If the Gipsy and other tramping, travelling “rob rats” of to-day are to become honest, industrious, and useful citizens of the future, it must be by the influence of the schoolmaster and the sanitary officer, coming to a great extent as they do between the fitful and uncertain efforts of the missionary, the relentless hands of persecution, the policeman, and the stage.
From the time the Gipsies landed in this country in 1515, down to the time when Raper’s translation of Grellmann’s work appeared in 1787, a period of 272 years, nothing seems to have been done to improve the Gipsies, except to pass laws for their extermination. The earliest notice of the Gipsies in our own country was published in a quarto volume in the year 1612, the object of which was to expose the system of fortune-telling, juggling, and legerdemain, and in which reference is made to the
Gipsies as follows:—“This kind of people about a hundred years ago beganne to gather an head, as the first heere about the southerne parts. And this, as I am imformed and can gather, was their beginning: Certain Egyptians banished their country (belike not for their good conditions) arrived heere in England, who for quaint tricks and devices, not known heere at that time among us, were esteemed and had in great admiration; insomuch that many of our English loyterers joined with them, and in time learned their crafty cosening. The speech which they used was the right Egyptian language, with whom our Englishmen conversing at least learned their language. These people continuing about the country and practising their cosening art, purchased themselves great credit among the country people, and got much by palmistry and telling of fortunes; insomuch they pitifully cosened poor country girls, both of money, silver spoons, and the best of their apparalle or other goods they could make.” And he goes on to say, “But what numbers were executed on these statutes you would wonder; yet, notwithstanding, all would not prevaile, but they wandered as before uppe and downe and meeting once a year at a place appointed; sometimes at the Peake’s Hole in Derbyshire, and other whiles by Ketbroak at Blackheath.” The annual gathering of the Gipsies and others of the same class, who make Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and neighbouring counties, their head-quarters, takes place at the well-known Bolton Fair, held about Whitsuntide, on the borders of Leicestershire, a village situated in a kind of triangle, between Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Spellman speaks of the Gipsies about this time as follows:—“The worst kind of wanderers and impostors springing up on the Continent, but yet rapidly spreading themselves through Britain and other parts of Europe, disfigured by their swarthiness, sun-burnt, filthy in their clothing and indecent in all their customs.” Under these circumstances it is not to be wondered at, in these dark ages,
that some steps should be taken to stop these lawless desperadoes and vagabonds from contaminating our English labourers’ and servant girls with their loose ideas of labour, cleanliness, honesty, morality, truthfulness, and religion. It was soon manifest what kind of strange people had begun to flock to our shores to make their domiciles among us, as will be seen in a description given of them in an Act of Parliament passed in the twenty-second year of the reign of Henry VIII., being only about seven years after their landing in Scotland, and to which I have referred before. In the tenth chapter of the said act they are described as—“An outlandish people calling themselves Egyptians, using no crafte nor feat of merchandise; who have come into this realm and gone from shire to shire and place to place in great company, and used great subtle and crafty means to deceive the people, bearing them in hand that by palmistry they could tell the men’s and women’s fortunes, and so many times by crafte and subtlety have deceived the people of their money, and also have committed many heinous felonies and robberies. Wherefore all are directed to avoid the realm and not to return under pain of imprisonment and forfeitures of their goods and chattels; and on their trials for any felonies which they may have committed they shall not be entitled to a jury.” As if this was not sufficient or as if it had not the desired effect the authors anticipated viz., in preventing other Gipsies flocking to our shores or driving those away from us who were already in our midst another act was passed in the twenty-seventh year of the same reign, more severe than the previous act, and part of it runs as follows:—“Whereas certain outlandish people, who do not profess any crafte or trade, whereby to maintain themselves, but go about in great numbers from place to pace using insidious underhand means to impose on His Majesty’s subjects, making them believe that they understand the art of foretelling to men and women their good and evil fortunes by looking in their hands, whereby they
frequently defraud people of their money; likewise are guilty of thefts and highway robberies; it is hereby ordered that the said vagrants, commonly called Egyptians, in case they remain one month in the kingdom, shall be proceeded against as thieves and rascals, and at the importation of such Egyptians (the importer) shall forfeit £40 for every trespass.”
The fine of £40 being inflicted at that time, which means a large sum at the present day, carries something more with it than the thefts committed by the Gipsies. It is evident that the Gipsies had wheedled themselves into the graces and favours of some portion of the aristocracy by their crafts and deception. If the Gipsy offences had been committed against the labouring population it would have been the height of absurdity for Parliament to have inflicted a fine of some hundreds of pounds upon the working man of the poorer classes. It has occurred to me that the question of Popery may have been one of the causes of their persecution; and it is not unlikely that wealthy Roman Catholics may have had something to do with their importation into this country. The fact is, before the Gipsies left the Continent for England they were Roman Catholic pilgrims, and going about the country doing the work of the Pope to some extent, and this may have been one of the objects of those who were opposed to the Protestant tendencies of Henry VIII. in causing them to come over to England. At this time our own country was in a very disturbed state, religiously, and no people were so suitable to work in the dark and carry messages from place to place as the Gipsies, especially if by so doing they could make plenty of plunder out of it; and this idea I have hinted at before as one of their leading characteristics. It should not be overlooked that telegraphs, railways, stagecoaches, and canals had not been established at this time, consequently for the Gipsies to be moving about the country from village to village under a cloak, as they appeared to the
higher powers, was sufficient to make them the subjects of bitter persecution. For the Gipsies to have openly avowed that they were Roman Catholics before landing upon our shores, would in all probability have defeated the object of those who induced—if induced—them to come over to Britain. At any rate, we may, I think, fairly assume that this feature of their character, an addition to their fortune-telling proclivities, may have been one of the causes of their persecution, and in this view I am to some extent supported by circumstances.
During the reign of Henry VIII. a number of Gipsies were sent back to France, and in the book of receipts and payments of the thirty-fifth of the same reign the following entries are made:—“Nett payments, 1st Sept., 36 of Henry VIII. Item, to Tho. Warner, Sergeant of the Admyraltie, 10th Sept., for victuals prepared for a shippe appointed to convey certaine Egupeians, 58s. Item, to the same Tho. Warner, to the use of John Bowles for freight of said shippe, £6 5s. 0d. Item, to Robt. ap Rice, Esq., Shriff of Huntingdon, for the charge of the Egupeians at a special gailo delivery, and the bringing of them to be carreied over the sees; over and besides the sum of £4 5s. 0d. groming of seventeen horses sold at five shillings the peice as apperythe by a particular book, £17 17s. 7d. Item, to Will. Wever, appointed to have the charge of the conduct of the said Egupeians to Callis, £5.”
In 1426 a first-rate horse was worth about £1 6s. 8d., and a colt 4s. 6d. Twenty-two years later the hay of an acre of land was worth about £5.
There were several acts passed relating to the Gipsies during the reign of Philip and Mary, and fifth of Elizabeth, by which it states—“If any person, being fourteen years old, whether natural born subject or stranger, who had been seen in the fellowship of such persons, or had disguised himself like them, or should remain with them one month at once or several times, it should be felony without the benefit of the clergy.” Wraxall, in his “History of France,” vol. ii.,