovery of Hind’s Exploits (1651) was more ambivalent in its portrayal of Hind. This pamphlet describes robberies and cozenages by Hind in every corner of the land and even though it hints at Hind’s political affiliation, this is not portrayed as a necessarily positive characteristic. The woodcut which accompanied this publication showed a Cavalier being assaulted by a Roundhead, the Cavalier being in a very compromised position, with a shepherd’s crook (or noose) around his neck. This was clearly a recycled image from an earlier satire against Cavaliers and Roundheads, titled An Exact Description of a Roundhead, and a Long-Head Shag-Pole: Taken Our [sic] of This also resembles John Clavell’s poem at the beginning of A Recantation of an Ill Led Life (1628): ‘The King of Kings tooke mercy on a Thiefe,/ so may my gracious King in mercy save me’: Clavell, A Recantation of an Ill Led Life, sig. A1v (in all but the first edition). Hind here is also presented as the penitent thief, who can recognise the true king, in the same way as the thief could recognise the true god. 55  John Gauden, Eikōn Basilikē. The Portraicture of His Sacred Majestie in His Solitudes and Sufferings (1649) presented Charles I as a martyr and alluded to Christ’s passion. 56  The Faithful Scout, issue 52, 9 January 1652, pp. 404–5; The Faithful Scout, issue 53, 16 January 1652, pp. 414–15. Some of The Faithfull Scout’s issues were printed for George Horton, see for example The Faithful Scout, issue 85 (27 August–3 September 1652) which was printed by Robert Wood for George Horton. 57  Fidge, The English Gusman; or The History of That Unparallel’d Thief James Hind, p. 35. 54 

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Plate 4  We Have Brought Our Hogs to a Fair Market, p. 5.

Plate 5  We Have Brought Our Hogs to a Fair Market, p. 7.

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the Purest Antiquities and Records (1642).58 Even though the text uses the term ‘Roundhead’ in order to mock the supporters of Parliament, it is particularly scathing against Cavaliers (describing them as ‘long-head shag-poll’). The inclusion of this image in a pamphlet about the Royalist Hind subverted the image of Hind as an active and (to a certain degree) successful robber.59 However, the same pamphlet also included the story of ‘How Hind putting on a Bears skin, attempted to rob a Committee man at Oxford’ (analysed in Chapter 2), which suggests an implicit acknowledgement of Hind’s Royalism and pokes fun at an agent of the Commonwealth. Thomas Knowles

Despite the fact that most booksellers did not follow Horton’s example in their treatment of Hind, some did use other robbers to create pieces of royalist polemic, albeit occasionally changing the real circumstances of their lives to fit the needs of polemical writing. In January 1652, Hinds Elder Brother recounted the adventures of another Royalist highwayman, Thomas Knowles. Even though the pamphlet gives him the title of ‘Major’, it is not clear if this is true, and his name cannot be found in any lists of Royalists of the period. Thomas Knowles did not suddenly appear in print in 1652: the first mention of his name is in a pamphlet in 1641, titled Newes from the North, or, A Relation of a Great Robberie Which Was Committed Nere Swanton in Yorkshire, July 12, 1641 Wherein is Discoursed How One Master Tailour was Robbed by a Company of Troupers, one Knowles, a Dancer, Being the Chief Ringleader: by Reason of his Avarice in Denying to Lend the King One Hundred Pounds at his Necessity, he Lost Fourteen Thousand Pounds, and the Parties Have Procured Pardon. The pamphlet’s title provides a good synopsis of the text: the king, in need of money for the war against the Scottish, asked someone called Taylor for a hundred pounds. However, Taylor refused to give the money out of greed, fraudulently claiming that he didn’t have any. As a form of punishment for his greed, some soldiers broke into his house, tied him up, and robbed him. The pamphlet mentioned that ‘the ring-leader in this act was one Knowles, who was heretofore a dancer on the ropes, and also a jester to Master John Punteus the French Mountebanke, which travelled throughout this Kingdom; who (when they had gotten the money) began to shew his feats of activity, upon the table, relling Master Tailour, that he would not take his money for nothing, he should have some sport for it’.60

Anonymous, An Exact Description of a Roundhead, and a Long-Head Shag-Poll: Taken Our [sic] of the Purest Antiquities and Records (1642). 59  Anonymous, A Second Discovery of Hind’s Exploits. I am grateful to Dr Helen Pierce for her help with this woodcut. Even though Horton’s pamphlets contained similar stories, the omission of almost any trace of Royalism in the other pamphlets makes Horton’s insistence on Hind’s pro-monarchical attitude even more glaring. 60  Anonymous, Newes from the North, or, A Relation of a Great Robberie Which Was Committed Nere Swanton in Yorkshire (1641), pp. 2–3. 58 

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Plate 6 Anonymous, A Second Discovery of Hind’s Exploits (1651), image on side-page.

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This story follows the usual trope of robbers punishing their victim for his greed and also presents the criminal as funny. The author clearly agrees with the troopers’ actions, even claiming that the king pardoned the men for their actions. The story seems highly implausible, something that is supported by the publication of Tongue Thou Lyest (1641), where the author is forced to admit that ‘Mr. Thomas Knowles, who is named in the fore-printed Libell, is a wronged man; for which I am enforced (though willingly) to recant it’, suggesting that Knowles had taken offence at his portrayal as a robber.61 It is not clear what happens to Knowles after 1641. Mentions of his name appear, but it is not clear whether they refer to the same person. A Perfect Diurnall in January 1652 mentioned that ‘Capt. Knowles’, together with ‘Lieutenant Col. Wilks Deputy Governour of Lieth [sic], Major Read’, and ‘Captaine Newman’ were in Edinburgh and ‘proceeded upon the businesses of the Country, determining several differences of parties in Lieth, Edenburgh and parts adjacent, making a speedy peace between all parties’.62 This would suggest that Knowles was working for the Commonwealth at that point, something supported by other printed accounts, as I will show. What is clear is that Knowles was arrested in March 1652 as a thief. A Perfect Account mentions that: ‘There was apprehended in London, and carried to Newgate (the latter end of the last week) one Knowls, a notorious theef charged to be one of those that robbed the Speaker, the Charter house, and did many other great robberies.’63 This newsbook did not make any other comments on the case, but again, the same process of turning a criminal into a Royalist appears. The pamphlet Hinds Elder Brother, or the Master Thief Discovered. Being a Notable Pithy Relation of the Life of Major Thomas Knowls His Many Exploits Escapes, and Witty Robberies (1652) described the life of Knowles, focusing on how he was apprenticed to the Mountebank Punteus (a fact also presented in the 1641 pamphlet) but also how he later became a highwayman – even robbing Hind – and then a ‘Captain of the Pioneers to the Scotch Army’, in Worcester, but managed to escape after their defeat. However, regardless of the truth of this statement, a royalist gloss is evident in the story ‘How Knowls robbed the Scotch Commissioners, when they lay at Somerset House’. This refers to the Scottish Commissioners sent to London. The pamphlet narrates how Knowles tricked ‘Lowden’, who is probably Loudoun, William Bray, Tongue Thou Lyest. Or, a Recantation for Writing That Infamous, Libellous, Pamphlet, Entituled Newes from the North: Or a Relation of the Great Robbery. Wherein Is Discoursed, the Infinite Wrongs Which Master Knowles Hath Thereby Suffered, and the Authors Heartily Sorrow for It (1641), p. 4. Nonetheless, the same pamphlet (minus Knowles’s name in the title page) was published next year: Anonymous, A Great Robbery in the North, Neer Swanton in Yorkshire; Shewing How One Mr. Tailour Was Robbed by a Company of Cavaliers (1642). Knowles’s name still appears in the pamphlet, however. 62  A Perfect Diurnall of Some Passages and Proceedings of, and in Relation to, the Armies in England and Ireland, issue 108, 29 December 1651, pp. 1571–2. 63  A Perfect Account, issue 62, 3 March 1652, p. 496. 61 

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one of the Scottish commissioners and a member of the committee of both kingdoms in the 1640s.64 The story itself is a common tale of trickery, where Knowles, disguised, steals from the Scottish commissioners. The poem which concludes this story follows the usual pattern of the trickster tricked, attributing the initial fraud to the Scots Commissioners: thus witty Knowls did borrow plate of those which cozen’d King and State. The one they sold, the others thought to cheat, but now repent, since they are soundly beat.65

The mention of the king suggests an attempt to present this as a pro-Royalist sentiment, something tricky, given that Knowles was working for the Commonwealth before his arrest. However, with the inclusion of the same story in a Faithfull Scout issue, Border managed the difficult task of showing that a man who had switched sides was still a Royalist at heart. Border reported that: The Mosse-Troopers are very busie in Scotland; but a party of the English Cavalry, commanded by Maj. Knowls (who formerly serv’d the King; but now according to the Times, every man for themselves) have lately arragn’d them for their Roguery, and ty’d them up from their gude Kale, making themselves Executors of their ill-gotten prizes. This Knowls bears an inveterate hatred against the Jockies, and is resolved to pay them home for their late perfidiousnesse and trechery to their Soveraign Lord the King; as appears by the ensuing Narrative, mixt with mirth and witty conceits, in his unparallel’d Exploits, when he rob’d the Scotch Commissioners at Somerset house in the Strand.66

To this, Border appended the story of Knowles stealing from Scottish Commissioners from Hind’s Elder Brother. By consequence, the newsbook uses the story of Knowles robbing the Scottish Commissioners as proof of loyalty to the king and attempts to show that Knowles was consistent in his beliefs in favour of the king. Faithful Scout’s story is a good example of how glosses could be used in order to turn a seemingly opportunistic robber into an agent of the king-in-exile. William Hart and Richard Hannam

This discussion of conscious attempts to present criminals as Royalists does not imply that all texts were presenting a polemical message. In two examples, those

David Stevenson, ‘Campbell, John, First Earl of Loudoun (1598–1662), Lord Chancellor of Scotland’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 14 January 2019, . 65  Anonymous, Hinds Elder Brother, p. 5. 66  The Faithful Scout, issue 54, 23 January 1652, p. 421. The Scots were apparently called ‘Jockies’; see for example the ballad, Anonymous, Jockies Lamentation, Whose Seditious Work Was the Loss of His Country, and His KIRK (1657). 64 

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of William Hart and Richard Hannam, we can see that robbers and Royalists were increasingly linked together regardless of whether this was part of the war of words between Parliamentarian apologists and Royalists. Sir William Hart was part of the Royalist army and possibly one of the Scottish officers.67 Mercurius Politicus in October 1651 reported that ‘Severall Prisoners of the Scotish Nation, were brought hither from Chester, whose names are these: the Earle of Lauderdale, Lieutenant Generall Sir David Lesley, Lieutenant generall Middleton, Sir William Fleming, Sir David Cunningham, and Sir William Hart, who stand committed in the Tower of London’, suggesting that Hart was a high-profile officer of the Scottish army.68 In March 1652, William Hart was turned into a highwayman, in the pamphlet The Knight Errant (1652). The fact that it took five months before this story was deemed useful to be printed in a pamphlet, in addition to the way that William Hart is transformed into a highwayman in this pamphlet suggests the increasing connection of Royalists to highwaymen. This may also be corroborated by the fact that the publisher of this pamphlet was E.C., who was more than likely Edward Crouch, the royalist printer who together with John Crouch published Man in the Moon, an illegal Royalist newsbook.69 Throughout, the pamphlet describes the various tricks and robberies that Hart performed in the common format for rogue pamphlets: stories such as ‘How Sir William Hart came to London, where living at a high rate, at last cozened a Linen Draper living upon Ludgate-hill of a hundred and forty pounds’ could easily be found in any other pamphlet. The fact that Hart was a Royalist was also presented in the title-page, which advertises that it will show ‘His severall exploits, cheats, and most witty tricks by him acted ever since his first beeing untill his proclaiming the SCOTCH KING at WORCESTER, in August last’. The title-page uses the common capitalisation of the king’s name, albeit this time presenting him as the ‘Scotch King’. When the pamphlet describes the meeting of Hart with the king, the depiction is positive, but the pamphlet does not paint itself as Royalist: ‘comes the Scotch King with his tarpallians [sailors, but probably means something else here] to town, and then hey boyes, who but our Knight proclaims him at the market Cross and the next day to Court as Bravely harnessed as one of the Goulden fellowes?’ Immediately after this, the author narrates how ‘our forces the same day routs the Bullyes, and all the fats in the tire, our Knights taken, brought to London and clapt prisoner

P.R. Newman, Royalist Officers in England and Wales, 1642–1660: A Biographical Dictionary (New York, 1981), 72, p. 178. 68  Mercurius Politicus, issue 70, 2 October 1651, p. 1112. 69  It seems probable that the publisher was Edward Crouch, since no other publisher in this period had the same initials. Underdown, A Freeborn People, pp. 90–111; Jason McElligott, ‘John Crouch: A Royalist Journalist in Cromwellian England’, Media History, 10:3 (2004), 139–55. 67 

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in the Tower’.70 In this, the Royalist is portrayed as a highwayman and possibly an enemy. However, there is still significant ambivalence in the pamphlet, both in terms of the use of ‘our’ knight, but also of the narration of Hart’s tricks. Consequently, even though the pamphlet is not in favour of Hart’s allegiance, it does not condemn him either. A particularly tenuous attempt to present a criminal as a Royalist is that of the burglar Richard Hannam, who was executed in 1656. A series of pamphlets appeared, relating in picaresque terms his travels and robberies in Europe and England, as well as his various escapes from prison. However, some of the pamphlets imply that Hannam was a Royalist. Whereas The Speech and Confession of Mr. Richard Hannam (1656) claimed that it presented Hannam’s ‘several Rambles, Figaries, Exploits, and Designs, performed in most parts of Europe; especially upon the King of Scots, the Queen of Swedes, the Kings of France, Spain, and Denmark, the High and Mighty States of Holland, the great Turk, and the Pope of Rome’, other pamphlets emphatically rejected the claim that Hannam had robbed the king of Scots, implying that this was due to personal conviction. Hannam’s Last Farewell to the World (1656) vehemently stated that ‘here I cannot but vindicate him from one common lie which is frequent in every mans mouth, and likewise printed in one feigned foolish pamphlet, to wit, that he should robb the King of Scots…’, claiming that it had information from Hannam himself: ‘(if a dying man may be to be believed) that he never did any such thing, but abhor’d the very thought of it’.71 The Witty Rogue also claimed that Hannam ‘denyed that he robbed the King of Scots, and said he would rather have parted with a thousand pounds then have been so asperst’.72 These are the only comments in Hannam’s pamphlets which connect the burglar to Royalist feelings. These offhanded comments about Hannam’s supposed royalism show that this was not a central part of the pamphlets’ depiction of Hannam, which makes the inclusion even more interesting. This charts a move from the earlier pamphlets, which presented royalism as a significant part of the criminal’s life and thus appropriated the criminal’s stories in order to make a polemical point. A similar tendency to conflate Royalists and criminals, without necessarily using it as polemic, is evident in the representation of a new type of urban criminal, the hector. ‘Swear and Swagger, Drink, Rant, and Rogue’: Hectors and Cavaliers in the 1650s

