[12] The language used by Bunyan in describing who and what he was, was so comprehensive and graphic that by using the word “Gipsy” he would have confused his reader, for in that case he would have had to explain its meaning as applicable to himself. This would have been foreign to his subject, and, in the face of the legal responsibility, would have compromised his personal safety, and proved a bar to his usefulness, or standing in society, as illustrated by the aversion on the part of so many to investigate the idea to-day. He said that his “descent was well known to many.” Did not that imply that he had been more precise to many in private, but would not use a word in his Grace Abounding? This heading was very expressive when we consider that many would almost seem to think that the “Gipsy tribe,” or those possessing Gipsy blood, are outside of “God’s covenanted mercies.” According to Mr. Brown, Bunyan’s language, as we shall see, “might simply mean that his father was a poor man in a village!” and that in ascertaining who he was, “I have really nothing to go upon but Bunyan’s own words” about himself (which is not a fact), as if these had no bearing on the question, and were not worth listening to, and possessed no meaning!
[13] Dated 8th September, 1882.
[14a] Mr. Borrow, in his Gipsies in Spain, gives a very graphic account of the result of a marriage between a Spaniard and a Gipsy woman. I have alluded to it, in the Disquisition on the Gipsies, as “a very fine illustration of this principle of half-breed ultra Gipsyism,” that of “an officer in the Spanish army adopting a young female Gipsy child, whose parents had been executed, and educating and marrying her. A son of this marriage, who rose to be a captain in the service of Donna Isabel, hated the white race so intensely as, when a child, to tell his father that he wished he (his father) was dead. At whose door must the cause of such a feeling be laid? . . . This is certainly an extreme instance of the result of the prejudice against the Gipsy race; and no opinion can be formed upon it without knowing some of the circumstances connected with the feelings of the father, or his relations, toward the mother and the Gipsy race generally” (p. 372).
[14b] This Thomas Bonyon might not have been born till many years after 1502, as I have explained at page 18.
[15a] “Easily explained,” indeed, by his father having been “simply a poor man in a village.”
[15b] Mr. Brown in his letter acknowledges having received these pamphlets. I did not send them with the object of enlightening him on the subject under review. I have not been able to see his book on the Bunyan Festival. It is very likely that I would find matter in it for comment.
[16a] It reads very candidly when it is said that “none of Bunyan’s admirers would object to his being shown to be a Gipsy, if only sufficient proof were adduced.” The real position is, that Bunyan’s admissions as to what he was and was not, and his calling and surroundings, show that he was of the Gipsy race; and “proof” should be “adduced” to show that he was not that, but of the ordinary race of Englishmen.
[16b] It would be interesting to learn from Mr. Brown, 1st. When, and under what circumstances, he took up this question in regard to Bunyan; 2d. What regard he paid to the subject of the Gipsies in general, as published; 3d. Whether he made any personal inquiries in regard to it; 4th. Whether he read anything, and what, in favour of Bunyan having been of the Gipsy race; 5th. How he came to maintain that because the name of Bunyan existed in England before the Gipsies arrived in it, therefore Bunyan was not one of the race; 6th. Whether he knows of Gipsies bearing native surnames, and even of one with a foreign surname; 7th. What reason he had for supposing that Thomas Bonyon, in 1542, had no Gipsy blood in his veins, or that his descendants for several generations did not pass into the Gipsy current in society, as explained; 8th. Where Mr. Brown resided before he settled at Bedford, and how long he has been there. 9th. What traditions he found in the town and neighbourhood bearing on Bunyan’s descent, and whether there are people there averse to its being asserted that Bunyan was what might be called of the ordinary native English race; 10th. Are there none there who object to its being said that Bunyan’s family was a broken-down branch of the aristocracy, titled or untitled, that most probably entered England from Normandy, under William the Conqueror? 11th. What are the reasons for saying that Bunyan was not of the Gipsy race? 12th. Might not any person be of the Gipsy race, notwithstanding it was not even surmised, much less proved, by any one acquainted with the Gipsy subject, and much more so by one apparently totally ignorant of it? 13th. Since Bunyan was an Englishman under any circumstances, why should anyone claim him to have been entirely of the native or ordinary blood, till it is proved that part of his blood belonged to the Gipsy race, that entered Great Britain not later than 1506—no regard being shown to what he said he “was and was not, and his calling and surroundings”? 14th. Has Mr. Brown’s object, from first to last, been exclusively that of proving Bunyan not to have been of the Gipsy race? 15th. In that case, should he not, while occupying the pulpit of Bunyan, look upon his “mission” as most sacred, and “laying aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset him,” “give no sleep to his eyes or slumber to his eyelids” till he was satisfied who Bunyan really was, and acknowledge him accordingly?
[17] Dated 13th September, 1882.
[18] There may be some doubt that Towla Bailyow, mentioned in a writ of the Scots’ parliament in 1540, was a Baillie according to the modern spelling of the word. In that case, the first Gipsies mentioned officially in Great Britain with full native names, seem to have been John Brown and George Brown, as found in a writ of the Scots’ parliament of the 8th April, 1554. In the History of the Gipsies I find the following:—