Vagrancy in English Culture and Society, 1650-1750.

Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- List of Tables -- Acknowledgements -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction: Sticks, Stones, Broken Bones -- Masterless Men -- Being vagrant in England between 1650 and 1750 -- Definitions: Rogue, vagrant, and vagabond -- Stereotyping, sexuality, and space -- A cultural and social history of vagrancy -- The arguments -- 1. The Assumption of Idleness -- Idleness, the 'path of mistake' -- The argument -- Indenture and the unsettled state -- Transport and impressment -- Improvement and idleness -- Improvement by the numbers -- Identification and vagrant news -- Conclusions: The assumption endures -- 2. Rogue Ballads -- Cheap print and popular roguery -- Ballads as a historical source and the problems of historical laughter -- 'Carefree' by choice -- 'Mending kettles handsomely' -- 'Forlorn travellers' -- 'Revenge a widdowe's wrong' -- Health as morality -- Vagrancy in ballad woodcuts -- Conclusions -- 3. Hidden Histories: Vagrancy, Migration, and Crisis in Local England, 1650-1750 -- Introduction -- Settlement, migration, and demography -- Constables' accounts and their ambiguities -- Quantifying social description -- Dalton's Countrey Justice and Gardiner's Compleat Constable -- A case study of Grandborough, Warwickshire: 1671-1704 -- The paid private contractor -- Quarter sessions, petty sessions, and (mis)classification -- Vagrant stories, vagrant spaces -- 4. Masterless Women: The Female Vagrant in English Culture and Society, 1650-1750 -- Picaras and precarity -- The gendering of homelessness -- Vagrancy, sex, and domestic service -- Masterless women with children -- Absent husband: Vagrant wife -- 'Why Do You Not Take Us Up?' Ann West, Mary Davis, and one vagrant family -- Conclusions -- Conclusion: 'But Words Will Never Hurt Me' -- 'The beggar-king of Ithaca'.

Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.