href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@38850@[email protected]#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[30] minstrels, iugglers, pedlers, tinkers, pretensed[31] schollers, shipmen, prisoners gathering for fees, and others, so oft as they be taken without sufficient licence. From [32]among which companie our bearewards are not excepted, and iust cause: for I haue read that they haue either voluntarilie, or for want of power to master their sauage beasts, beene occasion of the death and deuoration of manie children in sundrie countries by which they haue passed, whose parents neuer knew what was become of them. And for that cause there is and haue beene manie sharpe lawes made for bearwards in Germanie, wherof you may read in other. But to our roges.[32] Each one also that harboreth or aideth them with meat or monie, is taxed and compelled to fine with the queene's maiestie for euerie time that he dooth so succour them, as it THE GROUNDWORKE OF CONNY-CATCHING, 1592.shall please the iustices of peace to assigne, so that the taxation exceed not twentie shillings, as I haue beene informed. And thus much of the poore, and such prouision as is appointed for them within the realme of England."

Among the users of Harman's book, the chief and coolest was the author of The groundworke of Conny-catching, 1592, who wrote a few introductory pages, and then quietly reprinted almost all Harman's book with an 'I leaue you now vnto those which by Maister Harman are discouered' (p. 103, below). By this time Harman was no doubt dead.—Who will search for his Will in the Wills Office?—Though Samuel Rowlands was alive, he did not show up this early appropriator of Harman's work as he did a later one. As a kind of Supplement to the Caueat, I have added, as the 4th tract in the present volume, such parts of the Groundworke of Conny-catching as are not reprinted from Harman. The Groundworke has been attributed to Robert Greene, but on no evidence (I believe) except Greene's having written a book in three Parts on Conny-catching, 1591-2, and 'A Disputation betweene a Hee Conny-catcher and a Shee Conny-catcher, whether a Theafe or a Whore is most hvrtfull in Cousonage to the Common-wealth,' 1592.[33] Hearne's copy of the Groundworke is bound up in the 2nd vol. of Greene's Works, among George III.'s books in the British Museum, as if it really was Greene's.

Another pilferer from Harman was Thomas Dekker, in his Belman of London, 1608, of which three editions were published in the same year (Hazlitt). But Samuel Rowlands found him out and showed him up. From the fifth edition of the Belman, the earliest that our copier, Mr W. M. Wood, could find in the British Museum, he has drawn up the following account of the book: