or abbey-loon, subs. (old).—An idler; a vagabond: orig. (prior to the Reformation) a lazy monk or hanger-on to a religious house. Hence ABBEY-LUBBER-LIKE = lazy, thriftless, ne’er-do-well. See LUBBER.
1509. BARCLAY, Poems [Percy Society, xxii., p. xxxvi.]. [An] ABBEY LOWNE or limnier of a monke.
1538. T. STARKEY, England in the Reign of King Henry the Eighth (1871), 131. The nuryschyng also of a grete sorte of idul ABBEY-LUBBARYS, wych are apte to no thyng but, as the byschoppys and abbotys be, only to ete and drynke?
1563. The Burnynge of Paules Church [HALLIWELL]. The most of that which they did bestow was on the riche, and not the poore indede … but lither LUBBERS that might worke and would not. In so much that it came into a commen proverbe to call him an ABBAY-LUBBER, that was idle, wel fed, a long lewd lither loiterer, that might worke and would not.
1570. BARNABE GOOGE, Popish Kingdome, ii. 21. So ABBY LUBBER LYKE they liue & Lordes they called bee.
1589. NASHE, The Anatomie of Absurditie, in Works [GROSART, i. 14]. Those exiled ABBIE-LUBBERS, from whose idle pens, proceded those worne out impressions of the feyned no where acts, of Arthur of the rounde table.
1611. COTGRAVE, Dictionarie, s.v. Archimarmitonerastique: m. An ABBEY-LUBBER, or Arch-frequenter of the Cloyster beefe-pot, or beefe-boyler.
1648. HERRICK, Hesperides, ‘The Temple,’ i. 128. Of Cloyster-Monks they have enow, I, and their ABBY-LUBBERS, too.
1655. FULLER, The Church History of Britain, I. v. 28. Abbey labourers, not ABBEY-LUBBERS like their Successours in after-Ages.
1680. DRYDEN, Spanish Friar, iii. 3. This is … no huge, overgrown ABBEY LUBBER; this is but a diminutive SUCKING friar.
1693. W. ROBERTSON, Phraseologia Generalis, 446, A porridge-belly Friar, an ABBEY LUBBER.
1705. HICKERINGILL, Priest-Craft, Its Character and Consequences, II. iv. 45. The Dissolutions of Monasteries, (that fed ABBY-LUBBERS and wanton Nuns, and truly, legally and justly lapsed to the Crown).
