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TROUBLE WITH GYPSIES IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2015

DAVID CRESSY
DAVID CRESSY*
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
*
231 West 6th Street, Claremont, CA 91711, USAdavidcressy@hotmail.com
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Abstract

This article explores the social, legal, and administrative response in Tudor and early Stuart England to people known in law as ‘Egyptians’ or ‘counterfeit Egyptians’ but commonly called ‘Gypsies’. It argues that such people differed from ordinary poor vagrants in their heritage, their language, and such activities as horse dealing and fortune-telling. Elizabethan and Jacobean publications placed Gypsies on the fringes of fecklessness, criminality, and the picaresque, and established a stereotype of deceit and imposture that has not yet disappeared. Acts of Parliament in 1531, 1554, and 1563 criminalized ‘Egyptians’, forbidding their entry, ordering their expulsion, and eventually making them liable to the death penalty. Enforcement, however, was haphazard, and repression co-existed uneasily with growing registers of tolerance. This is a neglected topic in early modern social history, with links to international and interdisciplinary Romani studies as well as work on itinerancy, ethnicity, and marginality.

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Articles
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The Historical Journal , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 45 - 70
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the American Historical Association in January 2013, at the Huntington Library British History Seminar in November 2013, and at the Tudor-Stuart Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research in March 2015.

References

1 John Pound, Poverty and vagrancy in Tudor England (London, 1971); John L. McMullan, The canting crew: London's criminal underworld, 1550–1700 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1984); A. L. Beier, Masterless men: the vagrancy problem in England, 1560–1640 (London, 1985); Paul Slack, Poverty and policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1988); Linda Woodbridge, Vagrancy, homelessness, and English Renaissance literature (Urbana, IL, and Chicago, IL, 2001); Bryan Reynolds, Becoming criminal: transverse performance and cultural dissidence in early modern England (Baltimore, MD, and London, 2002); Pascale Drouet, Le vagabond dans l'Angleterre de Shakespeare: ou l'art de contrefaire à la ville at à la scène (Paris, 2003); Craig Dionne and Steve Mentz, eds., Rogues and early modern English culture (Ann Arbor, MI, 2004); Steve Hindle, On the parish?: the micro-politics of poor relief in rural England, c. 1550–1750 (Oxford, 2004); Patricia Fumerton, Unsettled: the culture of mobility and the working poor in early modern England (Chicago, IL, and London, 2006). Early work on ‘the wayfaring community’ made no mention of Gypsies: Alan Everitt, Change in the provinces: the seventeenth century (Leicester, 1972), pp. 38–43; Anthony Fletcher, A county community in peace and war: Sussex, 1600–1669 (London, 1975), pp. 165–70.

2 Beier, Masterless men, pp. 10, 31, 58–62, 104, 125. Beier draws on the work of the ‘Gypsy lore’ antiquarians, to whom all subsequent scholarship is indebted: Crofton, Henry T., ‘Early annals of the Gypsies in England’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 1 (1888), pp. 5–25Google Scholar; Winstedt, Eric Otto, ‘Early British Gypsies’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, n.s., 7 (1913–14), pp. 5–36Google Scholar; Thompson, T. W., ‘Gleanings from constables' accounts and other sources’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 3rd ser., 7 (1928), pp. 30–48Google Scholar; Crofton, Henry T., ‘Supplementary annals of the Gypsies in England, before 1700’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, n.s., 1 (1907/8), pp. 31–4Google Scholar; Thompson, T. W., ‘Consorting with and counterfeiting Egyptians’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 3rd ser., 2 (1923), pp. 81–92Google Scholar; and Winstedt, E. O., ‘Records of Gypsies in the eastern counties of England’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 3rd ser., 40 (1961), pp. 25–35Google Scholar.

3 David Smith, ‘Gypsies, tinkers, travellers and the forest economy’, in John Langton and Graham Jones, eds., Forests and chases of England and Wales, c. 1500 to c. 1850 (Oxford, 2005), p. 61.

