[9] Dated 30th August, 1882.[10a] Contributions to Natural History, etc., p. 158.[10b] I have commented on the assertion of Mr. Groome, that “John Bunyan, from parish registers, does not appear to have had one drop of Gipsy blood,” as if that could have been ascertained from parish registers! I did not expect to find such a loose idea as that in the EncyclopÆdia Britannica, taken from a casual or stray contributor to Notes and Queries. But I find an English journal quoting it as a proof that Bunyan was not of the Gipsy race; and supporting it by Mr. Froude’s ignoring the question in his highly conventional work on Bunyan.—The Scottish Churches and the Gipsies, pp. 11, 52 and 59.[11a] Mr. Brown objects to its being said that the English Bunyans could have sprung from Bunyans that left Scotland fifty years before 1548, for the reason that he finds men of that name in England, in 1219, 1257 and 1310. Thomas Bunyan, if he is correct in his information, says that the Italian mason of the name of Bunyan was at Melrose in 1136. The name might have had its origin in foreign masons called Bunyan, as there would be families of that craft, continued from generation to generation, during the middle ages, employed in church architecture all over Europe, including England as well as Scotland. I have not seen Mr. Thomas Bunyan’s information, as quoted above, called in question by any one.[11b] Dated 6th September, 1882.[11c] In an article in Notes and Queries, for the 27th March, 1875, I said:—“In addition to the investigations made in church registers, I would suggest that the records of the different criminal courts in Bedfordshire (if they still exist) should be examined, to find if people of the name of Bunyan (and how designated) are found to have been on trial, and for what offences.”—Contributions, etc., p. 186.[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:—

“I am further inclined to think that it would be about this period, and chiefly in consequence of these bloody enactments, the Gipsies would, in general, assume the ordinary Christian and surnames common at that time in Scotland. And their usual sagacity pointed out to them the advantages arising from taking the cognomens of the most powerful families in the kingdom, whose influence would afford them ample protection as adopted members of their respective clans. In support of my opinion of the origin of the surnames of the Gipsies of the present day, we find that the most prevailing names among them are those of the most influential of our noble families of Scotland, such as Stewart, Gordon, Douglas, Graham, Ruthven, Hamilton, Drummond, Kennedy, Cunningham, Montgomery, Kerr, Campbell, Maxwell, Johnstone, Ogilvie, McDonald, Robertson, Grant, Baillie, Shaw, Burnet, Brown, Keith, etc.” To that I added that “the English Gipsies say that native names were assumed by their race in consequence of the proscription to which it was subjected.”—(p. 117.)

[19] Perhaps I admitted too much when I said that “William Bonyon and his wife were apparently ordinary English people,” for they need not necessarily have been that, as I have shown. Had they been such, the tradition of it would soon have died out in their Gipsy descendants of mixed blood but for the little property that remained in the family; for the associations of descent from the native race are not pleasant to the tribe when they consider the hard feelings which it has entertained for their Gipsy blood.

James IV. of Scotland, when introducing “Anthonius Gawino, Earl of Little Egypt, and the other afflicted and lamentable tribe of his retinue,” to his uncle, the King of Denmark, in 1506, said that they “had lately arrived on the frontiers of our kingdom”; so that it is uncertain at what time before 1506 some of the tribe had made their appearance without being recorded in a public document. The Scottish king believed that as “Denmark was nearer to Egypt than Scotland,” a greater number of the Gipsies sojourned in it; and that his uncle would know more about them than he did. If this style of reasoning was correct, England must have received Gipsies before Scotland, for it was “nearer to Egypt than Scotland.”—History of the Gipsies, p. 99.

Speaking of the “standing” of the leading Gipsies in Scotland between 1506 and 1579, the author of the History wrote as follows:—

“It is evident that the Gipsies in Scotland at that time were allowed to punish the criminal members of their own tribe according to their own peculiar laws, customs and usages, without molestation. And it cannot be supposed that the ministers of three or four succeeding monarchs would have suffered their sovereigns to be so much imposed on as to allow them to put their names to public documents, styling poor and miserable wretches, as we at the present day imagine them to have been, ‘Lords and Earls of Little Egypt.’ . . . I am disposed to believe that Anthonius Gawino in 1506, and John Faw in 1540, would personally as individuals, that is, as Gipsy ‘Rajahs,’ have a very respectable and imposing appearance in the eyes of the officers of the Crown” (p. 107).

Although he says that “the English government had not been so easily nor so long imposed on as the kings of Scotland, and the authorities of Europe generally” (p. 91), we can easily imagine that the principal Gipsies at least occupied a pretty good position among the English people generally. If Bailyow in 1540 represented the native name of Baillie (as it is believed to have done), we could have William Bonyon, who died in 1542, one of the original Gipsies, most likely of mixed blood; and we certainly had “John Brown and George Brown, Egyptians,” before 1554.