History of Rogues

The word "rogue" was first recorded in print in John Awdeley’s Fraternity of Vagabonds (1561), and then in Thomas Harman’s Caveat for Common Cursitors (1566).
The 1572 Vagabond Act defined a rogue as a healthy person who has no land, no master, and no legitimate trade or source of income; it included rogues in the class of idle vagrants or vagabonds. If a person was apprehended as a rogue, he would be stripped to the waist, whipped until bleeding, and a hole "about the compass [circumference] of an inch"[citation needed] would be burned through the cartilage of his right ear. A rogue who committed a second offence, unless taken in by someone who would give him work for one year, could face execution as a felon. A third-offence perpetrator would only escape death if someone hired him for two years.

The 1598 Vagabond Act banished and transplanted "incorrigible and dangerous rogues" overseas, and the 1604 Act commanded that rogues be branded with the letter "R" on their bodies.