In April 1652 Thomason bought a pamphlet from Smithfield titled A Notable and Pleasant History of the Famous Renowned Knights of the Blade, Commonly Called

J.B., The Knight Errant: Being a Witty, Notable and True Relation of the Strange Adventures of Sir William Hart Now Prisoner in the Tower (1652), sigs B4v–B5r. 71  Anonymous, The Speech and Confession of Mr. Richard Hannam, title-page; Anonymous, Hannam’s Last Farewell to the World. 72  E., The Witty Rogue Arraigned, Condemned, and Executed. Or, The History of That Incomparable Thief Richard Hainam, p. 47. 70 

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Hectors or, St. Nicholas Clerkes which presented the actions of a new group of urban criminals. These the author presented in the following terms: ‘the new Trojans, the valiant Hectors, the Champions of the times, and Creams of Valour, the never enough renowned Gallanto’s [sic]’.73 Despite the irony, the description suggests that these hectors were considered sufficiently well-known as a category of criminals. This section aims to show how the image of the ‘hector’ developed in cheap print in the 1640s and 1650s, incorporating elements from earlier depictions of criminals, but also connecting them more clearly to elite criminality. In the process, the term hector (with its connotations of bravery, criminality, and merry defiance) became a synonym for Cavaliers. Recent scholarship has shown how the image of the Cavalier evolved in the 1640s and 1650s, from a translation of the French chevalier or Italian cavaliero associated with horsemanship and courage to a term of abuse against Royalists. Stoyle has stressed that the term ‘Cavalier’ in the sixteenth century conjured two distinct images, that of the ‘courageous military man’ and the ‘gallant man of fashion’. However, Stoyle contends that ‘the two figures soon became increasingly blurred’, a process particularly evident in the early 1640s, when the term was used by Parliamentarian publications as a term of abuse. It then incorporated the added associations with drunkenness and support for the king. Stoyle argues that the term ‘Cavalier’ was embraced by Royalists such as John Suckling before the term was used against them.74 Nigel Smith agrees that the term ‘Cavalier’ was employed by Parliamentarian and Puritan apologists as a ‘smear’ but it was also accepted by Royalists, a point that parallels what this chapter has shown so far about the use of the term ‘robber’ by Royalists. Smith argues that being an English ‘Cavalier’ was a lifestyle, which – among other things – involved drinking, gambling, doing extravagant things, and behaving as ‘libertine gentlemen’.75 This composite image of the Cavalier could be used as both a term of abuse but also a badge of honour, especially in the context of ‘merry defiance’ employed by Royalists, as we saw earlier. In the previous part of this chapter, I analysed the ways in which criminality was rhetorically appropriated in order to discuss issues of allegiance and the war. In the remainder of this chapter, I will focus specifically on a new category of urban criminals, the hectors, and explore the ways in which their representation in print incorporated associations with drunkenness, elite criminality, duelling culture, and libertinism. All of these characteristics were also elements of the image of the Cavalier; this chapter will show that, progressively, the image of

Anonymous, A Notable and Pleasant History of the Famous Renowned Knights of the Blade, Commonly Called Hectors, p. 11. 74  Mark Stoyle, ‘The Cannibal Cavalier: Sir Thomas Lunsford and the Fashioning of the Royalist Archetype’, The Historical Journal, 59:2 (2016), 9–12. See also Angela McShane, ‘Roaring Royalists and Ranting Brewers: The Politicisation of Drink and Drunkenness in Political Broadside Ballads from 1640 to 1689’, in A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Adam Smyth (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 69–88. 75  Nigel Smith, ‘Cross-Channel Cavaliers’, The Seventeenth Century, 32:4 (2017), 434. 73 

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the hector came to be conflated with the image of the Cavalier. This process was completed in the 1660s, when the two terms were used interchangeably. In contrast to the previous sections, this is not explicitly a story of how this depiction of criminality was used as polemic. As we will see, there are few mentions of allegiance to the king in the texts. Nonetheless, the fact that descriptions of hectors appeared as rogue pamphlets, bearing close similarities to the ones for Royalist highwaymen, and that the lifestyle presented was patterned after the Cavalier stereotype, suggests that they could be employed to discredit those rowdy Royalists. Going back to the pamphlet we started with, A Notable and Pleasant History of the Famous Renowned Knights of the Blade, Commonly Called Hectors or, St. Nicholas Clerkes, it is clear that it borrowed from earlier pamphlets depicting the practices of rogues. The term ‘St Nicholas Clerks’ itself had a long association with crime (highway robbery specifically), harking back to Elizabethan and early Stuart depictions of highwaymen. In Martins Months Minde (1589) an encounter with a highwayman is described in these terms: ‘like the Saint Nicolas Clarkes on Salsburie plaine… [the highwayman] stept out before us in the high waie, and bidde us stand’. In a similar vein, in The Belman of London (1608), the description of the ‘High-Law’ (highway robbery) reads: ‘The theefe that commits the Robberie, and is cheife Clarke to Saint Nicholas, is called the High Lawyer’.76 The activities of disbanded soldiers who turned to urban crime are couched in similar terms to those used in earlier pamphlets: There was no sooner an end put to the Wars of England, but a great company of Officers and Souldiers being discarded, they repaire to the famous City of London, in hope that new troubles would arise, to maintain them in the same disordered courses they formerly practiced in the Armies, but missing fewell to feed the fire of their desires, they began to study living by their wits.

The passage defined living ‘by their wits’ thus: ‘it consists much in cheat and cousenage, gaming, decoying, pimping, whoring, swearing, and drinking, and with the nobler sort, in robbing’. As we have seen, living ‘by their wits’ was a very common way to describe the practices of rogues, and it is clear from the practices outlined above, that hectors were considered a part of London’s crime scene. The pamphlet itself follows the same structure as most discoveries of criminals, which had appeared since the late sixteenth century. The pamphlet is broken into chapters, presenting ‘Their Profession and manner of Life’ as well as their ‘Lawes, Articles and Customes established among them’.77 The rest of the chapters describe the various tricks hectors play, focusing on deceit and immorality.

Mar-phoreus, Martins Months Minde, That Is, a Certaine Report, and True Description of the Death, and Funeralls, of Olde Martin Marreprelate, the Great Makebate of England, and Father of the Factious (1589), sigs B1r–B1v; Dekker, The Belman of London, sig. Hv. 77  Anonymous, A Notable and Pleasant History of the Famous Renowned Knights of the Blade, Commonly Called Hectors, pp. 1–2. 76 

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This pamphlet is not, however, just a refashioning of earlier pamphlets in the context of the 1650s. A Notable and Pleasant History of the Famous Renowned Knights of the Blade places emphasis on elite criminality to a greater extent than earlier texts. We can see in this some of the characteristics of the rake, which – as Erin Mackie argues – is an image connected with excessive sexuality, criminality, and glamorous high life in the late seventeenth century.78 One of the few original aspects of the depictions of hectors was their fame as accomplished duellists, which associated them both with a more warlike ethos and a gentlemanlike behaviour. Duelling was part of the military culture which had flourished in continental Europe in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; this was disseminated in England with greater impetus during the Civil Wars, when many of the professional soldiers who were serving in Continental armies came back to England to fight for their respective causes. Duelling was considered an aristocratic habit and for this reason, in the few occasions when hectors have received scholarly attention, it has been taken for granted that hectors were part of the tradition of gentlemen ‘gangs’, emphasising their unruliness and tendency to get into fights.79 This is not an unreasonable analysis: there are very clear characteristics of elite criminality, which also echo Prince Hal’s group of criminals.80 Nonetheless, this tends to ignore not only the apparent connection with earlier rogue pamphlets, but also that the concept of gentlemanly honour on which the practice of the duel was based was cultivated and disseminated further in the course of the Civil Wars.81 Furthermore, studies have shown that duelling was a ‘persistent and prominent feature of life amongst the royalist exiles’, suggesting that duelling could also be construed as a sign of royalist allegiance.82 Throughout A Notable and Pleasant History hectors are seen to exploit their fame as duellists. One of their favourite tricks was requesting a loan from a gentleman, claiming that that this was a normal practice among peers. His refusal was taken as an insult, prompting the hector to challenge him to a duel. Thus, the gentleman was left with the unappealing dilemma of either fighting a duel or succumbing to the extortion. Even though, in reality, the victim was coerced Erin Mackie, ‘Boys Will Be Boys: Masculinity, Criminality, and the Restoration Rake’, Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 46:2 (2005), 129–49. 79  Roger B. Manning, Swordsmen: The Martial Ethos in the Three Kingdoms (New York, 2003), p. 10; Thornton Shirley Graves, ‘Some Pre-Mohock Clansmen’, Studies in Philology, 20:4 (1923), 395–421. 80  William Shakespeare, Henry IV: Text Edited from the First Quarto: Contexts and Sources, Criticism, ed. Gordon McMullan, 3rd edn (New York, 2003). 81  Barbara Donagan, War in England, 1642–1649 (Oxford, 2008), pp. 215–92; Capp, England’s Culture Wars, pp. 167–71. 82  John Jeremiah Cronin, ‘Honour, Duelling and Royal Power in Exile: A Case-Study of the Banished Caroline Stuart Court, c.1649–c.1660’, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés, 17:2 (2013), 49. This, of course, does not imply that only Royalists were duellists. However, the values which led to duelling were more commonly associated with elite Royalists. 78 

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into giving money, this method of extortion was covered under a thin veneer of honourable conduct. In other cases, they incited duels among gentlemen, volunteering to act as their seconds. Their design, however, was to frighten the parties involved with the prospect of losing their life, so as to have them drop the duel. This allowed the hectors to claim restitution for their time: ‘the Gentlemen to stop their mouths, gives them some handsome gratuity besides their Horses and Armes, and now by this device they are mounted for the High-way’, with the obvious intention to practise highway robbery.83 This mention connects again the façade of gentlemanly behaviour and courage with criminality. Repeatedly hectors are presented as libertines, and their exploits with prostitutes are described in titillating detail. The pamphlet presents the activities of hectors as: singing, dancing, (and without question the noble exercise of vaulting on a bed so much spoken of, is not left unpractised,) and drinking of healths streined through the girles smocks, stripping of clothes, leaping over stooles, drinking healths under thighs, women and all, with Coats and Smocks turned up, heigh for Anthony.

The author’s expressed disappointment that hectors pay such attention to women far beneath their status (‘these people are better than halfe mad, to exercise such civilities to a company of damned bitch Whores’), implies that they were viewed as gentlemen. Nonetheless, their interactions with prostitutes did not divert them from trickery, as the pamphlet describes that hectors are often escorted by prostitutes when they go drinking, only to leave them behind to pay the tab while they disappear.84 The tone of the pamphlet shows an ironic detachment from the hectors, but also narrates their stories with some sympathy. At the end of the pamphlet, the author expresses his hopes for their repentance, admonishing hectors to ‘leave off your robbing, stealing… whoring, cheating, lying, drinking, dicing, swearing, quarrelling, fighting, making of quarrels…’. This sympathy is conditional, however: if hectors do not take his advice ‘ile give you other shall rid you from all ill living. Goe to Tiburne and be hang’d.’ Regardless of the conditional nature of such feelings, it seems that part of the sympathy for the hectors stems from characteristics which can be related to ideas of elite criminality: the author grudgingly acknowledges that ‘the Hectors for the most part are men composed of much courage and resolution, but unhappy in the want of better imployment’. Even though it is clear that not all hectors were supposed to belong to the upper sorts (the pamphlet itself makes the distinction between the ‘meaner sort of Hectors’ and those who are persons ‘of quality’), there is a blurring of the lines since all

Anonymous, A Notable and Pleasant History of the Famous Renowned Knights of the Blade, Commonly Called Hectors, pp. 5–6, 3–4. 84  Anonymous, A Notable and Pleasant History of the Famous Renowned Knights of the Blade, Commonly Called Hectors, pp. 10, 4. 83 

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of them are described as behaving in gentlemanly fashion, both in terms of their borrowing from gentlemen and fighting duels.85 This was not the only text to associate hectors with the war, with elite criminality, and duelling. The play pamphlet Hectors: Or The False Challenge, printed in 1656, portrays the three hector characters in very similar terms: they are disbanded soldiers who lost their fortunes during the wars and, faced with the choice to ‘turne brethren of the High-way, down right beggars, or hang our selves’ they chose to become hectors and gull young gentlemen by presenting themselves as duellists. The main hector character, Had-land, is a gentleman who lost his land after the war, probably due to sequestration, whereas one of the other two is said to have ‘lived to spend a fair estate, that hath kept thy Ancestors in good repute for many ages’.86 The play describes Had-land as a ‘hector’ but also ‘A Gent. Of worth and courage, although of decaied fortune’.87 All three hectors pretend to be gentlemen, and their main stratagem is to provoke gentlemen in duels and then dissuade them from fighting to gain composition (money to excuse not fighting the duel). The play casts Had-land as the opposite of the fop La-gull. The latter has recently come from the country and wants to learn how to behave like an urbane gentleman, which involves learning how to duel.88 In the play, the hectors use the same tricks as in A Notable and Pleasant History of the Famous Renowned Knights of the Blade: La-gull is forced into a duel, when he is accosted for money by Caster (one of the hectors). La-gull recounts how ‘I did but deny to lend him forty pounds, and straight he called me base uncivil fellow; and told me I did not like a man of honour.’ In perfect accordance to the hectors’ plan, La-gull gives Caster the lie. Had-land then frightens La-gull, claiming that a duel would result in the latter’s death, and persuades him to pay composition to Caster to avoid the fight. Throughout the play, the hectors use their position as professed experts in duelling ‘law’ in order to exploit La-gull’s gullibility and extract money from him.89 The distinction between the urban hectors and the gullible country gentleman bring to mind earlier rogue pamphlets. This is not the only similarity between the pamphlet and the play. The hectors are presented as behaving in a libertine fashion, with Slur and Caster (the other two hectors) mocking Had-land for being drunk all the time and consorting with Anonymous, A Notable and Pleasant History of the Famous Renowned Knights of the Blade, Commonly Called Hectors, pp. 14, 6, 10. 86  Prestwich, The Hectors: Or The False Challenge, p. 26. Sequestration was the practice of removing estates from (some of) those who had fought for the king: H.J. Habakkuk, ‘Landowners and the Civil War’, Economic History Review, 18:1 (1965), 130–51; H.J. Habakkuk, ‘Public Finance and the Sale of Confiscated Property during the Interregnum’, Economic History Review, 15:1 (1962), 70–88. 87  Prestwich, The Hectors: Or The False Challenge, p. 1. 88  This again recalls Mackie’s distinction between the rake and the fop: Mackie, ‘Boys Will Be Boys’, pp. 135–6. 89  Prestwich, The Hectors: Or The False Challenge, pp. 21–2. 85 

