If you were wandering through England in 1596, you might have bumped into a young man

who looked like he was on official business. He carried a folded sheet of parchment with all the right

flourishes and all the right signatures. He walked with the sort of confidence that suggested

that he was meant to be on the road. And that parchment, which he

presented to constables and parish officials along the way, allowed him to travel the entire

length and breadth of the kingdom without anyone stopping to question him. The problem, though,

is that that document was completely fake. Settle in, my friend,

get cozy, grab a beverage, let's chat about vagabonds and fake passports.

Hey friend, welcome back to the YouTube channel for the Renaissance English History Podcast.

I am your host, Heather.

I've been podcasting on Tudor England since 2009 with my show,

which makes it the original Tudor History podcast.

I am, as always, delighted that you are here with me today to talk about

vagabonds and fake passports. Let's dig in. I actually discovered this the other day when I did a short

minicast on Tudor Passports, and I wanted to dig into it and explore it a little bit more. It is

honestly worth an episode on its own.

So this forged passport that we were just talking about eventually landed on the desk of

Justice Edward Hext of Somerset. He was already in a mood. Hext was one of those magistrates who

actually tried to enforce the law. And by 1596, he felt as if the entire country was

just falling apart all around him. So when he caught the bearer of this passport, he wrote an

exasperated letter to the Privy Council complaining that crime was spiraling out of control.

Local officers were asleep at their posts, and this ridiculous document had survived

...