ABSTRACT
Thomas Harman is remembered solely for his A Caueat, the warning that he transmitted to his readers by disclosing the tricks and devices of vagrant beggars. Towards the deserving poor he was charitable and generous, as he was pitiless towards those he believed to be false beggars, who under the pretence of great misery, dyseases, and other innumerable calamities which they faced. The structure of A Caueat repeats the previous models; however, the dedicatory letter is much longer than is usual in contemporary books and is less a formal dedication than a detailed introduction. One of the peculiar traits of A Caueat is that next to 'pilfering, picking and spoiling', dissimulation and disguise are the main imputations which Harman lays on vagrants. The most theatrical of them are the Egyptians or gypsies, 'depely dissembling and long hyding and couering their depe deceitfull practises' and attracting the common people 'with the strangeness of the attire on their heades'.
