PREFACE.
If the ways and slang of Vagabonds and Beggars interested Martin Luther enough to make him write a preface to the Liber Vagatorum[1] in 1528, two of the ungodly may be excused for caring, in 1869, for the old Rogues of their English land, and for putting together three of the earliest tracts about them. Moreover, these tracts are part of the illustrative matter that we want round our great book on Elizabethan England, Harrison's Description of Britain, and the chief of them is quoted by the excellent parson who wrote that book.
The first of these three tracts, Awdeley's Fraternitye of Vacabondes, has been treated by many hasty bibliographers, who can never have taken the trouble to read the first three leaves of Harman's book, as later than, and a mere pilfering from, Harman's Caueat. No such accusation, however, did Harman himself bring against the worthy printer-author (herein like printer-author Crowley, though he was preacher too,) who preceded him. In his Epistle dedicatory to the Countes of Shrewsbury, p. [20], below, Harman, after speaking of 'these wyly wanderers,' vagabonds, says in 1566 or 1567,
There was a fewe yeares since a small bréefe setforth of some zelous man to his countrey,—of whom I knowe not,—that made a lytle shewe of there names and vsage, and gaue a glymsinge lyghte, not sufficient to perswade of their peuishe peltinge and pickinge practyses, but well worthy of prayse.
AWDELEY'S FRATERNITYE OF VACABONDES.
This description of the 'small bréefe,' and the 'lytle shewe' of the 'names and vsage,' exactly suits Awdeley's tract; and the 'fewe yeares since' also suits the date of what may be safely assumed to be the first edition of the Fraternitye, by John Awdeley or John Sampson, or Sampson Awdeley,—for by all these names, says Mr Payne Collier, was our one man known:—
It may be disputed whether this printer's name were really Sampson, or Awdeley: he was made free of the Stationers' Company as Sampson, and so he is most frequently termed towards the commencement of the Register; but he certainly wrote and printed his name Awdeley or Awdelay; now and then it stands in the Register 'Sampson Awdeley.' It is the more important to settle the point, because ... he was not only a printer, but a versifier,[2] and ought to have been included by Ritson in his Bibliographica Poetica. (Registers of the Stationers' Company, A.D. 1848, vol. i. p. 23.)
These verses of Awdeley's, or Sampson's, no doubt led to his 'small bréefe' being entered in the Stationers' Register as a 'ballett':
"1560-1. Rd. of John Sampson, for his lycense for pryntinge of a ballett called the description of vakaboundes ... iiijd.