4 David Mayall, Gypsy identities, 1500–2000: from Egipcyans and moon-men to the ethnic Romany (Abingdon and New York, NY, 2004), p. 26.

5 Angus Fraser, The Gypsies (Oxford, 1992); Becky Taylor, Another darkness, another dawn: a history of Gypsies, Roma and travellers (London, 2014); Yaron Matras, I met lucky people: the story of the Romani Gypsies (London, 2014).

6 Ian Hancock, The Pariah syndrome: an account of Gypsy slavery and persecution (Ann Arbor, MI, 1987); Donald Kenrick and Colin Clark, Moving on: the Gypsies and travellers of Britain (Hatfield, 1995); Thomas Acton, ed., Gypsy politics and traveller identity (Hatfield, 1997); Thomas Acton, ed., Scholarship and the Gypsy struggle: commitment in Romani studies (Hatfield, 2000); Fraser, Angus, ‘The present and future of the Gypsy past’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 13 (2000), pp. 17–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Dale B. J. Randall, Jonson's Gypsies unmasked: background and theme of the Gypsies metamorphos'd (Durham, NC, 1975); Netzloff, Mark, ‘“Counterfeit Egyptians” and imagined borders: Jonson's The Gypsies metamorphosed’, ELH, 68 (2001), pp. 763–93CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Paola Pugliatti, ‘A lost lore: the activity of Gypsies as performers on the stage of Elizabethan–Jacobean street theatre’, in Paola Pugliatti and Alessandro Serpieri, eds., English Renaissance scenes: from canon to margins (Oxford, Bern, and Berlin, 2008), pp. 259–310.

8 The European history of Gypsies may be traced in François de Vaux de Foletier, Les Tsiganes dans l'ancienne France (Paris, 1961); O. Van Kappen, Geschiedenis der Zigeuners in Nederland (1420–1750) (Assen, 1965); Reimer Gronemeyer, Zigeuner im Speigel Früher Chroniken und Abhandlungen (Giessen, 1987); Henriette Asséo, Les Tsiganes, une destinée européenne (Paris, 1994); David M. Crowe, A history of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia (New York, NY, 1996); Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov, Gypsies in the Ottoman empire (Hatfield, 2001); Elisa Novi Chavarria, Sulle tracce degli zingari: il popolo rom nel Regno di Napoli (secoli XV–XVIII) (Naples, 2007); Richard J. Pym, The Gypsies of early modern Spain, 1425–1783 (Basingstoke, 2007); Benedetto Fassanelli, Vite al bando: storie di cingari nella terraferma veneta alle fine del Cinquecento (Rome, 2011).

9 Crofton, ‘Early annals’, pp. 7, 8; Henry Ellis, ed., Original letters illustrative of English history (3 vols., London, 1825), ii, p. 101; Oxford English Dictionary, sub ‘gipsy/gypsy’.

10 Peter Pett, The happy future state of England (London, 1688), 235.

11 [Thomas More], A dyaloge of Syr Thomas More (London, 1529), book 3, fo. 91, otherwise known as A dialogue concerning heresies.

12 Arthur Ogle, The tragedy of the Lollards' Tower: the case of Richard Hunne, with its aftermath in the Reformation parliament (Oxford, 1949), pp. 94–9; Richard Marius, Thomas More: a biography (New York, NY, 1984), pp. 135–41.

13 Cornwall Record Office, Truro, AR/26/2; Sally L. Joyce and Evelyn S. Newlyn, eds., Records of early English drama: Cornwall (Toronto, 1999), p. 530.

14 Crofton, ‘Early annals’, pp. 7, 8.

15 C. H. Cooper, Annals of Cambridge (5 vols., Cambridge, 1842–52), i, p. 298.

16 Taylor, Another darkness, pp. 49–50, citing Herefordshire Archives, BG/11/28, Misc. Papers, 6/18.

17 22 Henry VIII c. 10.

18 22 Henry VIII, c. 12.

