Language surrounding poverty in early modern England: Constructing seventeenth-century beggars and vagrants. This briefing concentrates upon attitudes towards a subset of poor people – a group who might today be termed beggars or vagrants. Seventeenth century vagrants were a marginalised group: they were overwhelmingly illiterate and politically powerless. By undertaking a study of them, we hope to improve our understanding of a people who were effectively voiceless in their own time. On a practical level, it is important to understand changing discourses on the poor because legislative change was influenced by changing public perceptions of poverty.

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