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prostitutes. In addition, they resort to petty crime and confidence tricks. Their grand design is to cheat Quorum, a justice of the peace, out of his money by arranging to marry him to a prostitute, but they also do not refrain from pettier tricks, such as cheating at cards and dice. Even their confidence tricks, however, rely often on their ability with the sword rather than their wit. When two of the hectors got into trouble after being discovered cheating at cards, Had-land rescues them by fighting off their pursuers.90 The combination of criminality, gentlemanly behaviour, and libertinism was, as we have seen, also a characteristic of Cavaliers. In the play, the characters are presented as Royalists, not only because they lost their fortunes at the wars, but because of their behaviour as well. Had-land accuses Caster of cowardice and indifference towards their ‘cause’: ‘I think I knew thee in the late Wars, thou went’st by the name of Captaine, a thing could do nothing but drink and damne thy self, and run away, so monstrous a Coward, that thy prodigious fears were able to work upon the genius of an Army.’ The fact that the side on which these men fought was the Royalist one becomes evident later, when Had-land again blamed Caster for his actions: ‘Hast thou not lived by thy profane debauchnesse, and base cowardice to help to sink a cause in which we all do suffer?’91 The play is very indulgent towards the hectors and the ending makes this abundantly clear. Even though the hectors are described as ‘a Moth and Canker to thy country’, in the end they are rewarded by Quorum, their victim, with land and wealth, proving that sin sometimes does go unpunished. The reason given by Quorum for this strange benevolence is that he believes that their wit can help them manage the estate: ‘I see you have wit to get an Estate, I hope you will have wit to keep it.’ In addition, their other victim, La-gull, decides to forgive Had-land after he assists him in fighting off some men, because he showed courage.92 By consequence, even though their actions are not presented as moral, their wit and courage are characteristics that redeem them; the former is a usual characteristic of rogue pamphlets, the latter is more relevant to the cultural environment of the 1650s, with its emphasis on war experience and gentlemanly portrayal of these criminals. Erin Mackie argues that rakes in the seventeenth century were associated with fashion, gentlemanly behaviour, and elite criminality, but were redeemed from criminality by their wit. However, we have seen that all criminals were to an extent redeemed by their wit. This kind of absurd happy ending was more usual in plays, but it was possible to show sympathy towards hectors in other texts as well. These two texts are the most detailed depictions of hectors in the 1650s, but shorter descriptions of their activities were included in various other rogue pamphlets published in this period. In The Catterpillers of this Nation Anatomized Prestwich, The Hectors: Or The False Challenge, pp. 17, 22–3, 36–8, 55–7. Prestwich, The Hectors: Or The False Challenge, pp. 19, 26. 92  Prestwich, The Hectors: or The False Challenge, pp. 68, 57. There are parallels with Thomas Middleton, A Mad World, My Masters (1608). 90  91 

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(1659), a pamphlet ‘discovery’ of the practices of highwaymen (which, as we have seen, transcribed in prose John Clavell’s A Recantation of an Ill Led Life), the only original part of the pamphlet is the one titled ‘the manner of hectoring & trapanning as it is acted in and about the city of London’ which was deemed important enough to be included in the title-page.93 According to this pamphlet, hectors are included in the category of urban crime. The author describes the hector as ‘excellently well skill’d in all kinds of gaming, and all the cheats belonging to them’, who practices ‘the Art of borrowing of any believing Creature, which he intends never to repay’. The hector also ‘swears more then any Car-man, and lie nimbler then a City Tradesman’ and tends to ‘Hack and Pad’ (practise highway robbery).94 Most of the activities described (living by their wits, confidence tricks, and highway robbery) were the same as in earlier rogue pamphlets and described in the same terms. However, the pamphlet also places emphasis on duelling, one of the core characteristics of the image of the hector, and on swearing. Swearing – as we have seen – was considered a trademark of Cavaliers and its inclusion in depictions of hectors is significant. The Catterpillers of This Nation’s description of the hector as ‘this Dammee Captain [lives] by his wit, Sword and Baskethilt-Oathes’ outlines succinctly the main characteristics of the hector’s image as criminality, duelling, and swearing.95 A Notable and Pleasant History of the Famous Renowned Knights of the Blade (1652) also stressed this connection between swearing and drinking toasts, when the hectors exclaim: ‘God Dam--- … here’s a health to Liberty, and the Devil take the Justice.’96 The ballad A Total Rout, or a Brief Discovery, of a Pack of Knaves and Drabs, Intituled Pimps, Panders, Hectors, Trapans, Nappers, Mobs, and Spanners (1653) followed closely the pamphlet descriptions of hectors, associating them with sword-wielding, cheating, swearing, leaving debt to ale-keepers, and theft (their victims included ‘Turn-ball Whores’ and gentlemen), activities which were expected to land them in prison and thence to the gallows. Interestingly, the ballad conflated hectors with radical groups: the author repeatedly called hectors ‘my poor Ranter’ and even commented that ‘Thus poverty makes you Gentlemen bold,/ Turn Levellers all for another mans gold.’ Even though the author does not approve of the hectors’ actions as can be seen from the last lines of the ballad: ‘Thy cursed God dammees, and damnable cheats,/ Ungodly endeavours, and horrible feats,/ Are all Cable ropes to draw thee to Hell’, the tone of this ballad could be read as either sarcastic or playful.97 This shows that there were

Anonymous, The Catterpillers of This Nation Anatomized, title-page; Clavell, A Recantation of an Ill Led Life. 94  Anonymous, The Catterpillers of This Nation Anatomized, pp. 37–8. 95  Anonymous, The Catterpillers of This Nation Anatomized, pp. 37–8. 96  Anonymous, A Notable and Pleasant History of the Famous Renowned Knights of the Blade, Commonly Called Hectors, p. 11. 97  Anonymous, A Total Rout. 93 

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limits to how far this medium could be used to criticise hectors, because of the inherent ambivalence towards criminals which characterised this body of writing. Friedman has read this ballad differently, as part of the anti-Ranter literature, written from a Royalist perspective: ‘for Royalists they [Ranters] became an emblem of the immoral excesses of the revolution’.98 I think, however, that the term ‘Ranter’ is used here as another insult heaped against Royalists, because this ballad follows the stereotypical description of hectors as Cavaliers. Apart from these mentions, which were specifically in cheap print relating to criminals, there are many in other texts which offhandedly describe hectors as criminals. In The Younger Brothers Advocate (1654), a short text against primogeniture, the text connects hectors again with highway robbery and deception by stating that many who ‘know not how to maintain themselves by honest and lawful waies, are driven to take indirect courses, and by consorting themselves with ill company, acquainting themselves with shifts, and practising how to deceive, hence it is that many are driven to beg, cheat, steal, and many times hanged for theft’, turning ‘Hectors, Knights of the blade’.99 In A Brief and Perfect Journal of the Late Preceedings and Successe of the English Army in the West-Indies (1655), ‘Hectors, and Knights of the blade’ are grouped together with ‘common Cheats, Theeves, Cutpurses and such like leud persons, who had long time lived by the sleight of hand, and dexterity of wit, and were now making a fair progresse unto Newgate, from whence they were to proceed towards Tiborn’.100 These depictions were not just restricted to printed materials. A mention in the State Papers Domestic shows that hectors were associated with urban deviance: in 9 June 1654, after the apprehension of various suspicious individuals in a night search in London and the suburbs, the Council of State ordered the classification of those in the following categories: Irishmen. Persons who have acted against the commonwealth since 1648. Officers who have served against Parliament and are come from beyond sea since Dec. 1653. Foreigners. Persons who have no visible means of subsistence. Persons called hectors, common gamesters, common tavern haunters, and idle persons, and such as can give no good account of their calling. Papists. Officers heretofore employed against Parliament, who can give no good account of themselves. Suspicious persons on any particular consideration.101

It is interesting that those who ‘can give no good account of their calling’ and hectors are included in a list of enemies of the Commonwealth. Even though Friedman, Miracles and the Pulp Press during the English Revolution, pp. 109–10. Champianus Northtonus, The Younger Brothers Advocate: Or a Line or Two for Younger Brothers. With Their Petition to the Parliament. By Champianus Northtonus (1654), p. 6. 100  I.S., A Brief and Perfect Journal of the Late Preceedings and Successe of the English Army in the West-Indies (1655), p. 8. 101  Mary Anne Everett Green (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Interregnum, 1654 (London, 1879), 72, pp. 204–5. 98  99 

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there is no suggestion that criminals and ‘idle people’ were viewed as enemies, the fact that they were engaging in illicit activities could be construed as a threat: what were they doing out at night, among so many of the Parliament’s opponents? Most of the characteristic elements of the image of the hector, such as riotous behaviour, drinking and libertinism, experience in the wars, excessive swearing, and gentlemanlike attitude, as well as criminality, overlapped with the image of the Cavalier. As we have seen, the Cavalier stereotype was part of the ‘culture of defiance’ of defeated Royalists, who emphasised profaneness, disorder, and conviviality in order to oppose the ‘reformation of manners’ envisaged by Puritans.102 Criminality was a characteristic that applied to both hectors and Cavaliers but could be used to either celebrate or condemn those groups. For example, the early satirical text against Royalists, The Sucklington Faction; or Suckling’s Roaring Boyes (1641), portrays the followers of the archetypical Cavalier Suckling as ‘prodigall children’ ‘acting ye parts of hot-spur Cavaliers and disguised ding-thrifts’, who enjoy ‘wine and women, horses, hounds, and whores, dauncing, dicing, drabbing, drinking’. Interestingly also, the text reproduces the association between drinking and sociability, by describing one of those men as a ‘notorious good-fellow’. In this text, the Cavaliers are presented as confederates of the ‘Titeretu’s, or joviall roaring Boyes’.103 Titeretus or ‘Tityre-tues’ were groups of unruly young noblemen, portrayed as secret societies in the 1620s and 1630s. Ostensibly, they indulged in anti-social and deviant behaviour, such as drinking, ‘roaring’, resorting to prostitutes or stirring trouble in general. Their activities worried the authorities to such an extent that an investigation was ordered in 1623 into the ‘secret societies’ of the ‘Order of the Bungle’ and ‘Tityre-tues’.104 There is a connection here between profligate, riotous living which led to criminality, and the actions of hectors and Cavaliers. This could also be a way to celebrate the criminal-cum-Royalist. Lois Potter and Jerome De Groot have underscored that in the 1640s and 1650s Royalists were often willing to conflate loyalty and criminality, because they did not believe in the legitimacy of those in authority.105 In the same fashion, drinking, and especially health-drinking to the king, came to be viewed as a political act of resistance against the Commonwealth and drinking rituals became symbols of the Royalist opposition to puritanical abstinence.106 Since drinking had become Capp, England’s Culture Wars, p. 99. Anonymous, The Sucklington Faction; or Suckling’s Roaring Boyes (1641). 104  Graves, ‘Some Pre-Mohock Clansmen’, pp. 400–4; Mary Anne Everett Green (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Domestic: James I, 1623–25 (London, 1859), 155, p. 130. 105  Lois Potter, Secret Rites and Secret Writing: Royalist Literature, 1641–1660 (Cambridge and New York, 1989); De Groot, ‘Prison Writing, Writing Prison during the 1640s and 1650s’, p. 211. 106  Potter, Secret Rites and Secret Writing, p. 138; Marika Keblusek, ‘Drinking and the Royalist Exile Experience, 1642–1660’, in A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in Seventeenth-Century England, p. 58; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy in England, 1649–1660, p. 16; Capp, England’s Culture Wars, pp. 162–7; De Groot, ‘Prison Writing, Writing Prison during the 1640s and 102  103 

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so politicised as a sign of the Cavalier, it is little surprise that the descriptions of inebriated hectors were meant to evoke the Cavalier ethos. James Hind, as we have seen, was often described in print as drinking, toasting the king’s health, and swearing, thus enacting his Royalist affiliation. Interestingly, the term ‘hector’ may even have originated from a group of Royalists: a anonymous pamphlet was published in 1642, titled A Declaration, or Resolution of the County of Hereford (1642).107 According to Ian Atherton, this was widely read (in both printed and manuscript form) and was described by Parliament as ‘the foulest and most scandalous Pamphlet that ever was raised or published against the Parliament’. The nine justices who were probably behind this publication ‘became known locally as the “nine worthies” and the Declaration was known as “the nine worthies’ resolution’.108 Given the fact that Hector was one of the traditional Nine Worthies, and the popularity of this declaration, it is intriguing to consider the possibility that the term ‘hector’ was brought to the fore and used as a label for this kind of criminal specifically because of its connection with Royalism. We have seen so far that at least the two most detailed depictions of hectors suggested that they were Royalists. Apart from the overlap between the lifestyle of the Cavalier and the hector, other texts also presented hectors as Royalists. John Cleveland, the Royalist poet and satirist, published a poem in 1653 titled ‘To the Hectors, upon the unfortunate death of H. Compton’.109 In this, Cleveland castigated hectors for orchestrating the duel between two Royalists, Colonel Henry Compton and George Brydges, Lord Chandos.110 Cleveland accused hectors that they dictate ‘who shall be battled next, who must be beat/ who kill’d: that you may drink, swear and eat’. The author lays the blame for Royalist infighting at the feet of the hectors, claiming that the hectors’ actions played into the hand of their enemies, since the death of the Royalist Colonel was an unexpected boon for the Commonwealth. In Cleveland’s words, hectors ‘bid us fight a prize to feast the laughter of our enemies’.111 Regardless of the specific

1650s’, pp. 206–7. More generally about drinking as a characteristic of aristocratic sociability, see O’Callaghan, The English Wits, pp. 60–5; Michelle O’Callaghan, ‘Tavern Societies, the Inns of Court, and the Culture of Conviviality in Early Seventeenth-Century London’, in A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in Seventeenth-Century England, pp. 37–51. 107  Anonymous, A Declaration, or Resolution of the Countie of Hereford (1642). 108  Ian Atherton, Ambition and Failure in Stuart England: The Career of John, First Viscount Scudamore (Manchester, 1999), pp. 223–4. 109  John Cleveland, Poems by J.C.; with Additions, Never before Printed (1653), pp. 17–19. Mercurius Pragmaticus, the Royalist newsbook commented in favour of duelling legislation as well: Mercurius Pragmaticus, issue 1, 18 May 1652, p. 5. 110  Andrew Warmington, ‘Brydges, George, Sixth Baron Chandos (1620–1655), Royalist Nobleman’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 14 January 2019, . 111  George Brydges was charged with manslaughter and branded as a criminal: Capp, England’s Culture Wars, pp. 168–9. A report of the finding of Compton’s body after the duel is in A 149