19 27 Henry VIII, c. 25.

20 Letters and papers, foreign and domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII (LP), xii, part 2, p. 79.

21 Ibid., p. 349.

22 Ellis, ed., Original letters illustrative of English history, ii, pp. 100–3.

23 The National Archives (TNA), REQ 2/5/322.

24 LP, xiv, part 1, p. 84; TNA, SP1/142, fo. 220; TNA, E 199/41/46. Gypsies had travelled in Scotland since the beginning of the sixteenth century, paying scant attention to national borders. Certain ‘Egyptians’ who danced before James V at Holyrood House in 1529 may have secured letters of protection: Fraser, Gypsies, p. 117; David MacRitchie, Scottish Gypsies under the Stewarts (Edinburgh, 1894), pp. 29–39.

25 LP, xiv, part 1, p. 21; TNA, SP1/153, fo. 40.

26 Ibid., part 2, pp. 109, 303.

27 LP, xv, p. 325; TNA, SP 1/160, fo. 49.

28 Sampson, John, ‘Early records of the Gypsies in England’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 3rd ser., 3 (1927), p. 34Google Scholar.

29 TNA, E 101/518/28; Sampson, ‘Early records’, pp. 32–4, citing TNA, Exchequer K. R. Accounts Misc. 524/5.

30 Crofton, ‘Early annals’, p. 11, derived from the Book of receipts and payments of 25 Henry VIII.

31 LP, xix, part 2, p. 112; TNA, SP 1/192, fo. 51r–51v.

32 LP, xix, part 2, pp. 112, 159.

33 Lords journal, i, p. 273 (10 Dec. 1545).

34 Andrew Boorde, The fyrst boke of the introduction of knowledge (London, 1542; 1562 edn), ch. 38, sig. Niir–Niiv. On the linguistic significance of Boorde's word list, see Ian Hancock, ‘Romani and Angloromani’, in Peter Trudgill, ed., Language in the British Isles (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 368, 378–9; Yaron Matras, Romani in Britain: the afterlife of a language (Edinburgh, 2010), p. 58.

35 Claims of 10,000 Tudor Gypsies are often repeated in popular surveys. They derive from William Harrison's description of Elizabethan England, where he includes Gypsies with vagrant beggars ‘to amount unto above 10,000 persons as I have heard reported’, Georges Edelen, ed., The description of England by William Harrison (Ithaca, NY, 1968), 184. Hancock, Pariah syndrome, p. 89, renders this as ‘ten thousand Gypsies in the British Isles’ in 1528.

36 1 & 2 Philip and Mary, c. 4.

37 Acts of the privy council (APC), v, p. 185.

38 Folger Shakespeare Library, MS L.b.210.

39 TNA, SP 12/6, fo. 63r–63v, SP 12/51, fo. 27.

40 TNA, SP 12/6, fos. 82, 109.

41 TNA, SP 12/6, fo. 108, SP 12/7, fo. 37; Historical Manuscripts Commission (HMC), Twelfth report, appendix, part 9 (London, 1891), p. 468; Crofton, ‘Early annals’, p. 16.

42 APC, vii, pp. 112, 124.

43 5 Elizabeth I, c. 20. This Elizabethan law was repealed in 1783 by 23 Geo. III, c. 51. Later reformers described it as ‘the most barbarous…that ever disgraced our criminal code’, Sir Samuel Romilly, Observations on the criminal law of England (London, 1810), p. 5.

44 Judith Okely, The Traveller-Gypsies (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 3–5; Angus Fraser, ‘Counterfeit Egyptians’, Tsiganologische Studien, 2 (1990), pp. 43–69; Wim Willems, In search of the true Gypsy: from enlightenment to final solution (London, 1998), pp. 3, 293, 301; Mayall, Gypsy identities, pp. 61–3. See also Tobias B. Hug, Impostures in early modern England: representations and perceptions of fraudulent identities (Manchester and New York, NY, 2009), pp. 112–15.

