Daily Life in Elizabethan England by Jeffrey L. Forgeng Read Free Book Online Page B

Cursitors (1566) offers a canting conversation between two of these vagabonds:
    Bene Lightmans to thy quarroms! In what libken hast thou libbed in this darkmans, whether in a libbege or in the strummel?
    Good morrow to thy body! In what house hast thou lain in all night, whether in a bed or in the straw?
    I couched a hogshead in a skipper this darkmans.
    I lay me down to sleep in a barn this night.
    I tour the strummel trine upon thy nab-cheat and togeman. . . . Bring we to Rome-vill, to nip a bung; so shall we have lour for the bousing-ken. And when we bring back to the dewse-a-vill, we will filch some duds off the ruffmans or mill the ken for a lag of duds.
    I see the straw hang upon thy cap and coat. . . . Go we to London to cut a purse; then shall we have money for the alehouse. And when we come back again into the country, we will steal some linen clothes off some hedges, or rob some house for a buck [laundry-tub] of clothes.5
    The cutpurse alluded to here typically wore a horn sheath on his thumb and carried a small knife, so that he could cut people’s purses off their WILLIAM FLEETWOOD, CITY RECORDER OF LONDON,
    DESCRIBES A SCHOOL FOR CUTPURSES IN 1585
    One Wotton, a gentleman born, and sometime a merchant man of good
    credit, who falling by time into decay, kept an alehouse at Smart’s Quay, near Billingsgate, and after for some misdemeanor being put down, he reared up a new trade of life, and in this same house he procured all the cutpurses about this city to repair to his same house. There was a school house set up to learn young boys to cut purses. There was hung up two devices: the one was a pocket, the other was a purse. The pocket had in it certain counters and was hung about with hawks’ bells, and over the top did hang a little sacring bell; and he that could take a counter without any noise was allowed to be a “Public Foister”; and he that could take a piece of silver out of the purse without the noise of any bells, he was adjudged a “Judicial Nipper.”
    Note that a foister is a pickpocket, and a nipper is termed a pickpurse, or a cutpurse.
    R. H. Tawney and Eileen Power, eds., Tudor Economic Documents (London: Longmans, 1924), 2.337–8.
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    Daily Life in Elizabethan England
    belts by slicing against his thumb. Pickpockets would actually filch valuables out of his victims’ pockets (the word filch, as the dialogue suggests, comes from the dialect of the Elizabethan rogue). Such thieves especially frequented crowded places like markets, fairs, and public spectacles.

SOCIAL STABILITY AND AMBITION
    In principle, Elizabethan society was a rigid and orderly hierarchy that discouraged the pursuit of personal advancement. People were expected to live within the social class of their parents, a man following his father’s vocation or one comparable to it, a woman marrying into a family similar in status to the one in which she was born. Each person was supposed to fit into a stable social network, remaining in place to preserve the steady state of society as a whole.
    The realities were much more complex. It was not always easy to be certain of a person’s social status. Formal titles could be verified, as in the case of a nobleman, a knight, or a freeman in a guild. The less formal distinctions, such as between an esquire and a gentleman, or between a gentleman and a yeoman, were not always so clear. A prosperous yeoman might hold more land than a minor gentleman; by subletting it to tenants of his own, he could live off the rents and slip into the gentlemanly class.
    Successful merchants often used their profits to purchase land and make themselves gentlemen. For women, the opportunities for advancement were more limited, since they were generally not in a position to accumulate wealth or power independent of a husband, although a woman
    might advance in society if she managed to marry a man of significantly higher social station. Meanwhile, a gentleman who acquired excessive debts might slide down