The accusation of “rogue and vagabond” made me think of the scene in Shakespeare’s King Lear where Kent attempts to pick a fight with Oswald so he can kill him. To do so, he hurls a string of insults at him:
“KENT:
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a
base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a
lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,
glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue;
one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a
bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but
the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar,
and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I
will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest
the least syllable of thy addition.”
King Lear, Act Two, Scene Two
(Oswald is initially stunned then cries for help and is rescued.)
The accusation of being a rogue and vagabond has got to be from the same medieval era.
I bet that’s the first recorded use of “son of a bitch” in the English language.
Few people realize the extent to which Ol’ Bill, and the translators of the King James Bible, invented what we now know as English.