45 Walter Haddon, A dialogue agaynst the tyrannye of the Papists (London, 1562), sig. Cv; Thomas Middleton, A mad world, my masters (London, 1608), act 5; John Benbrigge, Usura accomodata, or a ready way to rectifie usury (London, 1646), p. 13; Reginald Scot, The discouerie of witchcraft (London, 1584), p. 464; John Gaule, Select cases of conscience touching witches and witchcrafts (London, 1646), p. 177.

46 Discussing the ‘abstruse and mystical sciences’ of ancient Egypt, Thomas Brown wondered if ‘those vagabond and counterfeit Egyptians do yet…retain a few corrupted principles which sometimes may verify their prognostics', Thomas Browne, Religio medici (London, 1642), p. 117. The savant Joseph Glanvill was also willing to consider that Gypsies ‘were not such imposters as they were taken for, but that they had a traditional kind of learning among them, and could do wonders by the power of imagination’, Joseph Glanvill, The vanity of dogmatizing: or confidence in opinions (London, 1661), p. 197.

47 39 Elizabeth I, c. 4.

48 Samuel Rid, The art of iugling or legerdemaine (London, 1612), sig. B; Thomas Harman, A caveat or warening for commen cursetors vulgarely called vagabones (London, 1567), sig. Aiiiv; Thomas Dekker, The belman of London: bringing to light the most notorious villanies that are now practiced in the kingdome (London, 1608), sig. Cv.

49 Harman, Caveat or warening for commen cursetors, sigs. Br–Bv. The 1573 edition has ‘banished’ instead of ‘vanished’. See also A. L. Beier, ‘New historicism, historical context, and the literature of rogues: the case of Thomas Harman reopened’, in Dionne and Mentz, eds., Rogues and early modern English culture, pp. 98–119.

50 Thomas Smith, De recta & emendata linguae Anglicae scriptione, dialogus (Lutetiae, i.e. Paris, 1568), p. 6.

51 Edelen, ed., Description of England by William Harrison, pp. 180–6.

52 Scot, Discouerie of witchcraft, p. 197.

53 John Harvey, A discoursive problem concerning prophesies (London, 1588), pp. 63–4.

54 Dekker, Belman of London, sig. Cv; Thomas Dekker, Lanthorne and candle-light: or the bell-mans second nights walke (London, 1608), sigs. G4v–G6v.

55 See, for example, A new dictionary of the terms ancient and modern of the canting crew (London, 1699), which described Gypsies as ‘a counterfeit brood of wandering rogues and wenches, herding together and living promiscuously, or in common, under hedges and in barns, disguising themselves with blacking their faces and bodies, and wearing an antic dress, as well as devising a particular cant, strolling up and down, and under colour of fortune-telling, palmistry, physiognomy, and cure of diseases, impose always upon the unthinking vulgar, and often steal from them, whatever is not too hot for their fingers, or too heavy to carry off’.

56 Robert Naunton, Fragmenta regalia, or observations on the late Queen Elizabeth, her times and favorits (London, 1641), p. 17.

57 Somerset Archives, DD/PH/219, no. 42.

58 Somerset Archives, D/D/Cd. 66, fo. 173.

59 Thomas Bell, The Catholique triumph, conteyning a reply to the pretended answer of B. C. (a masked Iesuite) (London, 1610), pp. 123, 237; Thomas Thompson, Antichrist arraigned in a sermon at Pauls Crosse (London, 1618), p. 182; Henry Burton, Vindiciae veritatis: truth vindicated against calumny (London, 1645), p. 19; Stephen Proudlove, Truths triumph over errour: or, the routing of the seven false prophets (London, 1653), title page; Richard Brathwait, The honest ghost, or a voice from the vault (London, 1658), p. 320; Fabian Phillips, King Charles the first, no man of blood: but a martyr for his people (London, 1649), p. 65.

60 Edmund Hockeringill, Gregory, Father-Greybeard, with his vizard off; or, news from the cabal (London, 1673), pp. 251, 258.

