Top pop from seventeenth-century England. Broadside ballads were single-sheet songs that sold for a penny a piece. This website concentrates on over 100 resoundingly successful examples that you can investigate through recordings, images and a wealth of other materials. Whether you are interested in music, art, love, gender, tragedy, politics, family life, crime, history, humour or death, you will find something to engage you here. See also User’s Guide.

Crime - Robbery/theft  

Showing 1 to 10 of 10

10 The Norfolke Gentleman his last Will and Testament [Roxburghe 1.284-85]
18 An excellent Ballad of a Prince of England's Courtship to the/ King of France’s Daughter, and how the Prince was disasterously slain [Roxburghe 1.102-03]
43 Save a Theefe from the Gallowes and hee'l hang thee if he can [Manchester Central Library Blackletter Ballads 1.56]
48 A pretty Ballad of the Lord of Lorn, and the false Steward [Pepys 1.494-95]
54 An Excellent Ballad of George Barnwel an Apprentice in Lon-/don, who was undone by a Strumpet [Pepys 2.158-59]
55 A Warning to all lewd Livers./ By the Example of a disobedient Child [Roxburghe 3.262-63]
85 A new Ballad, intituled, The stout Cripple of Cornwal [Euing 242]
93 Ragged, and Torne, and True./ Or, the poore mans Resoltion [Roxburghe 1.352-53]
100 Luke Huttons Lamentation: which he wrote the day before his death, being/ condemned to be hanged at Yorke for his robberies and trespasses committed/ there-about [Euing 189]
115 The Crafty MISS:/ Or, An Excise man well fitted [Pepys 3.274]