Let no one bring a charge of plagiarizing Awdeley, against Harman, for the latter, as has been shown, referred fairly to Awdeley's 'small breefe' or 'old briefe of vacabonds,' and wrote his own "bolde Beggars booke" (p. [91]) from his own long experience with them.
Harman's Caueat is too well-known and widely valued a book to need description or eulogy here. It is the standard work on its subject,—'these rowsey, ragged, rabblement of rakehelles' (p. [19])—and has been largely plundered by divers literary cadgers. No copy of the first edition seems to be known to bibliographers. It was published in 1566 or 1567,—probably the latter year,[4]—and must (I conclude) have contained less than the second, as in that's 'Harman to the Reader,' p. [28], below, he says 'well good reader, I meane not to be tedyous vnto the, but haue added fyue or sixe more tales, because some of them weare doune whyle my booke was fyrste in the presse.' He speaks again of his first edition at p. [44], below, 'I had the best geldinge stolen oute of my pasture, that I had amongst others, whyle this boke was first a printynge;' and also at p. [51], below, 'Apon Alhollenday in the morning last anno domini 1566, or my booke was halfe printed, I meane the first impression.' All Hallows' or All Saints' Day is November 1.
The edition called the second[5], also bearing date in 1567, is known to us in two states, the latter of which I have called the third edition. The first state of the second edition is shown by the Bodleian copy, which is 'Augmented and inlarged by the fyrst author here of,' and has, besides smaller differences specified in the footnotes in our pages, this great difference, that the arrangement of 'The Names of HARMAN'S CAUEAT: THE TWO STATES OF THE 2ND EDITION.the Vpright Men, Roges, and Pallyards' is not alphabetical, by the first letter of the Christian names, as in the second state of the second edition (which I call the third edition), but higgledy-piggledy, or, at least, without attention to the succession of initials either of Christian or Sur-names, thus, though in three columns:
¶ Vpright men.
- Richard Brymmysh.
- John Myllar.
- Wel arayd Richard.
- John Walchman.
- William Chamborne.
- Bryan Medcalfe.
- Robert Gerse.
- Gryffen.
- Richard Barton.
- John Braye.
- Thomas Cutter.
- Dowzabell skylfull in fence.
[&c.]
¶ Roges.
- Harry Walles with the little mouth.
- John Waren.
- Richard Brewton.
- Thomas Paske.
- George Belbarby.
- Humfrey Warde.
- Lytle Robyn.
- Lytle Dycke.
- Richard Iones.
- Lambart Rose.
- Harry Mason.
- Thomas Smithe with the skal skyn.
[&c.]