NEWGATE
In the matter of rogues, vagabonds, and common cheats, the age of Elizabeth shows no falling off, but quite the reverse. We have little precise information on English ribauderie before this time, but now, thanks to John Awdely, Thomas Harman, Parson Hybesdrine, Thomas Dekker, Robert Greene, and others, we learn the whole art and mystery of coney-catching as practised under the Tudor dynasty. The rogues had their own language. No doubt they always had their language, as they have it now; and it varied from year to year as it varies now, but the groundwork remained the same, and, indeed, remains the same to this day. The rogues and thieves, the beggars and the impostors, are still with us. They are still accompanied by their autem morts, their walking morts, their Kynchen morts, their doxies, and their dolls, only some of those cheats are changed with the changes of the time. Under Queen Gloriana they abound in every town and in every street, they tramp along all the roads, they haunt the farm-houses, they rob the market-women and the old men. They have their ranks and their precedency. The Upright man is a captain among them; the Curtall has authority over them; the Patriarch Co-marries them until death do them part—that is to say, until they pass a carcass of any creature, when, if they choose, they shake hands and go separate ways. They are well known by profession and name at every fair throughout the country. They are Great John Gray and Little John Gray; John Stradling with the shaking head; Lawrence with the great leg; Henry Smyth, who drawls when he speaks; that fine old gentleman, Richard Horwood, who is eighty years of age and can still bite a sixpenny nail asunder with his teeth, and a notable toper still; Will Pellet, who carries the Kynchen mort at his back; John Browne, the stammerer; and the rest of them. They are all known; their backs and shoulders are scored with the nine-tailed cat; not a headborough or a constable but knows them every one. Yet they forget their prison and their whipping as soon as they are free. Those things are the little drawbacks of the profession, against which must be set freedom, no work, no masters, and no duties. Who would not go upon the budge, even though at the end there stands the three trees, up which we shall have to climb by the ladder?
The Budge it is a delicate trade,
And a delicate trade of fame;
For when that we have bit the bloe,
We carry away the game.
But when that we come to Tyburn
For going upon the Budge,
There stands Jack Catch the hangman,
That owes us all a grudge.
And when that he hath noosed us,
And our friends tip him no cole;
O then he throws us into the cart,
And tumbles us in the hole.
In the streets of London they separate and practise each in the quarter most likely to catch the gull. For instance, observe this well-dressed young gentleman, with the simple manner and the honest face, strolling along the middle-walk of Paul's. Simple as he looks, his eye glances here and there among the throng. Presently he sees a young countryman, whom he knows by the unfailing signs; he approaches the countryman; he speaks to him; in a few minutes they leave the Cathedral together and betake them to a tavern, where they dine, each paying for himself, in amity and friendship, though strangers but an hour since. Then comes into the tavern an ancient person, somewhat decayed in appearance, who sits down and calls for a stoup of ale. "Now," says the first young man, "you shall see a jest, sir." Whereupon he accosts the old gentleman, and presently proposes to throw the dice for another pot. The old man accepts, being a very simple and childlike old man, and loses—both his money and his temper. Then the countryman joins in.... After the young countryman gets home, he learns that the old man was a "fingerer" by profession, and that the young man was his confidant.
The courtesy man works where the sailors and sea-captains congregate; he accosts one who looks credulous and new; he tells him that he is one of a company, tall, proper men, all like himself—he is well-mannered; they are disbanded soldiers, masterless and moneyless; for himself he would not beg, but for his dear comrades he would do anything. When he receives a shilling he puts it up with an air of contempt, but accepts the donor's good-will, and thanks him for so much. A plausible villain, this.
Outside Aldgate, where the Essex farmers are found, the "ring faller" loves to practise his artless game. Have we not still with us the man who picks up the ring which he is willing to let us have for the tenth of its value? The Elizabethan mariner, who has been shipwrecked and lost his all, has vanished. The Tudor disbanded soldier has vanished, but the army reserve man sells his matches in the street when he cannot find the work he looks for so earnestly; the counterfeit cranker who stood at the corner of the street covered with mud, and his face besmeared with blood, as one who has just had an attack of the falling sickness, is gone, because that kind of sickness is known no longer; the "frater" who carried a forged license to beg for a hospital, is also gone; the abraham man, who pretended to be mad, is gone; the "palliard" or "clapper dodger;" the angler, who stuck a hook in a long pole and helped himself out of the open shops; the "prigger of prancers," a horse thief; the ruffler, the swigman and prigman, are also gone, but their descendants remain with us, zealous in the pursuit of kindred callings, and watched over paternally by a force 38,000 strong—about one policeman for every habitual criminal—so that, since every policeman costs £100 a year, and every criminal steals, eats, or destroys property to the same amount at least, every criminal costs the country, first, the things which he steals—say £100 a year; next, his policeman, another £100; thirdly, the loss of his own industry; and fourthly, the loss of the policeman's industry—making in all about £500 a year. It would be cheaper to lock him up.
In the matter of punishments, we have entered upon a time of greater cruelty than prevailed under the Plantagenets. Men are boiled, and women are burned for poisoning; heretics are still burned—in 1585 one thus suffered for denying the divinity of Christ; ears are nailed to the pillory and sliced off for defamation and seditious words; long and cruel whippings are inflicted—in one case through Westminster and London for forgery; an immense number are hanged every year; the chronicler Macheyn continually sets down such a fact as that on this day twelve were hanged at Tyburn, seven men and five women; mariners were hanged at low water at Wapping, for offences committed at sea; the good old custom of pillory was maintained with zeal; and the parading of backsliders in carts or on horseback was kept up. Thus, one woman for selling fry of fish, unlawful, rode triumphantly through the town with garlands of fish decorating her head and shoulders and the tail of the horse, while one went before beating a brass basin. Another woman was carried round, a distaff in her hand and a blue hood on her head, for a common scold. A man was similarly honored for selling measly pork; and another, riding with his head to the animal's tail, for doing something sinful connected with lamb and veal.