Cutting Ball

"Cutting" Ball was a notorious criminal during the Elizabethan Age.^[1] (His name came from a "cutpurse", a thief.)

Thomas Nashe mentions a ballad written about him, which doesn't survive.^[2] His sister Em was the mistress of writer Robert Greene. Greene, who wrote much about the London underworld, once hired Ball as a bodyguard.^[3]

Ball was hanged at Tyburn.

Sources

1. ^ Will in the World. Stephen Greenblatt. W. W. Norton & Company, 2004. page 205.
2. ^ Works of Thomas Nashe. Ronald Brunlees McKerrow, ed. Sidgwick & Jackson, 1910. Volume 3, Page 55. See notes.
3. ^ "Robert Greene: King of the Paper Stage," Stephanie Hopkins Hughes. page 14.