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reasons Cleveland had to be outraged, it is evident from his description that he considered hectors to be part of the Royalist side, but that their debauched lifestyle hurt the king’s cause. The sentence of a man described as a hector in 1658 manifested all the conventional characteristics of the hector image and commented specifically on his status as a Royalist. As Mercurius Politicus reported, a trooper in Captain Mills’ troop, who ‘had been a long time a notorious Hector in London, and some say a highway man’, was sentenced ‘for traitorous words, gestures, and unhandsome deportments, expressing his malicious dislike and hatred of his Highness, and the present Government, and his love to his grand Enemies, the King of Spain, and the pretended King of Scots, and Duke of York, and their interest, by several times drinking their healths’.112 In these texts there are no overt mentions of the king, or obvious attempts to couch them as polemic in favour of or against the Royalists. Nonetheless, these texts appear in the same context as the other pamphlets about highwaymen as Cavaliers, and hectors are portrayed as a hybrid of the Cavalier and the urban criminal. By consequence, they could show the moral bankruptcy of Royalists, but equally, the ambivalence that these texts show toward criminals could extend to Cavaliers. Even though these texts are not clearly political, they cannot completely avoid being read as such, based on when they appear. This process is completed in the 1660s, where there is an attempt by other Royalists to disown hectors (in the same way as Cavaliers) but cannot completely disassociate themselves from hectors either. 1660s: Hectors and Cavaliers

By the 1660s the association of the term ‘hector’ with Cavaliers, libertinism, duelling, and criminality had become so self-explanatory that it was considered unnecessary to describe fully. This can be seen in the series The Wandring Whore (1660), where ‘Gusman a Pimping Hector’ is one of the characters taking part in these fictional dialogues which uncovered the activities of prostitutes in London.113 The term ‘Gusman’ was used metonymically to denote a highwayman and had a long history, making it an excellent example of how earlier depictions of rogues were kept current by being foisted on contemporary criminals. Gusman was a fictional rogue from Spain, famous from a work by Mateo Alemán titled The Rogue: or The Life of Guzman de Alfarach (1623).114 This very popular tract was translated and printed in England in 1623, with reprints (some with additional

Perfect Account, issue 72, 12 May 1652, p. 576. 112  Mercurius Politicus, issue 433, 9 September 1658, p. 828. 113  Anonymous, The Wandring Whore Continued a Dialogue between Magdalena a Crafty Bawd, Julietta an Exquisite Whore, Francion a Lascivious Gallant, and Gusman a Pimping Hector. 114  Matheo Alemán, The Rogue: Or The Life of Guzman de Alfarache. Written in Spanish by Matheo Aleman, Servant to His Catholike Maiestie, and Borne in Seuill (1623). 150

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material) in 1630, 1634, 1655, and 1656. That the term ‘Gusman’ had not lost its cultural significance can be deduced from James Hind’s description as ‘the English Gusman’. Additionally, a 1657 pamphlet titled Guzman, Hinde and Hannam Outstript: Being a Discovery of the Whole Art, Mistery and Antiquity of Theeves and Theeving (1657) combined the names of the rogue Gusman, the highwayman Hind, and the burglar Hannam.115 Consequently, naming the ‘pimping hector’ ‘Gusman’ in The Wandring Whore series connected very succinctly the hector with highway robbery and urban crime in general.116 Texts in the 1660s continue to use the term ‘hector’ as a synonym for the most avid duellists. Richard Allestree, in The Gentlemans Calling (1660), sought to recast duelling as murder or suicide, rather than a pursuit of honour. Arguing that it is cowardice to duel only because of fear of reproach by others, Allestree exclaims ‘what wretched Cowards are our greatest Hectors?’117 No explanation is provided for the connection between hectors and duelling, suggesting that none was needed. Others were more positive in their characterisation of hectors as duellists, rejecting Allestree’s claim that duelling conferred honour on individuals. Richard Brathwaite provided the following ‘Advice to a Gallant’ (a category which included young gentlemen, courtiers, and libertines): ‘Your Profession is Gallantry: and standing on that Punto, you look to be handled more softly and tenderly. Otherwise, you mean to act the Rantor, though no Hector (for your thoughts have dispenc’d long ago with that Complement of valour) in a phantastick shrug, or an impertinent vapour.’118 Hectors clearly feature in this group of gentlemen and libertines, but are also considered more valorous, which is probably connected to duels. The ambivalence of the term and its association with duelling is also evident in the quarrel between the Royalist Henry Pierrepont, Lord Marquesse of Dorchester, and Lord Roos. When challenged to a duel by Dorchester, Lord Roos accused him of being a hector, adding that ‘of which calling there are so many already, that they can hardly live one by another’. Lord Roos’s sarcasm

Carlos Garcia, Guzman, Hinde and Hannam Outstript: Being a Discovery of the Whole Art, Mistery and Antiquity of Theeves and Theeving: With Their Statutes, Laws, Customs and Practises (1657). This was a reprint of the translated discovery of thieves Carlos Garcia, The Sonne of the Rogue, or, The Politick Theefe with the Antiquitie of Theeves (1638). In Strange newes from Bartholomew-Fair, the ‘noble Hectors’ are grouped together with ‘Trappans, Pimps, Dicks merry Cullys and mad-conceited Lads of Great-Bedlam’: Peter Aretine, Strange Newes from Bartholomew-Fair, or, the Wandring-Whore Discovered (1661). 116  The connection of hectors with prostitutes was well-attested: see as well ‘Ther’s many a swearing Hector loves a Whore’: John Taylor, Misselanies, or, Fifty Years Gathering out of Sundry Authors in Prose and Verse Being the Studious Readings, Painful Collections, and Some of Them Are the Composings of the Writer and Publisher Heerof John Taylor (1652), p. 32. 117  Richard Allestree, The Gentlemans Calling (1660), p. 145. 118  Richard Brathwaite, The Captive-Captain, or, The Restrain’d Cavalier Drawn to His Full Bodie in These Characters... Presented and Acted to Life in a Suit of Durance, an Habit Suiting Best with His Place of Residence (1665), sig. Ev. 115 

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suggests that this was intended this as an insult, but Dorchester took it as a compliment: ‘as a Hector (a name amongst others you are pleased to bestow upon me) I tell you, He that will Fight, though he have never so much the worse, loses no reputation’.119 The treatment of hectors after the Restoration is a testament to this ambivalent attitude towards Cavaliers by others of the Royalist persuasion. Charles II attempted to root out the habit of drinking, roaring, and cursing so characteristic of both Cavaliers and hectors: the 1660 Proclamation against Vicious, Debauch’d, and Prophane Persons targeted specifically those ‘who under pretence of Affection to Us and Our Service, assume to themselves the Liberty of Reviling, Threatning and Reproaching others’ and those: who spend their time in Taverns, Tipling-houses and Debauches, giving no other evidence of their affection to Us, but in Drinking Our health, and Inveighing against all other who are not of their own dissolute temper; and who, in truth, have more discredited Our cause by the Licence of their Manners and Lives, then they could ever advance it by their Affection or Courage.120

Nonetheless, ‘their Affection and Courage’ were not insignificant elements, and hectoring had come to be viewed as a morally questionable yet tacitly acknowledged badge of service to the king: In Truth’s Discovery, or, The Cavaliers Case Clearly Stated (1664), published by Edward Crouch, rowdiness and crime are presented as the distinctive characteristics of the Cavalier: He that cannot Swear and Swagger, Drink, Rant, and Rogue, is look’d upon (by some) as a pittiful Fellow, and not worth their keeping Company… These Vices have got such a custome of late, that they are look’d upon to be the only Badge to distinguish a Cavalier from a Sectary.121

The fact that ‘roguing’ had become a basic characteristic of the self-representation of the Cavalier is indicative of how far the stereotypes of the ‘hector’ and the ‘Cavalier’ had coalesced. Richard Brathwaite’s admonishment to the ‘Croud of Supplicants at White-hall’ suggested also that being a hector could be received as

Henry Pierrepont Dorchester Marquis of, The Lord Marquesse of Dorchesters Letter to the Lord Roos with the Lord Roos’s Answer Thereunto: Whereunto Is Added the Reasons Why the Lord Marquesse of Dorchester Published His Letter of the 25 of Febr. 1659 Dated the 13 of the Same Moneth : With His Answer to the Lord Roos in His Letter (1660). 120  England and Wales Sovereign, A Proclamation against Vicious, Debauch’d, and Prophane Persons (1660). On how Royalist ballads and broadsides satirising the Rump could be viewed as excessive and indecorous, thus harming the king’s cause, see Jenner, ‘The Roasting of the Rump’, pp. 116–18. 121  Charles Hammond, Truth’s Discovery, or, The Cavaliers Case Clearly Stated by Conscience and Plain-Dealing Presented to the Honorable Commissioners, and All the Truly Loyall and Indigent Officers, and Souldiers (1664). 119 

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a compliment. Brathwaite characteristically wrote that ‘Who serves his Soveraign for meer hope of gain, May have an Hector’s heart, but’s mind a Swain.’122 The fact that the king’s followers are described as hectors instead of Cavaliers is indicative of the extent to which these two terms had become interwoven. Conclusion

In conclusion, crime pamphlets appearing in the charged political atmosphere of the 1650s could be easily appropriated by the contesting sides to serve as polemic. Whereas Parliamentary/Commonwealth publications used the term ‘robber’ as a way to show the lack of legitimacy of the king’s side, Royalist publishers also employed the form of the rogue pamphlet and portrayed royalists as highwaymen. This, in a way, is not surprising: rogue pamphlets could be critical of rogues’ activities, but always exhibited ambivalence towards them. It is very difficult to write about clever tricks without showing admiration for the witty robber. Thus, the rogue pamphlet could easily be employed to show sympathy towards the criminal and, by consequence, the Royalist. In addition, the tendency of rogue pamphlets to present victims as deserving of being tricked, because they were greedy or immoral, worked well for presenting criticisms of the Commonwealth regime. In doing so, such pamphlets inverted the stereotype of the robber created in the 1640s, by presenting robbers as loyal subjects invested of moral authority. In the battle of words between Parliamentarians and Royalists, the Royalisthighwayman could be an effective persona to advertise resistance to what was felt to be an illegitimate regime. The politicisation of the term ‘robber’ also affected the portrayal of hectors, a new type of criminals. As we saw, their depictions effectively intertwined earlier depictions of rogues with many of the characteristics of the Cavaliers and in the process the image of the hector and the Cavalier coalesced. Even though texts about hectors were rarely used as explicit polemic, the identification of Cavaliers and hectors, appearing at such as politically charged moment, was political in itself. The concern of Royalists that criticism of hectors could be employed against them can be deduced from the very fact that several Royalist writers attempted to disown the practices of the hector-cum-Cavalier. At the same time, rogue pamphlets included some sympathy for the criminal which could subvert the intended condemnation of such practices. More broadly, however, this chapter has shown the ways in which cheap print came to be politicised in this period. As recent scholarship has shown, the 1640s proved that cheap print was an ideal vehicle for shaping public opinion. Cheap print could agitate for change or continuity, with pamphlets and ballads specifically addressing political issues. In the 1640s, cheap print often reproduced earlier texts or cultural materials, which acquired new meaning in this politically Richard Brathwaite, To His Majesty upon His Happy Arrivall in Our Late Discomposed Albion. By R. Brathwait Esq. (1660), p. 15. 122 

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charged context.123 Rogue pamphlets followed the same strategies, reproducing earlier stories and tropes, such as the trickster trope or the rogue as punisher of injustice, and portraying Royalist robbers who had moral authority and ridiculing their opponents. This was particularly effective due to the central role of legality in debates of the 1640s and 1650s. Legality and criminality were contested terms in this period, which cut at the heart of what was at stake in a war between Parliament and king, and in its aftermath. This elicited conflicting responses from both Parliamentarians and Royalists and the treatment of such phenomena in print showed how conscious both sides were of the opportunities to create publicity.

Shagan, ‘Constructing Discord’; Smith, Literature and Revolution in England, 1640–1660. See also, as an example, the use of Nashe’s persona in John Taylor, Crop-Eare Curried, or, Tom Nash His Ghost, Declaring the Pruining of Prinnes Two Last Parricidicall Pamphlets, Being 92 Sheets in Quarto, Wherein the One of Them He Stretch’d the Soveraigne Power of Parliaments (1644). 123 

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In the period between 1590 and 1670, rogue pamphlets were consistently published. Part of the reason for their recurrent appearance was the pamphlet format, which made them ideal vehicles for the presentation of information and appeals to public opinion. Rogue pamphlets argued that their texts were useful because they uncovered the tricks of criminals working in London or presented the ‘truth’ about the life and death of famous criminals. Claims of facticity coexisted with the employment of laughter as a way to criticise contemporary society. Rogue pamphlets satirised the grasping nature of the city, something they had in common with a variety of other writings – prose, poems, and plays – about early modern London. This tendency to present ordinary society as worse than criminals casts doubt on the assumption – made often by scholars studying rogue pamphlets – that rogue pamphlets presented a criminal underworld. Rogue pamphlets often presented a narrative of distrust, of how London was a city that could swallow up anyone foolish enough to venture into its streets without the necessary wisdom to avoid its crooks. However, the dangers inherent in the city were not just its criminals, but its citizens and other denizens as well, and rogue pamphlets present this contradiction in stark terms. Nor did these just equate crime with other forms of urban deceit: they also portrayed criminals as friends or at least drinking buddies, as we have seen in Chapters 2 and 3. This claim was also made by deponents in trial cases, suggesting either a cross-fertilisation of the two kinds of crime stories, or a common way of talking about crime. Good fellowship, in particular, runs through three of this book’s chapters: in Chapter 4 we saw how some rogue pamphlets used the idiom of good fellowship to present a favourable picture of the Royalist-as-criminal. This may suggest that the rogue was considered the quintessential good fellow. This bring us back to Nicholas Breton’s epigram at the start of this book, which presented a rogue as a companion, often – but not necessarily – a false one. Discoveries of urban criminals did not disappear after 1670. We can see in later texts similar representations of city vice as in the earlier ones. The pamphlet Youths Safety: Or, Advice to the Younger Sort, of Either Sex (1698) is one such example. The title-page promises to lay ‘open the Wicked Practices of the 155

