  Vagabonds were beggars, tramps and vagrants who wandered the country without a settled home or job.

   Some vagabonds were soldiers who had been demobbed, or criminals, but most were unemployed people moving to a new town or village looking for work.

The records of the town of Warwick, for example, list among the vagabonds:

  A girl from Cheltenham going to find work as a servant.

  A man from Henley-on-Thames who said that ‘he had no trade to 
live on but is only a labourer and is come into the area to seek work 
but can find none’.

  A silk-weaver who had been to various places to seek work but was 
now heading for London.

  John Weaver of Stratford who had sold ‘small-wares and was 
robbed of them and so was now forced to go abroad (elsewhere)’.

In the Middle Ages people had not been very free to move around from place to place.

By the 1500s these restrictions had been removed and there was a lot of travel from town to town.

 How were the poor helped?

  Each village and town did try to help the genuine poor of their own parish.

  The aged, the sick and children of poor families received help to buy food, which was paid for out of the poor-rate, a local tax paid by the better-off residents.

Why did people think that vagabonds were a problem? 


In the 1500s people became worried about vagabonds for three main reasons:

 People felt that idleness was wrong. Puritan religion taught that everyone should work hard so they did not have time to be tempted to commit sins. Not working was actually seen as a crime in its own right. Most people did not object to helping the genuine poor, who could not work because they were old or sick, but were suspicious of outsiders asking for help, especially if they appeared to be healthy and fit enough to work.

  Vagrants were blamed for many crimes such as thefts, assaults 
and murders. It made sense to many people that vagrants were more likely to commit crime because that was the only way they could get money to buy food.

  Many people were worried about the cost. Each village and town raised poor-rates to help the genuine poor of their own parish. Local people did not want to spend their hard-earned money supporting the poor or idle from another parish. They wanted them to return to their own towns or villages.

  These worries were particularly acute at times of poverty when the number of unemployed and poor people, looking for work, naturally increased.

  Pamphlets that were produced about vagrants also added to people’s fears.

How did they treat vagabonds? 


Through the century governments took different measures against vagabonds.

Were the vagabonds really such a problem?

  Many ordinary citizens did live ‘in terror of the tramp’.

  The harshness of the laws against vagabonds tells us that 
landowners and the government believed that vagabonds were 
behind many crimes and were a serious danger to peace.

  Some vagabonds were undoubtedly criminals – CUT-PURSES, petty thieves and fraudulent beggars.

 There were also some gangs.

BUT most vagabonds were not a threat to law and order.

  Most vagabonds were not criminals or the devious beggars they were made out to be.

  They were genuinely poor and unemployed people looking for work.

  As the population was increasing there simply was not enough work 
for everyone.

  In some areas, changed work patterns increased the problem.

  In years of good harvests many people could only just ‘get by’ so 
when the harvest failed, bread prices went up rapidly and the poor became desperate – then they would travel in search of any kind of work.

  In the same way, workers in trades might suddenly hit a bad time when their trade went through a recession – they would then have to get on the road and look for work. 


In normal years vagrancy was not a big problem.

  The city with the greatest number of vagrants was London.

  It was the only large town in England in this period.

  Many people went there thinking that they would be bound to find 
work or that it offered good opportunities for crime.

  Even so, in 1560 the London Bridewell dealt with only 69 vagabonds.

  However, following the bad harvests of the 1570s the number of 
vagrants had grown to 209 per year.

  The late 1590s were years of even greater poverty – wages were at 
their lowest point since the year 1200.

  In 1600 the number of vagrants in London was up to 555.

  In normal years Oxford JPs dealt with 12 vagrants a year.

  In 1598 they dealt with 67.

  It was the same story in Salisbury where there were 96 vagrants in 
1598 instead of the usual 20 or fewer.

For more information click the link below:

http://www.paigntononline.com/vagrancyvagabonds/