vagrance

English

Noun

vagrance (uncountable)

1. (archaic) Vagrancy, wandering.
   • 1601, John Legat, printer to the University of Cambridge (publisher), Ease for Overseers of the Poore: Abstracted from the Statutes [1]

     […] but as they have wavering and straying mindes, so they will have wandering and unstaid bodies, which will sooner be disposed to vagrance than activitie, to idlenesse than to worke.

   • 1801, Samuel Johnson, The Rambler‎^[2]:

     Locke […] urged the necessity of a trade to men of all ranks and professions, that when the mind is weary with its proper task, it may be relaxed by a slighter attention to some mechanical operation; and that while the vital functions are resuscitated and awakened by vigorous motion, the understanding may be restrained from that vagrance and dissipation by which it relieves itself after a long intenseness of thought, unless some allurement be presented that may engage application without anxiety.

   • 1913, Carl Shurz (Frederic Bancroft editor), Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz [3]

     Here vagrance laws were enacted calculated to tie the colored laborer to his late owner by the most arbitrary legal obligations.