The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Mendicancy \Men"di*can*cy\, n.
   The condition of being mendicant; beggary; begging. --Burke.
   [1913 Webster]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

mendicancy
    n 1: the state of being a beggar or mendicant; "they were
         reduced to mendicancy" [syn: beggary, mendicancy,
         mendicity]
    2: a solicitation for money or food (especially in the street by
       an apparently penniless person) [syn: beggary, begging,
       mendicancy]

Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:

33 Moby Thesaurus words for "mendicancy":
   bare cupboard, bare subsistence, beggarliness, beggary, begging,
   bumming, cadging, deprivation, destitution, empty purse,
   grinding poverty, gripe, hand-to-mouth existence, homelessness,
   impoverishment, indigence, lack, mendicity, moneylessness,
   mooching, necessitousness, necessity, need, neediness, panhandling,
   pauperism, pauperization, penury, pinch, privation, scrounging,
   sponging, want