To know the keen inquiring Social Reformer, Thomas Harman, the reader must go to his book. He lived in the country (p. 34, foot), in [Crayford] Kent (p. 30, p. 35), near a heath (p. 35), near Lady Elizabeth Shrewsbury’s parish (p. 19), not far from London (p. 30, p. 35); ‘he lodged at the White Friars within the cloister’ (p. 51), seemingly while he was having his book printed (p. 53), and had his servant there with him (_ib._); ‘he knew London well’ (p. 54, &c.); and in Kent ‘beinge placed as a poore gentleman,’ he had in 1567, ‘kepte a house these twenty yeares, where vnto pouerty dayely hath and doth repayre,’ and where, being kept at home ‘through sickenes, he talked dayly with many of these wyly wanderars, as well men and wemmen, as boyes and gyrles,’ whose tricks he has so pleasantly set down for us. He did not, though, confine his intercourse with vagabonds to talking, for he says of some, p. 48,
¶ Some tyme they counterfet the seale of the Admiraltie. I haue diuers tymes taken a waye from them their lycences of both sortes, { viii} wyth suche money as they haue gathered, and haue confiscated the same to the pouerty nigh adioyninge to me. p. 51–6.
Our author also practically exposed these tricks, as witness his hunting out the Cranke, Nycholas Genings, and his securing the vagabond’s 13_s._ and 4_d._ for the poor of Newington parish, p. 51–6, his making the deaf and dumb beggar hear and speak, p. 58–9 (and securing his money too for the poor). But he fed deserving beggars, see p. 66, p. 20.
Though Harman tells us ‘Eloquence haue I none, I neuer was acquaynted with the Muses, I neuer tasted of Helycon’ (p. 27–8), yet he could write verses—though awfully bad ones: see them at pages 50 and 89–91, below, perhaps too at p. 26[6];—he knew Latin—see his comment on Cursetors and Vagabone, p. 27; his _una voce_, p. 43; perhaps his ‘Argus eyes,’ p. 54; his _omnia venalia Rome_, p. 60; his _homo_, p. 73; he quotes St Augustine (and the Bible), p. 24; &c.;—he studied the old Statutes of the Realm (p. 27); he liked proverbs (see the Index); he was once ‘in commission of the peace,’ as he says, and judged malefactors, p. 60, though he evidently was not a Justice when he wrote his book; he was a ‘gentleman,’ says Harrison (see p. xii. below); ‘a Iustice of Peace in Kent,[7] in Queene Marie’s daies,’ says Samuel Rowlands;[8] he bore arms (of heraldry), and had them duly stamped on his pewter dishes (p. 35); he had at least one old ‘tennant who customably a greate tyme went twise in the weeke to London, (over Blacke Heathe) eyther wyth fruite or with pescoddes’ (p. 30); he hospitably asked his visitors to dinner (p. 45); he had horses in his pasture,[9] the best gelding of which the Pryggers of Prauncers prigged (p. 44); he had an unchaste cow that went to bull every month (p. 67, if his ownership is not chaff here); he had in his ‘well-house on the backe side of { ix} his house, a great cawdron of copper’ which the beggars stole (p. 34–5); he couldn’t keep his linen on his hedges or in his rooms, or his pigs and poultry from the thieves (p. 21); he hated the ‘rascal rabblement’ of them (p. 21), and ‘the wicked parsons that keepe typlinge Houses in all shires, where they haue succour and reliefe’; and, like a wise and practical man, he set himself to find out and expose all their ‘vndecent, dolefull [guileful] dealing, and execrable exercyses’ (p. 21) to the end that they might be stopt, and sin and wickedness might not so much abound, and thus ‘this Famous Empyre be in more welth, and better florysh, to the inestymable joye and comfort’ of his great Queen, Elizabeth, and the ‘vnspeakable . . reliefe and quietnes of minde, of all her faythfull Commons and Subiectes.’ The right end, and the right way to it. We’ve some like you still, Thomas Harman, in our Victorian time. May their number grow!