The Frater—in the name we seem to catch a memory of the extinct Friar—carried at his girdle a black box, in which there was a licence (forged) to beg.
The Abram man was one who feigned to have been mad, and to have been kept in Bedlam for a term of years.
The Freshwater Mariner or Whipjack was a beggar who pretended to be a sailor on his way to get a ship; or who had recently been shipwrecked; or who had been robbed by pirates; and who showed a forged writing signed, as it seemed, by men of substance and position confirming his story.
The Counterfeit Crank was a pretended epileptic. He carried a piece of white soap, which he put into his mouth to represent the epileptic foam. Harman draws a lively picture of such a man. He begged about the Temple, his face covered with blood and his rags with mud and dirt. At noon he repaired to the back of Clement’s Inn, where in a lane leading to the fields he renewed the blood on his face from a bladder which he had with him, and daubed his jerkin and hose again with mud. A certain printer watched him: in the evening he took a boat across the river; the printer followed him and caused him to be taken up in St. George’s Fields as a common beggar. They took him to the Constable’s house, where they stripped off his rags, showing him to be a healthy and comely man with no sign of any disease; in his pockets they found the sum of thirteen shillings, three pence, and a halfpenny; they gave him an old cloak of the Constable’s, in which he sat by the fire and drank three quarts of beer; after which he threw off the cloak and ran away naked. But they found out where he lived, viz. in a “pretty house, well stuffed, with a fair joined table, and a fair cupboard garnished with pewter.” So they took him to Bridewell, where they painted him, first in his disguise, and next in his proper attire. Then they whipped him through London and brought him back to Bridewell, where he stayed till they thought fit to let him go.
The Dommerar pretended to be dumb: he carried a forged licence, and generally pretended to have lost his tongue. One of them was, unluckily for himself, caught by a surgeon, who proved that he had a tongue though he had neatly folded it away somewhere; and as the fellow still would not speak, the surgeon tortured him till he did. This done, they haled him before the magistrate, who administered the usual medicine.
The Drunken Tinker’s career may be dismissed; so may that of the Pedlar; the Jackman made false writings and forgeries.
The “Demander for Glymmar” was a woman who pretended to have been burned out, and carried a begging licence.
The Basket women carried laces, pins, needles and girdles for sale. They bought coney skins and they stole linen from the hedges.
The “Autem Morte” and the “Walking Morte” were also pedlars, and of evil repute.
The Doxy was the companion and the confederate of the Upright Man.