Parson Haben

Parson Haben is a little-known early English writer associated with A Sermon in Praise of Thieves and Thievery, a short piece included in later editions of Awdeley’s Fraternitye of Vacabondes, Harman’s Caueat, Haben’s Sermon, &c. Project Gutenberg lists him under the alias Parson Hyberdyne, and the collection presents him alongside John Awdeley and Thomas Harman.

Very little reliable biographical information appears to survive about him as an individual. Even standard public book records mainly identify him by that single surviving work or alias rather than by clear dates, birthplace, or a fuller life story.

What makes him interesting today is the company he keeps: his writing belongs to a cluster of Elizabethan texts about rogues, beggars, and criminal life. Read now, it feels less like a polished author profile and more like a rare surviving voice from the margins of early modern English print culture.