A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors

A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors, vulgarly called vagabonds

Title page of the 1567 reprint held by the British Library.
Author	Thomas Harman
Language	Early Modern English
Genre	Rogue literature
Publisher	William Griffith
Publication date	1566
Publication place	England

A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors, vulgarly called vagabonds (shortened as Caveat) was first published in 1566 by Thomas Harman, and although no copies of that edition survive, it must have been popular, because two printers were punished by the Stationers' Company in 1567 for pirated editions. Two editions were published in 1568, and a revised edition in 1573. It is one of the fundamental texts for rogue literature.

Harman claimed to have collected his material directly from interviews with vagabonds themselves.^[1] The Caveat contained stories of vagabond life, a description of their society and techniques, a taxonomy of rogues, and a canting dictionary, which were reproduced in later works. Harman's reputation has changed since his work was first republished in the early twentieth century; A. V. Judges described him then as having "all the deftness of the trained sociologist", and the Caveat has been used as a primary source. However, historians have long doubted the reliability of his accounts of vagabond society and the use of cant. Harman has been subject to literary analysis informed by Marx, Freud and Foucault, although historian A.L. Beier suggested these "appear to be fruitful sources of fertile error".

Harman was certainly not a neutral observer; he frequently makes an explicit moral and social judgement about his subjects. These reflect a society in which sexual incontinence (that is, promiscuity) was subject to penalties in the local manor courts, the church courts and by justices of the peace in quarter sessions. It was also a society in ferment over the appropriate response to the increasing number of "masterless men". A large part of the Caveat was included in William Harrison's 16th-century work, Description of England as part of Holinshed's Chronicle.