[1] The Caveat contained stories of vagabond life, a description of their society and techniques, a taxonomy of rogues, and a canting dictionary, which were reproduced in later works.

Harman's reputation has changed since his work was first republished in the early twentieth century; A. V. Judges described him then as having "all the deftness of the trained sociologist", and the Caveat has been used as a primary source.

A fellow member of the commission was responsible for the creation of the Bridewell Palace in London, and Harman was clearly acquainted with developments in law enforcement there.

The structure and processes of this mirrored those of Tudor society, with its hierarchy and sumptuary laws, and the trade guilds, with their apprenticeships and initiations ceremonies.

In this an Upright Man pours beer over the head of the initiate, with the words, "I, G.P., do stall thee, W.T., to the rogue, and that henceforth it shall be lawful for you to cant .

Such a ceremony is reproduced in later rogue literature, and in the play The Beggars Bush by Beaumont, Fletcher and Massinger, from which it was extracted by Francis Kirkman in The Wits.

Bampfylde Moore Carew includes a similar account of his own inauguration as King of the Beggars, and there was a tradition that the graves of members of the Boswell gypsy family were visited annually and beer poured onto them during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

They included domestic servants who had been dismissed, labourers seeking work, or those whose trade required travel, such as pedlars and chapmen (peddler).

Harman does seem to have had direct contact with vagabonds, while most of those who wrote later rogue literature were London based writers living in literary circles.

His introduction to that is characteristic of his literary style and social attitude:- "Here I set before the good reader the lewd, lousy language of these loitering lusks and lazy lorels, wherewith they buy and sell the common people as they pass through the country."

Harman claimed that having for twenty years kept a house on the main road to London, and having through sickness been at his home much, he had learned how to extract information from those vagabonds who called seeking alms.

His work is aimed at assisting law enforcement, and ridding the country of rogues, so that parishes can concentrate their spending on the relief of the deserving poor.

She defers the reward, in the meantime informs local "gossips", and the lecher is caught by his wife and her friends with his pants literally down and soundly beaten by them.

Taking into account the possibility of coincidences, the likelihood or apprehension, and the use of false names, this does suggest that some of Harman's information was reliable.

Harman recounts Blunt's appearance at his lodgings in Whitefriars on All Hallows Day 1566 seeking alms, naked from the waist upwards, in ragged dirty clothes, his face smeared with fresh blood feigning the "falling sickness" (probably palsy or epilepsy).

Harman checked with the keeper of the hospital who denied this, and then had Blunt followed by two boys from his printers, who saw him beg all day, renewing the blood from a bladder, and putting fresh mud on his clothes.

Having then spent a period begging in the guise of a sailor whose ship and cargo had been lost at sea, and then as "Nicholas Jennings", a well-dressed hatter who had come to London for work, Blunt happened to accost Harman's printer on New Year's Day 1567.

After denials and another escape attempt Blunt made a confession and was found to have "a pretty house" in Newington, "well furnished" and with a wife living there.