“If tinkers may have leave to live
And bear the sowskin budget.”
This inn, then, is certainly very modest in its pretensions; but we shall descend lower still. Even “poor Tom’s flock of wild geese,” otherwise Tom of Bedlam, we have now to introduce. We find him at Balsall, Warwick, and no doubt it was formerly not an uncommon sign, since he was such a favourite in ballads; the Merry Tom, at Kirkcumbeck, Cumberland, evidently refers to the same individual. Notwithstanding all the fantastic ballads that went under Tom’s name, he was but a sorry rogue. Randle Holme[536] says:—
“The Sow gelder and Tom of Bedlam are both wandering knaves alike, and such as are seldom or never out of their way, having their home in any place. The first is described as carrying a long staff, with a head like[370] a spear or a half pike, and a horn hung by his side from a broad leather belt or girdle cross his shoulders. Tom of Bedlam is in the same garb, with a long staff, and a Cow or Ox Horn by his side, but his cloathing is more fantastic or ridiculous, for being a mad man he is madly decked and dressed all over with Rubins, Feathers, cuttings of cloth and what not; to make him seem a madman or one distracted, when he is no other but a dissembling knave.”
“The Canting Academy,” 1674, gives them a similar attire and character:—
“Abram-men, otherwise called Tom of Bedlams; they are very strangely and antickly garbed, with several coloured ribands or tape in their hats, it may be instead of a feather, a fox tail hanging down a long stick, with ribands streaming and the like; yet for all their seeming madness they have wit enough to steal as they go.”[537]
Aubrey says:—
“Before the Civil Warre, I remember Tom o’ Bedlams went about a begging. They had been such as had been in Bedlam and there recovered and come to some degree of soberness, and when they were licensed to goe out they had on their left arme an armilla of tinne (printed) about three inches breadth, which was sodered on.”[538]
This permission, if ever it was granted, was retracted after the Restoration, for in the year 1675 the London Gazette contained in several numbers the following advertisement:—
“Whereas several Vagrant Persons do wander about the city of London and countries, pretending themselves to be Lunaticks under cure in the Hospitall of Bethlem, commonly called Bedlam, with brass plates upon their arms and inscriptions thereon, These are to give notice that there is no such liberty given to any Patients kept in the Hospital for their cure, neither is any such plate as a distinction or mark put upon any Lunatick during their being there or when discharged thence. And that the same is a false pretence to colour their wandering and begging and deceive the people to the dishonour of the Government of that Hospital.”
Not only men but also women of a roving disposition, adopted poor Tom’s horn, and went wandering, begging, and pilfering under the name of Bess of Bedlam, which is still seen as a sign in Oak Street, Norwich. Bess was an old companion of poor Tom, for in the play of King Lear, Tom sings a snatch of a song with the words, “Come over the bourn, Bessy, to me,” and in the jollities of Plough Monday the fool and Bessy are two of the principal personages.[539]