The Oxford English Dictionary’s present entry for Beggars Bush reads:
(The name of) a tree used by beggars for shelter. Hence allusively: extreme poverty or destitution.
This is not justified by any evidence. It would be closer if the “hence” was reversed – the suggestion there was a tree used as shelter by beggars comes from the allusive use. But the OED cites no usages before Greene in 1592, so it misses the earlier allusive references by Jane Anger, Martin Marprelate, and Henry Porter.
From 1887 until this new definition the Oxford English Dictionary was closer, but still incorrect, because it relied on the compilers of earlier dictionaries. It conflated the allusive usage, the tree on Saxton’s map and the erroneous ‘rendezvous for beggars’ for which there is no evidence. There is no reliable basis for a link between actual beggars and the Huntingdon site, or any others. It gave under Beggars:
8. Special combinations. . . “beggar’s-bush, a bush under which a beggar finds shelter (name of ‘a tree near Huntingdon, formerly a noted rendezvous for beggars’ – Brewer), fig. beggary, ruin;”.
This was taken from E. Cobham Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1868 and all editions until recently when the entry was dropped) which gave;
“Beggars Bush. To go by beggar’s bush, or Go home by beggar’s bush – i.e. to go to ruin. Beggar’s Bush is the name of a tree which once stood on the left hand of the London road from Huntingdon to Caxton; so called because it was a noted rendezvous for beggars. These punning phrases and proverbs are very common.”
Through the influence of these two reference works this has been applied as a post facto explanation for the existence of the place name — see for example Donnybrook, Dublin and the histories of Dublin).
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