The sources

Romani Gypsies, referred to as ‘Egyptian pilgrims’ in older sources, are known to have been present in Scotland in 1506 at the very latest, when they sought the protection of the king on a journey to Denmark (Simson 1866: 98), and may have settled in Scotland as early as 1460. According to Winstedt (1915: 129), the earliest reference to Gypsies in England is in a work of Sir Thomas More, who mentions an ‘Egypcian’ woman who told fortunes in Lambeth in 1514. A subsequent reference from 1687 confirms the wedding of Robert Hern and Elizabeth Bozwell, ‘king and queen of the gipsies’, at Camberwell. While many subsequent sources speak of ‘vagrants’ or ‘travelling tinkers’ who cannot unambiguously be connected with the Romanies, much of the history of the Romani-speaking community in Britain can be traced thanks to sources that provide us both with a description of the community and with a sample of their Romani speech. These offer attestations of the language from regions as far apart as Northumberland, Durham, Derbyshire, Cheshire, Norfolk, Hampshire and Kent. They suggest that families tended to be settled in particular regions, though individuals might move and settle elsewhere, and that families often spent the summer months in a different county, giving rise to immersion opportunities with other families. By and large, this pattern of continuous settlement, travel during the summer, and the occasional breaking away of individuals has been retained among the English Gypsies to this very day.