Vagrancy in English Culture and Society, 1650-1750

David Hitchcock is Lecturer in History at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK.

• Introduction: Sticks, Stones, Broken Bones1. The Assumption of Idleness: Definitions of and Responses to Vagrancy in England2. ‘Rogue Ballads’ and Popular Perceptions of Vagrancy3. ‘Rogue’s Redemption’: Vagrancy, Marginalisation and Escape in English Literature4. The Hidden Histories of the Mobile Poor: Casual Relief and Roadside Subsistence5. Masterless Women: Domestic Service and Female Subsistence MobilityConclusions: The Pillory and the Whipping PostBibliographyIndex

Hitchcock (Canterbury Christ Church Univ., UK) provides the first substantial investigation of vagrancy in English culture and society from 1650 to 1750, building on the groundbreaking scholarship of A.L. Beier, who examined rootlessness in England during the century previous (Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560-1640, 1985). Hitchcock is to be commended for giving vivid voice to the most marginal and historically ephemeral of human populations. His work offers a highly readable and marvelously constructed social and cultural analysis of vagrancy grounded on a rich source base of royal proclamations, newspapers, pamphlets, court records, constabulary accounts, and popular ballads. The first half of the monograph explores the cultural construction of the vagrant, while the second gives a social history of vagrancy and subsistence mobility. Along the way, Hitchcock challenges a number of historiographic assumptions, namely, that contemporaries made clear-cut distinctions between vagrants and poor migrants; that English vagrancy declined in the decades following 1662; and that men constituted the vast body of vagrants in early modern England. This well-organized, highly accessible account will be of interest to all students of early modern culture, society, and gender. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.