Our author also practically exposed these tricks, as witness his hunting out the Cranke, Nycholas Genings, and his securing the vagabond’s 13⁠s. and 4⁠d. for the poor of Newington parish, p. [51]–6, his making the deaf and dumb beggar hear and speak, p. [58]–9 (and securing his money too for the poor). But he fed deserving beggars, see p. [66], p. [20].

Though Harman tells us ‘Eloquence haue I none, I neuer was acquaynted with the Muses, I neuer tasted of Helycon’ (p. [27]–8), yet he could write verses—though awfully bad ones: see them at pages [50] and [89]–91, below, perhaps too at p. [26][6];—he knew Latin—see his comment on Cursetors and Vagabone, p. [27]; his una voce, p. [43]; perhaps his ‘Argus eyes,’ p. [54]; his omnia venalia Rome, p. [60]; his homo, p. [73]; he quotes St Augustine (and the Bible), p. [24]; &c.;—he studied the old Statutes of the Realm (p. [27]); he liked proverbs (see the Index); he was once ‘in commission of the peace,’ as he says, and judged malefactors, p. [60], though he evidently was not a Justice when he wrote his book; he was a ‘gentleman,’ says Harrison (see p. [xii]. below); ‘a Iustice of Peace in Kent,[7] in Queene Marie’s daies,’ says Samuel Rowlands;[8] he bore arms (of heraldry), and had them duly stamped on his pewter dishes (p. [35]); he had at least one old ‘tennant who customably a greate tyme went twise in the weeke to London, (over Blacke Heathe) eyther wyth fruite or with pescoddes’ (p. [30]); he hospitably asked his visitors to dinner (p. [45]); he had horses in his pasture,[9] the best gelding of which the Pryggers of Prauncers prigged (p. [44]); he had an unchaste cow that went to bull every month (p. [67], if his ownership is not chaff here); he had in his ‘well-house on the backe side of {ix} his house, a great cawdron of copper’ which the beggars stole (p. [34]–5); he couldn’t keep his linen on his hedges or in his rooms, or his pigs and poultry from the thieves (p. [21]); he hated the ‘rascal rabblement’ of them (p. [21]), and ‘the wicked parsons that keepe typlinge Houses in all shires, where they haue succour and reliefe’; and, like a wise and practical man, he set himself to find out and expose all their ‘vndecent, dolefull [guileful] dealing, and execrable exercyses’ (p. [21]) to the end that they might be stopt, and sin and wickedness might not so much abound, and thus ‘this Famous Empyre be in more welth, and better florysh, to the inestymable joye and comfort’ of his great Queen, Elizabeth, and the ‘vnspeakable . . reliefe and quietnes of minde, of all her faythfull Commons and Subiectes.’ The right end, and the right way to it. We’ve some like you still, Thomas Harman, in our Victorian time. May their number grow!

Thus much about Harman we learn from his book and his literary contemporaries and successors. If we now turn to the historian of his county, Hasted, we find further interesting details about our author: 1, that he lived in Crayford parish, next to Erith, the Countess of Shrewsbury’s parish; 2, that he inherited the estates of Ellam, and Maystreet, and the manor of Mayton or Maxton; 3, that he was the grandson of Henry Harman, Clerk of the Crown, who had for his arms ‘Argent, a chevron between 3 scalps sable,’ which were no doubt those stampt on our Thomas’s pewter dishes; 4, that he had a ‘descendant,’—a son, I presume—who inherited his lands, and three daughters, one of whom, Bridget, married Henry Binneman—? not the printer, about 1565–85 A.D., p. [vi]–vii, above.

Hasted in his description of the parish of Crayford, speaking of Ellam, a place in the parish, says:—

“In the 16th year of K. Henry VII. John Ellam alienated it (the seat of Ellam) to Henry Harman, who was then Clerk of the Crown,[10] and {x} who likewise purchased an estate called Maystreet here, of Cowley and Bulbeck, of Bulbeck-street in this parish, in the 20th year of King Edward IV.[11] On his decease, William Harman, his son, possessed both these estates.[12] On his decease they descended to Thomas Harman, esq., his son; who, among others, procured his lands to be disgavelled, by the act of the 2 & 3 Edw. VI.[13] He married Millicent, one of the daughters of Nicholas Leigh, of Addington, in the county of Surry, esq.[14] His descendant, William Harman, sold both these places in the reign of K. James I. to Robert Draper, esqr.”—History of Kent, vol. i. p. 209.

The manor of Maxton, in the parish of Hougham “passed to Hobday, and thence to Harman, of Crayford; from which name it was sold by Thomas Harman to Sir James Hales. . . . . William Harman held the manor of Mayton, alias Maxton, with its appurtenances, of the Lord Cheney, as of his manor of Chilham, by Knight’s service. Thomas Harman was his son and heir: Rot. Esch. 2 Edw. VI.”—Hasted’s History of Kent, vi. p. 47.

“It is laid down as a rule, that nothing but an act of parliament can change the nature of gavelkind lands; and this has occasioned several [acts], for the purpose of disgavelling the possessions of divers gentlemen in this county. . . . . One out of several statutes made for this purpose is the 3rd of Edw. VI.”—Hasted’s History of Kent, vol. i. p. cxliii.

And in the list of names given,—taken from Robinson’s Gavelkind—twelfth from the bottom stands that of THOMAS HARMAN.