61 T. E. Hartley, ed., Proceedings in the parliaments of Elizabeth I, i:1558–1581 (Leicester, 1981), pp. 111–12; British Library, Lansdowne MS 102, fo. 25.

62 Essex Record Office, Chelmsford, Q/SR 19A/ 24, 30, 34, 61.

63 J. S. Cockburn, ed., Calendar of assize records: Essex indictments Elizabeth I (London, 1978), p. 47.

64 J. S. Cockburn, ed., Calendar of assize records: Kent indictments Elizabeth I (London, 1979), p. 88.

65 Cockburn, ed., Calendar…Essex, pp. 81, 83; Jenkins, Philip, ‘From gallows to prison? The execution rate in early modern England’, Criminal Justice History, 7 (1986), pp. 51–71Google Scholar. See also Cynthia B. Herrup, The common peace: participation and the criminal law in seventeenth-century England (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 165–6.

66 Blair, Frederick G., ‘Forged passports of British Gypsies in the sixteenth century’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 3rd ser., 28 (1950), pp. 131–7Google Scholar; APC, ix, p. 304.

67 APC, x, p. 6.

68 APC, ix, pp. 304, 311, 313.

69 TNA, KB 8/44, fos. 6–11; Thompson, ‘Consorting with and counterfeiting Egyptians’.

70 APC, viii, p. 113.

71 APC, xvii, p. 278.

72 J. S. Cockburn, ed., Calendar of assize records: Sussex indictments Elizabeth I (London, 1975), 168; Cockburn, ed., Calendar…Essex, 175; APC, xi, p. 361; TNA, E 199/24/38, E 199/24/40, E 199/4/50; Essex Record Office, Q/SR/113/40.

73 TNA, E 199/24/38 and 40.

74 TNA, E 199/4/50; Peter Edwards, Horse and man in early modern England (London and New York, NY, 2007), pp. 194–8.

75 The following account is based on TNA, STAC 7/10/20 and STAC 10/1/132, supplemented by Acts of the Privy Council.

76 MacCaffery, W. T., ‘Talbot and Stanhope: an episode in Elizabethan politics’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 33 (1960), pp. 73–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 APC, xi, pp. 62–3.

78 Crofton, ‘Early annals’, p. 20; Calendar of state papers, domestic (CSPD) 1581–1590, p. 672; CSPD 1591–1594, p. 146; John Cordy Jeaffreson, ed., Middlesex county records…to the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth (Clerkenwell, 1886), p. 221, also pp, 253, 267.

79 Jones, R. O., ‘The mode of disposing of Gipsies and vagrants in the reign of Elizabeth’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 4th ser., 13 (1882), pp. 226–9Google Scholar.

80 British Library, Lansdowne MS 81, fos. 161–2; John Strype, Annals of the Reformation (4 vols., London, 1738), iv, pp. 290–5.

81 J. C. Atkinson, ed., North Riding of the county of York: quarter sessions records, i (London. 1884), pp. 11, 21; J. C. Atkinson, ed., North riding of the county of York: quarter sessions records, ii (London, 1885), pp. 119–20; H. Hampton Copnall, Nottinghamshire county records: notes and extracts from the Nottinghamshire county records of the seventeenth century (Nottingham, 1915), pp. 50, 116; J. S. Cockburn, ed., Calendar of assize records. Essex…James I (London, 1982), p. 46.

82 Alan McGowan, ed., The Winchester confessions, 1615–1616: depositions of travellers, Gypsies, fraudsters, and makers of counterfeit documents, including a vocabulary of the Romany language (Romany and Traveller Family History Society, South Chailey, Sussex, 1996), transcribed from Hampshire Record Office, Jervoise of Herriard Collection, 44M69/G3/159; Bakker, Peter, ‘An early vocabulary of British Romani (1616): a linguistic analysis’, Romani Studies, 5 (2002), pp. 75–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Matras, Romani in Britain, pp. 58, 91, 131.

