Learn all about the Beggars' Brotherhood! How they operate, how they live, how to tell a Dell from a Hedge-Creeper, how to ""couch a hogshead"", to avoid being ""buried aloft""...Thomas Treludick, 14, in the year 1588, leaves his comfortable mansion in Cornwall and his tiresome tutor, because of resentment at his mother's remarriage. A love of the draws him to London, but en route he meets up with Luke the Red, King of Beggars, and joins up. In London no ship will have him, Luke is arrested and Tom befriended by a personable young gentleman who takes him to a house of card cheats, where he saves a fellow Cornishman from being fleeced. As a reward, Capt. Penruth takes him aboard his ship Delight of the World where he plays a part in the fight against the Spanish Armada, and where he finds out that his stepfather is a great seaman, and returns home with him, with promise that he may go to sea at 16. For boys who like unusual adventure, and tales of the sea, this makes fairly good reading.