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Town-Shifts, Sharpers, Sparks, Beau’s, Sweeteners, Rakes, Intreating TownJilts, to Cheat, Ruin and Disgrace Gentlemen, Shop-Keepers, Apprentices, Gentlewomen, Servant-Maids’. This pamphlet is laid out in a similar fashion as earlier discoveries, presenting specific categories of criminals and their tricks and educating readers on how to avoid them.1 One of the differences with earlier rogue pamphlets is that this text expects women readers, addressing them specifically. Even though some of the categories of urban tricksters are the same as those encountered earlier (such as card sharps and town-shifts, even if different terms are used) this is not just a rehearsal of earlier categories. The pamphlet also presents new categories and a more urbane style of deceit (such as the beaus) showing the vitality of this kind of writing and its ability to adapt to new cultural contexts. For example, A New Plot Newly Discovered, by the Help of the London Bell-Man; Of Wicked and Hellish Conspiracies against the Peace of This Kingdom (1684) uses the language of plots made current by the Popish Plot (1678–1681) and the Rye House Plot (1683), but is actually a pastiche of earlier rogue pamphlets and has nothing to do with political conspiracies.2 Another tendency that transcends the end of our period is the politicisation of rogue pamphlets. Even though a critique of the social practices of early modern London can be construed as a broadly political statement, it is only after 1640 (and, more importantly, 1650) that rogue pamphlets pursue a political line. As we have seen in Chapter 4, even though accusations of robbery were flying from both sides, it was the Royalists who embraced this characterisation, using stories of Royalist highwaymen to attack their opponents and to valorise resistance to the Commonwealth. Highwaymen were particularly effective in this respect, as their glamour and their challenge to the law served as polemic against what was described as a corrupt and illegitimate regime. That this was a viable strategy was shown by the employment of the rogue pamphlet in the context of the Popish Plot in the late 1670s. Kate Loveman has investigated how the format of the rogue pamphlet was employed to discredit those who discovered the Popish Plot. A number of pamphlets about the Popish Plot were published, framing the life of Titus Oates as a tale of roguery and borrowing from the Spanish romances The Rogue: Or The Life of Guzman de Alfarache and Lazarillo de Tormes. In addition, pamphlet discoveries of the ‘cheats’, the informants of the Popish Plot, were produced, which read like discoveries of criminals and accused the informants of lying. From Loveman’s work, we can see that both major strands of the rogue pamphlet (the discovery of criminal practices and the life and death narrative) were used in order to undermine the informers of the Popish Plot, and by consequence the Whigs who had tried to benefit from it.3 Anonymous, Youths Safety: Or, Advice to the Younger Sort, of Either Sex (1698), title-page. Anonymous, A New Plot Newly Discovered, by the Help of the London Bell-Man; Of Wicked and Hellish Conspiracies against the Peace of This Kingdom (1684). 3  Loveman, ‘“Eminent Cheats”: Rogue Narratives in the Literature of the Exclusion Crisis’, pp. 108–22. 1  2 

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This was also true in 1684, when the pamphlet The Yorkshire-Rogue, or, Capt. Hind Improv’d; in the Notorious Life, and Infamous Death, of That Famous HighwayMan, William Nevison (1684) was published. I will finish the book with a short analysis of this pamphlet, since it allows us to see the evolution of the rogue pamphlet and the ways in which it continued to act as a vehicle for political commentary, and even polemic. William Nevison is a well-known highwayman, but he seems to have become more famous in the late eighteenth century rather than in his own time. In 1684, a pamphlet and a ballad appeared about him, narrating his life and execution.4 Even though we have court records about this case, verifying that Nevison was an actual criminal, apart from these two texts we have no other extant publications about him in this period. There are no mentions of him in newsbooks, newspapers, or any other publications. However, in the late eighteenth century many publications appeared, which connected Nevison to other infamous eighteenth-century criminals, such as Dick Turpin and Jonathan Wild.5 These connections seem to have contributed greatly to Nevison’s afterlife. Nevertheless, the 1684 pamphlet is very interesting both in terms of the continuities with – and departures from – earlier rogue pamphlets, but also of the politicisation of the rogue pamphlet. The pamphlet follows the usual rhetoric of usefulness to the readers, claiming that it was written for others ‘not only to avoid those Courses wherein he was Wrackt, but likewise as a Caution to all Persons, how they may prevent the Frauds and Robberies on themselves’. The story is also presented in familiar terms, starting with Nevison’s early years and following the prodigal son trope: Nevison was descended from ‘well Reputed, Honest and Reasonably Estated Parents’ but he did not follow in their footsteps.6 On the contrary, after performing various thefts in his home county, he escaped to London and started a life of crime. Even though in other rogue pamphlets this is as far as the prodigal son narrative goes, in this one, it reinserts itself later in the text. After years of robberies, Nevison returns to his father, asking for his pardon. His father is not only happy to pardon him, but he also ‘made him

Anonymous, The Yorkshire-Rogue, or, Capt. Hind Improv’d; in the Notorious Life, and Infamous Death, of That Famous Highway-Man, William Nevison, Who Was Executed at York, the 15th Day of March. 1684 (1684); Anonymous, The High-Way Mans Advice to His Brethren. Or, Nevison’s Last Legacy to the Knights of the High-Padd (1684). 5  Anonymous, The History of the Life & Death of That Noted Highwayman, Mr. William Nevison (Leeds, 1780); Anonymous, The Life of That King of Thieves Jonathan Wild: With Anecdotes of Joseph Blake, Alias Blue Skin, One of Wild’s Pupils: To Which Is Added, The Life of William Nevison, the High-Wayman (Edinburgh, 1773. London, 1799); Anonymous, The Lives of Richard Turpin, and William Nevison, Two Notorious Highwaymen: Containing a Particular Account of All Their Adventures until Their Trial and Execution at York (1795); The Trial of the Notorious Highwayman, Richard Turpin, for Horse-Stealing. Together with an Exact Account of That Noted Robber ... Now First Published in a Connected Form. To Which Is Added, a Circumstantial Account of William Nevison (1799). 6  Anonymous, The Yorkshire-Rogue, pp. 2–3. 4 

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extreamly welcome, inviting his Friends and Relation to bear a part therein, and increase the Charms of their Mirth’.7 Welcoming his son with open arms and providing a feast in his honour is a faithful imitation of the prodigal son trope. After being pardoned by his father, Nevison lived for years as an honest man; it was only with his father’s death that he decided to return to his criminal ways.8 The pamphlet presents the common theme of the trickster tricked: Nevison, in his attempt to seduce a lady, persuades her to pretend to be his wife when they lodge at an inn. The lady agrees, but, waking up before Nevison in the morning, she steals his horse and money. Her brazen act is easy to pull off, as she reassures the innkeeper that the goods belong to her by virtue of being Nevison’s wife. Nevison, when he discovers that he has been tricked, is magnanimous. Even though he considers this a blow to his fortune, he appreciates the trick: ‘upon the whole he could not much blame his Mistress who had outwitted him, it being his own Weapon… he resolved, if ever it was his hap to meet her again, he would not only excuse the Crime but esteem her’.9 This is very reminiscent of Ratsey’s good humour when he is outwitted by his victim, which we saw in Chapter 2. The similarities with earlier rogue pamphlets do not end with the prodigal son narrative, the trickster theme, and following the criminal from his cradle to the gallows. The author self-consciously sought to connect this pamphlet to earlier ones, entitling the pamphlet ‘The Yorkshire-Rogue, or Capt. Hind improved’. In doing so, the pamphlet shows that Hind was remembered as a significant highwayman more than thirty years after his execution. In addition, the title connects this pamphlet with Richard Head’s romance The English Rogue, which made a great splash in the 1660s and which drew inspiration from earlier texts (both English and Continental).10 The pamphlet employs the Robin Hood stereotype evident in previous highwaymen narratives. For example, Hind was often portrayed as being good to the poor and averse to the shedding of blood. In True and Perfect Relation of the Taking of Captain James Hind (1651), Hind argued that he disapproved of ‘shedding of bloud unjustly’ and ‘neither did I ever wrong any poorman of the worth of a penny: but I must confess, I have (when I have been necessitated thereto) made bold with a rich Bompkin, or a lying Lawyer, whose full fed-fees from the rich Farmer, doth too much impoverish the poor cottage-keeper’.11 Similarly, Nevison’s pamphlet argued that ‘the poor thereof bless him, he being

Anonymous, The Yorkshire-Rogue, pp. 65–6. Anonymous, The Yorkshire-Rogue, p. 73. 9  Anonymous, The Yorkshire-Rogue, p. 57. 10  Richard Head, The English Rogue: Continued in the Life of Meriton Latroon, and Other Extravagants: Comprehending the Most Eminent Cheats of Both Sexes (1671). This was influenced by Aleman, The Rogue: Or The Life of Guzman de Alfarache. Written in Spanish by Matheo Aleman, Servant to His Catholike Maiestie, and Borne in Seuill. 11  Anonymous, The True and Perfect Relation of the Taking of Captain James Hind, p. 5. A similar statement, made in another of Hind’s pamphlets, is presented in Chapter 2, p. 00. 7  8 

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to them very Charitable, out of those spoyles he takes from them, that can better spare it’.12 Throughout the pamphlet, Nevison appears charitable: he returns the money stolen by highwaymen to their victims, because they are poor and cannot afford to lose the money. Paradoxically, he steals a gentleman’s money from his servants to ensure that it reaches London unmolested by (other) highwaymen and in good time, as the gentleman’s creditor is very strict with the repayment. This echoes earlier statements that the metropolis is a place of grasping creditors ready to suck a gentleman’s money.13 Not only is Nevison gracious to his victims, but he also abhors the shedding of blood. According to the pamphlet, Nevison killed only one man (Fletcher), who tried to arrest him. Even this is portrayed as a tragic accident, with Nevison shooting Fletcher while they were grappling. The author comments that ‘this was the first man that Nevison had ever Slain, and much it repented him at his Death’. This had become such a significant part of the highwayman’s persona that the author notes the transformation of public feeling towards Nevison after news of this killing: ‘on this it was, that People began to change the Love bore him into a Mortal Hatred’.14 These characteristics show how the image of the highwayman was getting progressively more romanticised: the emphasis on graciousness and gallantry, as well as on the bravery and the beauty of the highwayman, are all characteristics that existed earlier but are more pronounced in this pamphlet.15 In particular, the description of Nevison as beloved of the people is an addition to the description of earlier rogues and highwaymen; even though in earlier pamphlets admiration for the witty characters is evident, it does not go so far as to describe the criminals as loved by the people. The only one who somewhat came close was Claude du Vall, but in his case, even though pamphlets mention the throngs of people who lamented his fate, their pity and sadness is either mocked or viewed as an inexplicable phenomenon by the authors.16 The Yorkshire-Rogue (1684), on the other hand, is clearly in favour of the highwayman. The author rarely condemns the criminal for his actions. He is also interested in the criminal’s state of mind, something rarely done in such pamphlets: the pamphlet describes how, after many years of successful robberies, ‘his Conscience would accuse him of those Crimes that were the necessary Concomitants’ of his actions.17 Anonymous, The Yorkshire-Rogue, p. 48. Anonymous, The Yorkshire-Rogue, pp. 37–40, 74–82. 14  Anonymous, The Yorkshire-Rogue, p. 100. It is likely that the fact that Edward Bracy (his accomplice) buried his wife in Sherwood Forest is intended as an allusion to Robin Hood: see p. 94. 15  Anonymous, The Yorkshire-Rogue, pp. 20, 43, 24, 74–82. 16  As was shown in Chapter 1. 17  Anonymous, The Yorkshire-Rogue, p. 61. Randal Martin has shown that Goodcole showed some interest in the mental state of the criminals before their incarceration, but this is rare. Authors only seem interested in repentance while awaiting execution. Randall Martin, ‘Henry Goodcole, Visitor of Newgate: Crime, Conversion, and Patronage’, The Seventeenth Century, 20:2 (2005), 153–84. 12  13 

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In this, we can see a move towards the even more fictionalised and romanticised highwaymen narratives of the eighteenth century, which presage the birth of the novel. This is also evidenced by the longer size of this pamphlet: it is 110 pages long, published in octavo (which seems to become the preferred size for such narratives in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). Even though it can still be included in cheap print (it is eight sheets long) it is clear that the tendency identified earlier, towards shorter narratives, is here reversed. As we saw in Chapter 1, a few octavo publications appeared after 1640, and it is likely that this trend continued, leading to the development of the eighteenth-century chapbook.18 This pamphlet is also a good example of the continued politicisation of the rogue pamphlet, and especially the highwaymen narrative. As we have seen in the 1650s and 1660s, highwaymen were portrayed as Royalists, with Royalist publishers presenting their actions as a challenge to an illegitimate regime. The same connection to Royalism is evident in The Yorkshire-Rogue. I argue that this pamphlet was a statement of allegiance to the Stuart succession, in the period of the ‘Tory Reaction’ after the Exclusion Crisis. The crisis was an attempt to exclude James, Duke of York, from the succession because of his Catholic faith. Until 1681, the attempts by the Whigs to change the succession had been vociferous and to an extent efficient in courting public opinion.19 Charles II saw off this attack, and from 1681 the Tories made a two-pronged attempt to undermine their opponents: apart from a straightforward move to silence opposition, they also appealed to the public by emphasising the close connection between Whigs and noncomformists, and by reminding audiences that the previous challenge to the monarch had resulted in the Civil War. Tory propagandists also sought to construct a more positive image of the Duke of York, by emphasising his bravery and military skills (real or imaginary).20 The same sentiments are presented in The Yorkshire-Rogue. Characteristic of this attempt to make a political statement is the fact that the pamphlet moved Nevison’s date of birth to 1639, to make it possible for him to have lived through the War of the Three Kingdoms and the Commonwealth period.21 The text is peppered with allusions to the war, or ‘Usurpation’ as the text terms it: when Nevison left England for the Netherlands in order to escape arrest, he pretended to be ‘of a good family in England, who upon Account of the then Usurpation there, were under Oppression’.22 The pamphlet presents

John Ashton, Chap-Books of the Eighteenth Century (S.I., 1882). Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms, 1660–1685 (London, 2006), pp. 136–202. 20  Harris, Restoration, pp. 214–37. 21  According to Tim Wales, it seems much more likely that he was born in 1648: Tim Wales, ‘Nevison [Nevinson], John [William] (d. 1684), Highwayman’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 15 January 2019, . 22  Anonymous, The Yorkshire-Rogue, p. 19. A similar comment about the ‘Usurpation’ is made in p. 24. 18  19 

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a scathing estimation of Cromwell’s impact on the three kingdoms at the time of his death: ‘the grand Usurper paid his last debt to Nature, and left 3 Torn and Distracted Realms, groaning under the burthen of his Tyrannical, and Imperious Slavery’.23 In stark contrast, the Restoration is presented in glowing terms: according to the pamphlet, after 1660, Nevison stopped enjoying his craft because of: the alteration of the Times, which afforded little of those opportunities he used formerly to improve against the Malignants, these being all like the unwholesome Vapour Exhaled by the peircing Light of that day, which happily restored his Majsty… whence Peace and Plenty began again to Flourish.24

Here, the author presents the supporters of the Commonwealth as ‘malignants’, who had brought war and lawlessness to the land, proven by Nevison’s ability to rob with impunity. The expression evokes the horror of the earlier period and emphasises the sense of relief for the restoration of the king. Throughout the pamphlet, the name of the Duke of York is brought to the fore. Nevison in the 1650s is described as ‘a true Royalist’ who ‘remember[ed] the Health of Good King Charles, and his 2 Royals Brothers in Adversity’. The health-drinking, as we have seen, was a common sign of Royalist allegiance, but here Nevison also invokes Charles II’s two brothers who guaranteed a Stuart succession. Nevison showed his allegiance to the king in more concrete ways as well, by going to Flanders and enlisting to ‘the English Volunteers, who were under the Command of his Royal Highness, who about the same time was made Lieutenant General of the Spanish Forces’ at the Siege of Dunkirk. His ‘Royal Highness’ was the Duke of York and the pamphlet loses no opportunity to advertise York’s bravery. Nevison was in: the Dukes own Regiment, that withstood, almost singly, the whole force of the Prevailing party, to give their Friends liberty to escape, purchasing their safety, at the hazard of their own Lives, but being at length after a Noble and Gallant resistance, over powred by Numbers… they were forced to yield.25

