Rogue (vagrant)

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The word rogue, a cultural icon of villainy and criminality, was first recorded in print in Thomas Awdeley’s Fraternity of Vagabonds (1561), and then in Thomas Harman’s Caveat for Common Cursitors.

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 of an inch" 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.

In modern English usage, the term 'rogue' can be used to describe an independent person who occasionally shirks conventional rules and methods of conduct in favor of personal goals or values. A rogue will usually operate on his own self-contrived values system which inevitably collides with those of the organizations or the society which he is part of.

An example would be a former member of a military organization "going rogue" to pursue paramilitary or soldier of fortune goals, or at worst, becoming a criminal. Another example would be a "rogue programmer" not following established development practices or guidelines in an organization, rather accomplishing his own goals by his own methods.