London: The Biography

There were already “shamming” beggars, who counterfeited deformity or sickness, but it was not yet a trade of shame. Some of their names have come down to us from the twelfth century, among them George a Greene, Robert the Devil and William Longbeard. Reputed to be the king of London beggars, in the reign of Henry II William Longbeard sought sanctuary in St. Mary le Bow after causing disturbances in Cheapside. Eventually he was smoked out by the officers of the court, but he was one of those early outcasts whose dispossession was a mark of pride. They were people wedded to poverty and isolation, who therefore became symbols of unaccommodated humankind. “Doe we not all come into the Worlde like arrant Beggars without a rag upon us?” Thomas Dekker wrote in the early seventeenth century. “Doe we not all go out of the Worlde like Beggars, saving an old sheete to cover us? And shall we not all walke up and downe in the Worlde like Beggars, with an old Blankett pinned about?” If God made humankind in His own image, then what curious broken-down divinity did these men and women display? This was the superstitious awe which the beggars provoked in those who passed them.

In the sixteenth century first emerged “brotherhoods” of beggars, who went by such names as the Roaring Boys, the Bonaventoes, the Quarters and the Bravadoes. They collected in Whitefriars and Moorditch and Hoxton, the field of Lincoln’s Inn and the porch of St. Bartholomew the Great; the last two locations are still used by vagrants today. All of them smoked pipes, as an emblem of their status, and were well known for their violence and their drunkenness. In Coplande’s Hye Way to the Spitel Hous (1531), he depicts beggars dolefully singing along the approach to St. Paul’s from the east, and reports one beggar asking him to “make this farthyng worth a half-penny, for the fyve joyes of our blessed lady.” Thomas Harman published accounts of London beggars in pamphlet form, emphasising their more sensational attributes and exploits. Of one Richard Horwood, a Londoner, he writes: “Well nigh eighty years old, he will bite a sixpenny nail assunder with his teeth, and a bawdy drunkard to boot.” In the spring of 1545 Henry VIII issued a proclamation against vagrants and beggars who haunted “the Bancke, and such like naughtie places”; they were to be whipped, or burned, or imprisoned upon a diet of bread and water. But nothing could stop their coming. The pace of enclosures in the countryside left many unemployed and homeless, and the return of soldiers from foreign wars increased that turbulent element. To these were added the native unemployed or unemployable, “maisterless men” as they were called, to denote very firmly the fact that they were not part of the social fabric established upon hierarchy. In 1569 some thousands of “maisterless men” were imprisoned, and in the same year the citizens manned their gates in order to prevent the entry of any groups of beggars; all the barges from Gravesend, and other likely points of departure, were searched. From this period may date the doggerel

Hark hark the dogges do bark

The Beggars are coming to Town!

In a city of wealth, the insurrection of the poor is that which is most feared. In 1581 Elizabeth I was riding by Aldersgate Bars towards the fields of Islington when she was surrounded by a group of sturdy beggars “which gave the queen much disturbance.” That evening the Recorder, Fleetwood, scoured the fields and arrested seventy-four of them. Eight years later a band of five hundred beggars threatened to sack Bartholomew Fair; at the same time they held their own fair, Durrest Fair, where stolen goods were sold.

By 1600, it was estimated that there were 12,000 beggars inhabiting the city: a large group of disaffected people who alternately cajoled or threatened the other citizens. One method of assault was the “whining chorus,” complete with wooden clappers and doleful songs such as

One small piece of money-

Among us all poor wretches-

Blind and lame!

For His sake that gave all!

Pitiful Worship!

One little doit!

Their technique depended upon their terrible appearance and their whining words.