The author’s graphic depiction of the desperate situation of the Spanish and English Royalist forces glosses over the defeat by showcasing the Duke of York’s bravery and willingness to sacrifice himself and his forces for the greater good. The implication here is that such bravery well becomes the successor to the throne. A final story about how Nevison robbed a Sequestrator (a man tasked to carry out the annexation of lands from Royalists) further illustrates that this

23  24  25 

Anonymous, The Yorkshire-Rogue, p. 35. Anonymous, The Yorkshire-Rogue, p. 62. Anonymous, The Yorkshire-Rogue, p. 34. 161

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was intended as polemic against the Commonwealth but also as an intervention in contemporary politics. The Sequestrator was travelling to London with four ladies, and, on the way, he ‘brag’d of his great Services to the Commonwealth in Arms’. Nevison stopped the stage coach they were on, stating that ‘no harm was intended against their Persons or Properties, the only search being for some of those Monies that had been Theivishly extorted from the Poor and ought to be refunded’. The claim that the Sequestrator’s work was thievery from the poor undermines this agent of the Commonwealth, and the regime which employed him. The ladies were given the chance to save the Sequestrator, with Nevison gallantly promising that ‘the least intimation of theirs should Bail the Gentleman’. However, the ladies so disliked him for his boasting, that they refused to speak in his favour, and later ridiculed him for his cowardice.26 In this story, the grasping agent of the Commonwealth is robbed, but the robbery is presented as an act of justice, while the spectators laugh at the Sequestrator and show no moral condemnation for the robbery; on the contrary, moral justification seems to be on the side of the highwayman. The story is reminiscent of Hind’s prank on the committee man, presented in Chapter 4, but is more clearly politicised. The end of this story also connects the past with 1684: when the Sequestrator was robbed, he also confessed ‘all those Roguries and Cheats, he had been concerned in, how many Widows and Orphans he had wrong’d, and many other stories of True Blew Protestant Villany’.27 A nineteenth-century reader added a handwritten comment in the margin here, ‘observe the date of this book is 1684’, correctly identifying that in the period of the Tory reaction such a statement was politically charged. Here, the Sequestrator is presented as a rogue and a cheat, inverting the balance between himself and the highwayman. In addition, describing these actions as ‘True Blew Protestant Villany’ connects agents of Commonwealth with noncomformists, and seems to suggest to readers that encouraging those groups could lead again to another political upheaval. It seems unlikely that this text was intended primarily as polemic; most of its contents are a long relation of Nevison’s life and robberies. However, the insistent portrayal of Nevison’s Royalism, the stark reminder of the ills of the Civil War era, the insinuation that the ‘hot sort’ of Protestants are always up to no good, as well as the promotion of the Duke of York, all suggest that the pamphlet wished to contribute to the debates about the succession. In particular, they can be read as part of the more light-touch ‘Tory Reaction’, aimed at wooing the hearts of the public by highlighting how perilous it would be to allow the Whigs and nonconformists to plunge the country into another tumult. It also shows that, after 1650, texts about highwaymen were chained to the Royalist cause, continuing in the footsteps of Horton’s portrayal of James Hind.

Anonymous, The Yorkshire-Rogue, pp. 44–7. Emphasis mine. Copy from Folger Shakespeare Library, Shelfmark 248-768q. 27  Anonymous, The Yorkshire-Rogue, p. 48. 26 

162

EPILOGUE

There is more research that can be done on rogue pamphlets. Further examination is needed on the ways in which such pamphlets were disseminated from London to the provinces. We catch rare glimpses of collectors preserving such texts (as shown in Chapter 1), but it is not clear how easily these pamphlets circulated, and how such urban publications were received by provincial readers. Additionally, comparing rogue pamphlets in various European countries would provide interesting insights into how crime was envisaged in different contexts and how texts were translated in other cultural environments. We have seen that rogue pamphlets were following the tropes used by French publications, and also by Spanish romances.28 A closer examination of the interactions between the different traditions of rogue pamphlets and their interconnectedness would surely be fruitful. This book has shown that these pamphlets were an important part of print culture and the discourses concerning London, their significance lying in the ways in which they used crime as a way of engaging with various issues relating to the city. This book forces us to rethink the assumption that crime should be examined as a separate category, as a discourse relating solely to order and justice. I have emphasised that these printed materials about crime were multivalent, often highlighting bonds of sociability, or more general condemnations of immoral behaviour. These characteristics can be brought into the foreground by comparing them with other discourses about the city, as this book has done. This comparison has also demonstrated that these pamphlets could have a serious function, even when they employed laughter to achieve this aim. Finally, this book has shown the ways in which rogue pamphlets participated in broader political debates; their significance increased with time, becoming an idiom for ridiculing the enemies of Royalists and Tories. Reading rogue pamphlets closely allows us to understand a broad spectrum of discourses about crime, politics, and early modern London.

Anne J. Cruz, Discourses of Poverty: Social Reform and the Picaresque Novel in Early Modern Spain (Toronto and London, 1999); Giancarlo Maiorino, At the Margins of the Renaissance: Lazarillo de Tormes and the Picaresque Art of Survival (University Park, PA and London, 2003); Gustavo Pellon and Julio Rodríguez-Luis (eds), Upstarts, Wanderers or Swindlers: Anatomy of the Picaro: A Critical Anthology (Amsterdam, 1986). 28 

163

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Middlesex Quarter Sessions: MJ/SR/1090-1095, Middlesex Sessions Rolls, 1652. Remembrancia Books, II–III, VIII. 1580–1640. Westminster Quarter Sessions: WJ/SR/NS/8-51, Westminster Quarter Sessions Rolls, 1624–1640. Rogue Pamphlets (in date order)

Greene, Robert, A Notable Discouery of Coosenage, 1591. ———, The Second Part of Conny-Catching, 1592. ———, A Disputation between a HeeConny-Catcher and a SheeConny-Catcher, 1592. ———, Blacke Bookes Messenger, 1592. ———, The Defence of Conny Catching, 1592. ———, The Third and Last Part of Conny-Catching, 1592. Harman, Thomas, The Groundworke of Conny-Catching, 1592. Rich, Barnabe, Greenes Newes Both from Heaven and Hell, 1593. Johnson, Thomas, A World of Wonders. A Masse of Murthers. A Covie of Cosonages, 1595. Hutton, Luke, The Blacke Dogge of Newgate, 1596. Anonymous, Mihil Mumchance, His Discouerie of the Art of Cheating in False Dyce Play, 1597. E., S., The Discouerie of the Knights of the Poste, 1597. Anonymous, Luke Huttons Lamentation Which He Wrote the Day before His Death, Being Condemned to Be Hanged at Yorke This Last Assises for His Robberies and Trespasses Committed, 1598. Middleton, Thomas, The Blacke Booke, 1604. Anonymous, The Life and Death of Gamaliell Ratsey, 1605. Anonymous, Ratseis Ghost. Or The Second Part of His Madde Prankes and Robberies, 1605. 165

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dekker, Thomas, The Belman of London, 1608. ———, Lanthorne and Candle-Light. Or, The Bell-Mans Second Nights-Walke, 1608. Rid, Samuel, Martin Mark-All, 1610. ———, O per Se O. Or A New Cryer of Lanthorne and Candle-Light Being an Addition, or Lengthening, of the Bell-Mans Second Night-Walke. In Which, Are Discouered Those Villanies, Which the Bell-Man (Because Hee Went i’thdarke) Could Not See: Now Laid Open to the World, 1612. Courtney, Charles, The Life, Apprehensio[n,] Arraignement, and Execution of Char[Les] Courtney, 1612. Anonymous, The Araignment of Iohn Selman, Who Was Executed Neere Charing-Crosse the 7. of Ianuary, 1611. for a Fellony by Him Committed in the Kings Chappell at White-Hall upon Christmas Day Last, in Presence of the King and Diuers of the Nobility, 1612. Greene, Robert, Theeues Falling out, True-Men Come by Their Goods: Or, The Belman Wanted a Clapper, 1615. Mynshul, Geffray, Certaine Characters and Essayes of Prison and Prisoners, 1618. Goodcole, Henry, Londons Cry: Ascended to God, and Entred into the Hearts, and Eares of Men for Reuenge of Bloodshedders, Burglaiers, and Vagabounds. Manifested the Last Sessions, Holden at Iustice Hall in the Old Baily the 9. 10. 11. 12. of December, Anno Dom. 1619, 1620. Taylor, John, An Arrant Thiefe, 1622. ———, The Praise and Vertue of a Jayle, and Jaylers, 1623. Anonymous, The Life and Death of Griffin Flood Informer, 1623. Clavell, John, A Recantation of an Ill Led Life, 1628. Dekker, Thomas, English Villanies Seven Severall Times Prest to Death by the Printers, Now the Eigth Time Discovered by Lanthorne and Candle-Light, 1638. Anonymous, Newes from the North, or, A Relation of a Great Robberie Which Was Committed Nere Swanton in Yorkshire, 1641. Anonymous, A Great Robbery in the North, Neer Swanton in Yorkshire; Shewing How One Mr. Tailour Was Robbed by a Company of Cavaliers, 1642. Anonymous, The Humble Petition of James Hind, 1651. Hind, James, The Declaration of Captain James Hind, 1651. Anonymous, The Last Will and Testament of James Hynd, High-Way Lawyer, 1651. Anonymous, The Pleasant and Delightful History of Captain Hind: Wherein Is Set Forth a More Full and Perfect Relation of His Several Exploits, Stratagems, Robberies, and Progress, Both in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Holland, 1651. S., J., An Excellent Comedy, Called, The Prince of Priggs, 1651. Anonymous, The True and Perfect Relation of the Taking of Captain James Hind, 1651. Fidge, George, Hind’s Ramble, or, the Description of His Manner and Course of Life, 1651. ———, The English Gusman; or The History of That Unparallel’d Thief James Hind, 1652. 166

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———, Wit for Mony. Being a Full Relation of the Life, Actions, Merry Conceits, and Pretty Pranks of Captain Iames Hind, 1652. H., G., We Have Brought Our Hogs to a Fair Market: Or, Strange Newes from NewGate, 1652. Anonymous, A Notable and Pleasant History of the Famous Renowned Knights of the Blade, Commonly Called Hectors, 1652. Anonymous, A Pill to Purge Melancholy: Or Merry Newes from Newgate: Wherein Is Set Forth, the Pleasant Jests, Witty Conceits, and Excellent Couzenages, of Captain James Hind, 1652. Anonymous, A Second Discovery of Hind’s Exploits: Or A Fuller Relation of His Ramble, Robberies, and Cheats in England, Ireland, Scotland, with His Voyage to Holland. Wherein Is Set Forth the Notorious Villanies of Theeves and Highway-Men. Full of Delight, and May Serve as a Guide to Gentlemen and Travellers, to Avoyd Their Treacheries, 1652. Anonymous, Hinds Elder Brother, or the Master Thief Discovered. Being a Notable Pithy Relation of the Life of Major Thomas Knowls His Many Exploits Escapes, and Witty Robberies, 1652. B., J., The Knight Errant: Being a Witty, Notable and True Relation of the Strange Adventures of Sir William Hart Now Prisoner in the Tower, 1652. Gayton, E., Wil: Bagnal’s Ghost. Or the Merry Devill of Gadmunton. In His Perambulation of the Prisons of London, 1655. Anonymous, Hannam’s Last Farewell to the World: Being a Full and True Relation of the Notorious Life and Shamfull Death of Mr. Richard Hannam, the Great Robber of England; with the Manner of His Apprehension, Examination, Confession and Speech Made to the Sheriffs a Little before His Execution in the Round in Smithfield, in Tuesday the 17. of June, 1656, 1656. Anonymous, The English Villain, or The Grand Thief, a Full Relation of the Desperate Life and Deserved Death of R. Hanam, 1656. Anonymous, The Life and Death of Mrs. Mary Frith. Commonly Called Mal Cutpurse, 1662. Anonymous, The Speech and Confession of Mr. Richard Hannam, 1656. E., S., The Witty Rogue Arraigned, Condemned, and Executed. Or, The History of That Incomparable Thief Richard Hainam. Relating the Several Robberies, Mad Pranks, and Handsome Jests by Him Performed, as It Was Taken from His Own Mouth, Not Long before His Death, 1656. Vernon, Samuel, The Trepan: Being a True Relation, Full of Stupendious Variety, of the Strange Practises of Mehetabel the Wife of Edward Jones, and Elizabeth Wife of Lieutenant John Pigeon, 1656. Prestwich, Edmund, The Hectors: Or The False Challenge, 1656. Anonymous, No Jest like a True Jest Being a Compendious Record of the Merry Life and Mad Exploits of Capt James Hind the Great Robber of England, 1657. Anonymous, The Devils Cabinet Broke Open: Or A New Discovery of the High-Way Thieves, 1657. 167

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anonymous, The Catterpillers of This Nation Anatomized, in a Brief yet Notable Discovery of House-Breakers, Pick-Pockets, &c. Together with the Life of a Penitent HighWay-Man, Discovering the Mystery of That Infernal Society. To Which Is Added, the Manner of Hectoring and Trapanning as It Is Acted in and about the City of London, 1659. Anonymous, The Wandring Whore Continued a Dialogue between Magdalena a Crafty Bawd, Julietta an Exquisite Whore, Francion a Lascivious Gallant, and Gusman a Pimping Hector, 1660. Anonymous, The Fifth and Last Part of the Wandring Whore: A Dialogue, 1661. Aretine, Peter, Strange Newes from Bartholomew-Fair, or, the Wandring-Whore Discovered, 1661. Anonymous, The Womans Champion; or the Strange Wonder Being a True Relation of the Mad Pranks, Merry Conceits, Politick Figaries, and Most Unheard of Stratagems of Mrs. Mary Frith, Commonly Called Mall Cutpurse, 1662. Anonymous, The Lawyer’s Clarke Trappan’d by the Crafty Whore of Canterbury, 1663. Anonymous, A Vindication of a Distressed Lady in Answer to a Pernitious, Scandalous, Libellous Pamphlet Intituled The Lavvyers Clarke Trappan’d by the Crafty Vvhore of Canterbury, 1663. Anonymous, A True and Impartial Account of the Arraignment, Tryal, Examination, Confession and Condemnation of Col. Iames Turner, 1664. Anonymous, The Triumph of Truth: In an Exact and Impartial Relation of the Life and Conversation of Col. James Turner Which He Imparted to an Intimate Friend a Little before His Execution, 1664. Anonymous, The Cheating Solliciter Cheated: Being a True and Perfect Relation of the Life and Death of Richard Farr, 1665. Anonymous, Leather-More or Advice Concerning Gaming, 1668. Anonymous, The Speech and Deportment of Col. Iames Turner at His Execution in Leaden-Hall-Street January 21. 1663, 1664. Pope, Walter, The Memoires of Monsieur Du Vall: Containing the History of his Life and Death, 1670. Butler, Samuel, To the Memory of the Most Renowned Du-Vall: A Pindarick Ode, 1671. Cellier, Elizabeth, The Ladies Answer to That Busie-Body, Who Wrote the Life and Death of Du Vall, 1671. Newsbooks (in date order)