83 J. P. Earwaker, ed., The constables' accounts of the manor of Manchester from the year 1612 to the year 1647 (2 vols., Manchester, 1891), i, p. 57; Ernest Axon, ed., Manchester sessions: notes of proceedings…, i:1616 – 1622–1623 (Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, vol. 42, 1901), p. 70; Ford, Judith, ‘“Egyptians” in early-modern Dorset’, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 130 (2009), p. 3Google Scholar.

84 Cheshire Record Office, QJB 1/6, fo. 46; J. W. Willis Bund, ed., Worcestershire county records…calendar of the quarter sessions papers…1591–1643 (Worcester, 1900), p. 577; HMC, Salisbury, xxii (1971), p. 213; J. Charles Cox, ed., Three centuries of Derbyshire annals: as illustrated by the records of the quarter sessions (2 vols., London, 1890), i, pp. 152–3; APC, 1626, June–December, 288; APC 1627, January–August, pp. 158, 185; John M. Wasson, ed., Records of early English drama: Devon (Toronto, 1986), p. 299; Slack, Paul, ‘Vagrants and vagrancy in England, 1594–1664’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 27 (1974), p. 364Google Scholar. For Irish beggars, see TNA, SP 16/141/75, SP 16/123/5, SP 16/131/1, SP 16/139/1, SP 16/181/123, SP 16/234/57; Patrick Fitzgerald, ‘“Like crickets to the crevice of a brew-house”: poor Irish migrants in England, 1560–1640’, in Patrick Fitzgerald, ed., Patterns of migration (Leicester, 1992), pp. 13–35. In Scotland too in the 1630s, where Gypsies were subject to attack, ‘the Council's bark was much more severe than its bite’: Rosalind Mitchison, The old poor law in Scotland: the experience of poverty, 1574–1845 (Edinburgh, 2000), p. 14.

85 Essex Record Office, Q/SR 256/49, T/A 418/101/113, T/A 418/102/ 34 and 88.

86 Hancock, Pariah syndrome, p. 90; Fraser, Gypsies, p. 133.

87 Sir Matthew Hale, Historia placitorum coronae: the history of the pleas of the crown (2 vols., London, 1736), i, p. 671; John Hoyland, A historical survey of the customs, habits, & present state of the Gypsies (London, 1816), p. 87.

88 Essex Record Office, D/Y 2/9 (film of Morant MS, vol. 9, cxlviii, p. 253).

89 John Melton, Astrologaster, or, the figure-caster: rather the arraignment of artelesse astrologers, and fortune-tellers, that cheat many ignorant people (London, 1620), pp. 48–51.

90 MacFie, R. A. Scott, ‘Gypsy persecutions: a survey of a black chapter in European history’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 3rd ser., 22 (1943), pp. 69–77Google Scholar; Van Kappen, Geschiedenis der Zigeuners in Nederland, pp. 463–73, 551–2; Henriette Asséo, ‘Marginalité et exclusion: le traitement adminstratif des Bohémiens dans la societé Française du XVIIe siècle’, in Henriette Asséo and Jean-Paul Vittu, eds., Problèmes socio-culturels au XVIIe au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1974), pp. 9–87; Joachim S. Hohmann, Geschichte der Zigeuner Verfolgung in Deutschland (Frankfurt and New York, NY, 1988), pp. 27–43; Antonio Gomez Alfaro, The great Gypsy round-up: Spain, the general imprisonment of the Gypsies in 1749 (Madrid, 1993); Pym, Gypsies of early modern Spain, pp. 152–64.

91 Thomas Middleton, More dissembling besides women (performed 1614, published 1657), act 3, scene 2, act 4, scene 2; The brave English Jipsie (broadside ballad, date uncertain); Christopher Hill, Liberty against the law: some seventeenth-century controversies (London, 1996), pp. 131–41.

92 David Mayall, Gypsy-Travellers in nineteenth-century society (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 73–80.