Perfect Diurnall of Some Passages in Parliament, issue 14, 16 October 1643. Perfect Diurnall of Some Passages in Parliament, issue 60, 16 September 1644. Mercurius Politicus, issue 27, 5 December 1650. A Perfect Account, issue 4, 29 January 1651. The Weekly Intelligencer of the Common-Wealth, issue 40, 30 September 1651. Mercurius Politicus, issue 70, 2 October 1651. Mercurius Politicus, issue 75, 6 November 1651. 168

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The Weekly Intelligencer, issue 45, 11 November 1651. A Perfect Diurnall of Some Passages and Proceedings of, and in Relation to, the Armies in England and Ireland, issue 108, 29 December 1651. A Perfect Account, issue 54, 7 January 1652. The Faithful Scout, issue 52, 9 January 1652. A Perfect Account, issue 55, 15 January 1652. The Faithful Scout, issue 53, 16 January 1652. The French Intelligencer, issue 10, 20 January 1652. A Perfect Account, issue 56, 21 January 1652. The Faithful Scout, issue 54, 23 January 1652. The Faithful Scout, issue 56, 6 February 1652. A Perfect Account, issue 62, 3 March 1652. A Perfect Account, issue 72, 12 May 1652. Mercurius Pragmaticus, issue 1, 18 May 1652. A Perfect Account, issue 87, 25 August 1652. A Faithful Scout, issue 85, 27 August 1652. A Perfect Account, issue 91, 22 September 1652. Mercurius Politicus, issue 288, 13 December 1655. Mercurius Politicus, issue 433, 9 September 1658. Other Printed Works

Aleman, Matheo, The Rogue: Or The Life of Guzman de Alfarache. Written in Spanish by Matheo Aleman, Servant to His Catholike Maiestie, and Borne in Seuill, 1623. Allestree, Richard. The Gentlemans Calling, 1660. Anonymous, A Declaration, or Resolution of the Countie of Hereford, 1642. Anonymous, A New Plot Newly Discovered, by the Help of the London Bell-Man; Of Wicked and Hellish Conspiracies against the Peace of This Kingdom, 1684. Anonymous, A Total Rout, or a Brief Discovery, of a Pack of Knaves and Drabs, Intituled Pimps, Panders, Hectors, Trapans, Nappers, Mobs, and Spanners, 1653. Anonymous, An Exact Description of a Roundhead, and a Long-Head Shag-Poll: Taken Our [sic] of the Purest Antiquities and Records, 1642. Anonymous, Answer to a Letter Written out of the Country, to Master John Pym, Esquire, One of the Worthy Members of the House of Commons, 1643. Anonymous, Here Is an Item for You. Or, The Countrimans Bill of Charges, for His Comming up to London Declared by a Whistle, 1630. Anonymous, Jockies Lamentation, Whose Seditious Work Was the Loss of His Country, and His KIRK, 1657. Anonymous, Merie Tales Newly Imprinted [and] Made by Master Skelton Poet Laureat, 1567. Anonymous, Pasquils Jests. Mixed with Mother Bunches Merriments, 1609. Anonymous, Robin Good-Fellow, His Mad Prankes and Merry Jests, Full of Honest Mirth, and Is a Fit Medicine for Melancholy, 1628. Anonymous, Roome for Companie, Heere Comes Good Fellowes, 1617. Anonymous, Strange Newes from Newgate and the Old-Baily, 1651. 169

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anonymous, The Brothers of the Blade: Answerable to the Sisters of the Scaberd, 1641. Anonymous, The Charge and Articles of High-Treason Exhibited against the Earl of Derby, at a Councel of War in the City of Chester, with His Tryal & Examination; His Speech at the Councel Table, and His Declaration and Propositions Touching the Surrender of the Isle of Man. Also, the Parliaments Resolution Concerning Major Gen. Massey: And the Examination and Confession of Mr. Sandwitch, the King of Scots Trumpeter, Who Was Taken at Hallifax in York-Shire, on Wednesday Last. With His Narrative and Declaration Touching His Master. Shewing the Manner How He Escaped from Hallifax Disguised, 1651. Anonymous, The High-Way Hector, 1640s. Anonymous, The High-Way Mans Advice to His Brethren. Or, Nevison’s Last Legacy to the Knights of the High-Padd, 1684. Anonymous, The History of the Life & Death of That Noted Highwayman, Mr. William Nevison. Leeds, 1780. Anonymous, The Last Newes from the Kings Majesties Army Now at Maidenhead: Containing Many Remarkable Passages, with Prince Robert His Intentions. Also Matters Worthy of Observation in and about the Cities of London and Westminster, with Severall Proceedings of Both Houses of Parliament to This Present 11. of November, 1642. Anonymous, The Life of That King of Thieves Jonathan Wild: With Anecdotes of Joseph Blake, Alias Blue Skin, One of Wild’s Pupils: To Which Is Added, The Life of William Nevison, the High-Wayman. Edinburgh, 1773. Anonymous, The Lives of Richard Turpin, and William Nevison, Two Notorious Highwaymen: Containing a Particular Account of All Their Adventures until Their Trial and Execution at York, 1795. Anonymous, The London Prodigall, 1605. Anonymous, The Mad-Merry Pranks of Robbin Good-Fellow, 1625. Anonymous, The Most Delectable History of Reynard the Fox. Newly Corrected and Purged from All the Grosenesses Both in Phrase and Matter. As Also Augmented and Inlarged with Sundry Excellent Moralls and Expositions Vpon Euery Seuerall Chapter. Neuer before This Time Imprinted, 1620. Anonymous, The Souldiers Language. Or, A Discourse Between Two Souldiers, the One Coming from York, the Other from Bristol, Shewing How the Warres Go on, and How the Souldiers Carrie and Demean Themselves. With a Survey of What Forces the King Hath at Command, Both Forraigne, and Domestick, 1644. Anonymous, The Speech of Collonel John Sares, Delivered at the Place of Execution on the Tenth of This Instant Month at Chester, 1652. Anonymous, The Sucklington Faction; or Suckling’s Roaring Boyes, 1641. Anonymous, The Trial of the Notorious Highwayman, Richard Turpin, for Horse-Stealing. Together with an Exact Account of That Noted Robber, ... Now First Published in a Connected Form. To Which Is Added, a Circumstantial Account of William Nevison, 1799 Anonymous, The Yorkshire-Rogue, or, Capt. Hind Improv’d; in the Notorious Life, and Infamous Death, of That Famous Highway-Man, William Nevison, Who Was Exe170

BIBLIOGRAPHY

cuted at York, the 15th Day of March. 1684, 1684. Anonymous, Youths Safety: Or, Advice to the Younger Sort, of Either Sex, 1698. Awdeley, John, The Fraternitye of Vacabondes, 1565. Baret, John, An Aluearie or Triple Dictionarie in Englishe, Latin, and French, 1574. Brandon, John, The Oxonian Antippodes, or, The Oxford Anty-Parliament, 1644. Brathwaite, Richard, The Captive-Captain, or, The Restrain’d Cavalier Drawn to His Full Bodie in These Characters... Presented and Acted to Life in a Suit of Durance, an Habit Suiting Best with His Place of Residence, 1665. ———, To His Majesty upon His Happy Arrivall in Our Late Discomposed Albion. By R. Brathwait Esq., 1660. Bray, William, Tongue Thou Lyest. Or, a Recantation for Writing That Infamous, Libellous, Pamphlet, Entituled Newes from the North: Or a Relation of the Great Robbery. Wherein Is Discoursed, the Infinite Wrongs Which Master Knowles Hath Thereby Suffered, and the Authors Heartily Sorrow for It, 1641. Breton, Nicholas, Choice, Chance, and Change: Or, Conceites in Their Colours, 1606. Brome, Richard, The Weeding of the Covent-Garden, 1658. Cleveland, John, Poems by J.C.; with Additions, Never before Printed, 1653. Copland, Robert, The Hye Way to the Spyttell Hous. Copland and the Porter. Who so Hath Lust, or Wyll Leaue His Thryft, 1536. Cotgrave, Randle, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, 1611. Cowdrey, Robert, A Table Alphabeticall Contayning and Teaching the True Writing and Vnderstanding of Hard Vsuall English Wordes, Borrowed from the Hebrew, Greeke, Latine, or French, 1604. Cowell, John, The Interpreter: Or Booke Containing the Signification of Vvords Wherein Is Set Foorth the True Meaning of All, or the Most Part of Such Words and Termes, as Are Mentioned in the Lawe Vvriters, or Statutes of This Victorious and Renowned Kingdome, Requiring Any Exposition or Interpretation, 1607. De Mendoza, Diego Hurtado, The Pleasaunt Historie of Lazarillo de Tormes a Spaniarde, Wherein Is Conteined His Marveilous Deedes and Life, 1586. Dekker, Thomas, A Strange Horse-Race at the End of Which, Comes in the Catch-Poles Masque. And after That the Bankrouts Banquet: Which Done, the Diuell, Falling Sicke, Makes His Last Will and Testament, This Present Yeare. 1613, 1613. ———, Jests to Make You Merie:  With the Coniuring vp of Cock VVatt, (the Walking Spirit of Newgate) to Tell Tales. Vnto Which Is Added, the Miserie of a Prison, and a Prisoner. And a Paradox in Praise of Serieant, 1607. ———, Worke for Armorours: Or, The Peace Is Broken, 1609. Done, John, A Miscellania of Morall, Theologicall and Philosophicall Sentances, 1650. Dorchester, Henry Pierrepont, Marquis of, The Lord Marquesse of Dorchesters Letter to the Lord Roos with the Lord Roos’s Answer Thereunto: Whereunto Is Added the Reasons Why the Lord Marquesse of Dorchester Published His Letter of the 25 of Febr. 1659 Dated the 13 of the Same Moneth: With His Answer to the Lord Roos in His Letter, 1660. England and Wales Privy Council, An Order to Be Published and Executed by the Lord Maior of the Citie of London, and Other Officers in All Places within Three 171

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Miles of the Sayd Citie, for Auoyding of All Kind of Beggars That Doe Wander about Contrary to the Lawes and Statutes of the Realme, 1593. England and Wales Sovereign, A Further Proclamation for the Suppressing and Punishing of Rogues and Vagabonds, and Reliefe of the Poore, 1630. England and Wales Sovereign, A Proclamation against Vicious, Debauch’d, and Prophane Persons, 1660. England and Wales Sovereign, By the King. A Proclamation for Restraint of Disorderly and Unnecessary Resort to the Court, 1625. England and Wales Sovereign, By the King. A Proclamation for the Due and Speedy Execution of the Statute against Rogues, Vagabonds, Idle, and Dissolute Persons, 1603. Garcia, Carlos, Guzman, Hinde and Hannam Outstript: Being a Discovery of the Whole Art, Mistery and Antiquity of Theeves and Theeving: With Their Statutes, Laws, Customs and Practises, 1657. ———, The Sonne of the Rogue, or, The Politick Theefe with the Antiquitie of Theeves, 1638. Gauden, John, Eikōn Basilikē. The Porvtraicture of His Sacred Majestie in His Solitudes and Sufferings, 1649. Greene, Robert, Greenes Groats-Vvorth of Witte, Bought with a Million of Repentance Describing the Follie of Youth, the Falshoode of Makeshifte Flatterers, the Miserie of the Negligent, and Mischiefes of Deceiuing Courtezans. Written before His Death, and Published at His Dyeing Request, 1592. ———, Greenes Vision: Written at the Instant of His Death. Conteyning a Penitent Passion for the Folly of His Pen, 1592. Hammond, Charles, Truth’s Discovery, or, The Cavaliers Case Clearly Stated by Conscience and Plain-Dealing Presented to the Honorable Commissioners, and All the Truly Loyall and Indigent Officers, and Souldiers, 1664. Harington, John, The Most Elegant and Witty Epigrams of Sir Iohn Harrington, 1618. Harman, Thomas, A Caueat for Commen Cursetors Vvlgarely Called Vagabones, Set Forth by Thomas Harman, Esquier, for the Vtilite and Proffyt of Hys Naturall Countrey, 1567. Head, Richard, The English Rogue: Continued in the Life of Meriton Latroon, and Other Extravagants: Comprehending the Most Eminent Cheats of Both Sexes, 1671. Hollyband, Claude, A Dictionary French and English, 1593. Johnson, Richard, Looke on Me London: I Am an Honest English-Man, Ripping vp the Bowels of Mischiefe, Luring in Thy Sub-Vrbs and Precincts, 1613. Mar-phoreus, Martins Months Minde, That Is, a Certaine Report, and True Description of the Death, and Funeralls, of Olde Martin Marreprelate, the Great Makebate of England, and Father of the Factious, 1589. Massey, Sir Edward, The Declaration of Major Gen. Massey upon His Death-Bed at Leicester, 1651. Middleton, Thomas, A Mad World, My Masters, 1608. Middleton, Thomas and Thomas Dekker, The Roaring Girle. Or Moll Cut-Purse, 1611. Nashe, Thomas, Christs Teares Ouer Ierusalem, 1599. 172

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190

Index Note: works are listed under the names of their authors. Anonymous works are listed under their titles. Alemán, Mateo, Rogue, The  150–1, 156 Allestree, Richard, Gentlemans Calling, The 151 Answer to a Letter Written out of the Country, to Master John Pym 121 Araignment of Iohn Selman, The  43, 109 Bacon, Francis  109 ballads 69–70 Black Dog of Newgate, the  77 See also Hutton, Luke Border, Daniel  126–7, 131, 137 Braithwaite, Richard  152–3 Bray, William, Tongue Thou Lyest 136 Breton, Nicholas  1 Brome, Richard, Weeding of the Covent-Garden, The  121 n.16 Brothers of the Blade, The 121–2 Butler, Samuel  28 To the Memory of the Most Renowned Du-Vall 73 Carleton, Anne  49 Catterpillers of This Nation Anatomized, The  45, 73, 145–6 Cavaliers  123 n.21, 131, 134, 140–1, 146, 148–50, 152–3 Cellier, Elizabeth, Ladies Answer to that BusieBody, The  29, 48–9, 73 Charge and Articles of High-Treason Exhibited against the Earl of Derby, The 124 Cheating Solliciter Cheated, The 62 city comedies  22, 69 Civil War, the, effect on print trade  23, 36, 117–8, 119, 154 Clavell, John  27, 103, 105–9 Recantation of an Ill Led Life, A 31, 33–4, 36, 80 n.116, 103–5, 108, 131 n.54 Cleveland, John, ‘To the Hectors’  149–50 Cotgrave, Randle, Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, A  63, 84 Courtney, Charles  27–8

Life, Apprehensio[n,] Arraignement, and Execution of Char[les] Courtney, The  36, 43 Cowell, John, Interpreter, The 11 credit see trust criminal networks 95, 101–2, 105–6, 108–9, 114, 115–6 Declaration, or Resolution of the Countie of Hereford, A 149 Dekker, Thomas  22, 27, 43 Belman of London, The  28, 65, 67, 82 n.123, 141 popularity  23, 44 rogues, description of  8–9, 54 English Villanies  25, 43 n.97 Jests to Make You Merie 51 Lanthorne and Candle-Light  9, 23, 25, 43 n.97, 44, 68, 77 O per Se O 43 Roaring Girl, The 22 Strange Horse-Race, A 71 Worke for Amorours 73 Devils Cabinet Broke Open, The  31–2, 102, 103 drinking  83, 84, 113, 115, 148–9 See also good fellowship in under rogue pamphlets duelling  142, 146, 149, 151 E., S., Witty Rogue Arraigned, The 139 Exclusion Crisis, the  160 Faithfull Scout, The see Border, Daniel Fidge, George English Gusman, The  25, 32, 46, 131 Hind’s Ramble 60 Wit for Mony 131 friendship see criminal networks; good fellowship in under rogue pamphlets Frith, Mary  22, 48 Further Proclamation for the Suppressing and Punishing of Rogues and Vagabonds, A 10 191

INDEX

gaming  95–6, 97–9 Garcia, Carlos, Guzman, Hinde and Hannam Outstript 151 Gauden, John, Eikon Basilike 131 Gayton, E., Wil: Bagnal’s Ghost 80–1 goldsmiths and criminality  110, 111–12, 114–5 Goodcole, Henry Londons Cry  19, 31, 32, 43, 60 Greene, Robert  2, 9, 17, 22, 27, 39–40, 43 Blacke Bookes Messenger, The  25, 40, 60–1 Defence of Conny Catching, The  67, 70, 76, 80 Disputation between a HeeConny-Catcher and a SheeConny-Catcher, A 23, 25, 84 Notable Discouery of Coosenage, A  9, 40, 41, 71, 75, 96–8 Theeues Falling out  23, 31, 44 Third and Last Part of Conny-Catching, The  56, 90, 111 Gusman 150–1

news reports of   124, 125–6, 128–31 Royalism of   25, 123, 134, 149 trial and execution  124–6 Hinds Elder Brother  45, 61, 134, 136–7 Hollyband, Claude, Dictionary French and English, A  11 n.45 Horton, George  34, 124, 126–9, 131 Humble Petition of James Hind, The 129–30, 131 Hutton, Luke  27 Blacke Dogge of Newgate, The  31, 36, 76–80

Hammond, Charles, Truth’s Discovery 152 Hannam, Richard  25, 84, 123, 139, 151 See also Hannam’s Last Farewell to the World; Speech and Confession of Mr. Richard Hannam, The Hannam’s Last Farewell to the World  9, 84, 139 Harington, John, Prophesie when Asses shall grow Elephants, A 17 Harman, Thomas Caueat for Commen Cursetors, A 22 Groundworke of Conny-Catching, The 22, 40, 42, 60, 69, 82 Hart, William  123, 138 Head, Richard, English Rogue, The 158 hectors  119, 140–1, 142–50, 151–3 Here Is an Item for You 69 H., G., We Have Brought Our Hogs to a Fair Market  128, 130–3 High-Way Hector, The  71, 122–3 highwaymen 12–13, 71–2, 102, 156, 159–60 Hind, James  9, 23, 27, 46, 60, 71–2, 84–5, 151, 158 Declaration of Captain James Hind, The 32

Last Newes from the Kings Majesties Army Now at Maidenhead 120 Last Will and Testament of James Hynd, The  71–2, 131 laughter, early modern theories of  54, 63, 87 Lawyers Clarke Trappan’d, The 49 Life and Death of Griffin Flood Informer, The  79 n.112 Lilburne, John  127 London 90–1 literary views of  22, 63, 74, 155 See also London in under rogue pamphlets London Prodigall, The 11 Luke Huttons Lamentation  76 n.104

jest, definition of  51 See also humour in under rogue pamphlets jewellers see goldsmiths and criminality Johnson, Thomas, World of Wonders, A 30, 61–2 Johnson, Richard, Looke on Me London 68–9 Knight Errant, The 138 Knowles, Thomas  45, 61, 123, 134, 136–7

Mad-Merry Pranks of Robbin Good-Fellow, The 82 Marprelate tracts  29, 74 Martins Months Minde 141 Massey, Sir Edward, Declaration of Major Gen. Massey, The 124 Mercurius Politicus  124, 125, 130, 138, 150 Merie Tales Newly Imprinted [and] Made by Master Skelton 59 Middleton, Thomas

192

INDEX

Blacke Booke, The  66, 76, 77 Michaelmas Term  69, 99 Mihil Mumchance  36–7, 98 Most Delectable History of Reynard the Fox, The 57–9 Mynshul, Geffray, Certaine Characters and Essayes of Prison  36, 71, 77

Parker, Martin, Knavery in all trades 69–70 Parliamentary propaganda see Royalists portrayed as robbers Pasquils Jests 59 Pecham, H., Art of Living in London, The 64 Perfect Account, A  125, 126, 136 Pill to Purge Melancholy, A  85, 131 Pleasant and Delightful History of Captain Hind, The 45 Pope, Walter, Memoires of Monsieur Du Vall, The  28–9, 48–9 Popish Plot, the  156 Prestwich, Edmund, Hectors, The 144–5 Privy Council, the  10 Proceedings of the Old Bailey 19 Proclamation against Vicious, Debauch’d, and Prophane Persons, A 152 Proclamation for the Due and Speedy Execution of the Statute against Rogues, A 10

Rich, Barnabe, Greenes Newes Both from Heaven and Hell 70 Rid, Samuel, Martin Mark-All 43 Robin Good-Fellow, His Mad Prankes and Merry Jests 81–3 Robin Hood  1 n.1, 72, 130, 158 rogue, definition of  1–2, 8–13, 15, 130 rogue pamphlets authorship 27–8 dedications 31 definition  8, 13, 18–19 format  21, 35, 36–7, 160 good fellowship in  55, 83–4, 86–7, 98, 155 historiography  2–8, 12, 18, 51–4, 64–5 humour in  32, 51, 54–63, 74–5, 85, 86–8, 155 instructional value  30–1, 40, 43, 155 jest-book style in  29–30, 56 justice, relationship with  75–6, 80–1 length see format lawyers, view of  71–2 London in  8, 55, 57, 63–71, 74, 98, 155 numbers 20–6 price 35–6 publishers  33, 34–5, 38 readership (intended)  47–8, 50, 156 Royalism in  119, 123–39, 141, 153, 156, 160–2 title-pages  38–40, 43–5 truth claims in  32 typography 37–8 usury, view of  71 wit in  66, 74, 86, 141 Rose, Richard  109–10, 111–14 Roundheads  123 n.21, 134 Rowlands, Samuel Diogines’ Lanthorne  22, 44 n.102, 68 Greenes Ghost Haunting Coniecatchers 40, 66 Royalists portrayed as robbers  119–24 See also Royalism in under rogue pamphlets Rupert, Prince  120

Ratseis Ghost  72, 85–6 Ratsey, Gamaliel  85 Reynard the Fox  57–9

Scott, Thomas  11 Second Discovery of Hind’s Exploits, A 84–5, 131, 134, 135

Nashe, Thomas  17, 21, 38–9 Pierce Penilesse  22, 33, 39, 68 Nedham, Marchamont  125 n.30, 126 Nevison, William  157–9, 160–2 Newes from the North  134, 136 Newgate (prison)  77 New Plot Newly Discovered, A 156 Northtonus, Champianus, Younger Brothers Advocate, The 147 Notable and Pleasant History of the Famous Renowned Knights of the Blade, A  139–40, 141–4, 146 novel, the  4, 160 Order to Be Published and Executed by the Lord Maior, An 9–10 organised crime see criminal networks Oxonian Antippodes, The 120–1

193

INDEX

S., E., Witty Rogue Arraigned, The 66 S., I., Brief and Perfect Journal of the Late Preceedings and Successe of the English Army in the West-Indies, A 147 S., J., Excellent Comedy, Called, The Prince of Priggs, An  47, 72–3 Souldiers Language, The 122 South, Robert, ‘discourse upon proverbs XXVIII.26, A’  92–3 Speech and Confession of Mr. Richard Hannam, The  34, 139 Speech and Deportment of Col. Iames Turner, The 34 Speech of Collonel John Sares, The 127–8 Strange Newes from Newgate  77 n.109 Sucklington Faction, The 148 swearing  122, 146 Taylor, John Arrant Thiefe, An 67 Crop-Eare Curried  154 n.123 Praise and Vertue of a Jayle, The 75–6, 80 Taylors Revenge 73 Wit and Mirth 62–3 Titeretus 148 Total Rout, A  60, 146–7 True and Perfect Relation of the Taking of Captain

James Hind, The  128–9, 131, 158 trust  92–6, 99–100, 103–5, 111, 115, 116 Turner, Colonel James  25 Turner, W., Turners Dish of Lentten Stuffe 69 vagrant (term)  12 n.52 Vall, Claude du  25, 159 See also Cellier, Elizabeth; Pope, Walter Vernon, Samuel, Trepan, The 32 Vindication of a Distressed Lady, A 49 Walker, Gilbert, A Manifest Detection of the Most Vyle and Detestable vse of Diceplay  96 n.23 Wandring Whore Continued, The 73 Wandring Whore, The  30–1, 150, 151 Weekly Intelligencer, The  124, 125–6, 129 Wilkins, John, Essay towards a Real Character, An 11 Wilson, Thomas, Christian Dictionarie, A 92 Wither, George, Britain’s Remembrancer 80 n.116 Wood, Anthony  46–7 Wortley, Francis  127 n.38 Yorkshire-Rogue, The 157–62 Youths Safety 155–6

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STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN CULTURAL, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY I Women of Quality Accepting and Contesting Ideals of Femininity in England, 1690–1760 Ingrid H. Tague II Restoration Scotland, 1660–1690 Royalist Politics, Religion and Ideas Clare Jackson III Britain, Hanover and the Protestant Interest, 1688–1756 Andrew C. Thompson IV Hanover and the British Empire, 1700–1837 Nick Harding V The Personal Rule of Charles II, 1681–85 Grant Tapsell VI Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England Jason McElligott VII The English Catholic Community, 1688–1745 Politics, Culture and Ideology Gabriel Glickman VIII England and the 1641 Irish Rebellion Joseph Cope IX Culture and Politics at the Court of Charles II, 1660–1685 Matthew Jenkinson X Commune, Country and Commonwealth The People of Cirencester, 1117–1643 David Rollison XI An Enlightenment Statesman in Whig Britain Lord Shelburne in Context, 1737–1805 Edited by Nigel Aston and Clarissa Campbell Orr

XII London’s News Press and the Thirty Years War Jayne E. E. Boys XIII God, Duty and Community in English Economic Life, 1660–1720 Brodie Waddell XIV Remaking English Society Social Relations and Social Change in Early Modern England Edited by Steve Hindle, Alexandra Shepard and John Walter XV Common Law and Enlightenment in England, 1689–1750 Julia Rudolph XVI The Final Crisis of the Stuart Monarchy The Revolutions of 1688–91 in their British, Atlantic and European Contexts Edited by Stephen Taylor and Tim Harris XVII The Civil Wars after 1660 Public Remembering in Late Stuart England Matthew Neufeld XVIII The Nature of the English Revolution Revisited Edited by Stephen Taylor and Grant Tapsell XIX The King’s Irishmen The Irish in the Exiled Court of Charles II, 1649–1660 Mark R.F. Williams XX Scotland in the Age of Two Revolutions Edited by Sharon Adams and Julian Goodare XXI Alehouses and Good Fellowship in Early Modern England Mark Hailwood XXII Social Relations and Urban Space: Norwich, 1600–1700 Fiona Williamson XXIII British Travellers and the Encounter with Britain, 1450–1700 John Cramsie

XXIV Domestic Culture in Early Modern England Antony Buxton XXV Accidents and Violent Death in Early Modern London, 1650–1750 Craig Spence XXVI Popular Culture and Political Agency in Early Modern England and Ireland Essays in Honour of John Walter Edited by Michael J. Braddick and Phil Withington XXVII Commerce and Politics in Hume’s History of England Jia Wei XXVIII Bristol from Below: Law, Authority and Protest in a Georgian City Steve Poole and Nicholas Rogers XXIX Disaffection and Everyday Life in Interregnum England Caroline Boswell XXX Cromwell’s House of Lords Politics, Parliaments and Constitutional Revolution, 1642–1660 Jonathan Fitzgibbons XXXI Stuart Marriage Diplomacy: Dynastic Politics in their European Context, 1604–1630 Edited by Valentina Caldari and Sara J. Wolfson XXXII National Identity and the Anglo-Scottish Borderlands, 1552–1652 Jenna M. Schultz

Lena Liapi

LENA LIAPI teaches early modern history at Keele University.

Cover image: Anonymous, The Life, Apprehensio[n,] Arraignement, and Execution of Char[les] Courtney, alias Hollice, alias Worsley, and Clement Slie Fencer: with their Escapes and Breaking of Prison (1612)  © The British Library Board (General Reference Collection C.27.c.35). Cover design: riverdesignbooks.com

Lena Liapi

Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History

Rog u e ry IN P ri n t

Early modern England was fascinated by the figure of the rogue. The rogue, who could be a beggar or vagrant but also a cutpurse, conman, card sharp, and all-round ‘trickster’ or even a highwayman, appeared in a variety of texts including plays, ballads, romances, sermons, proclamations, and pamphlets. This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of an extensive body of rogue pamphlets published in London between the late sixteenth and late seventeenth centuries, a period which saw a burst of publications about criminals. It examines how the figure of the rogue and rogue pamphlets developed and how the pamphlets both reflected and affected readers’ perceptions of crime and morality against a backdrop of dramatic urban growth. The book reveals that rogue pamphlets were part of a wider range of popular literature which dealt with London and its early modern transformations and that they were not static representations of criminality but were shaped by the changing cultural expectations of authors, publishers, and readers. Drawing on cutting-edge research, this study represents a timely contribution to the history of the book and early modern print culture, the cultural history of crime, and the socio-cultural history of London.

Rog u e ry in P ri n t / Crime and Culture in E arly Modern London