The beggars, it is observable, two or three centuries ago, used to proclaim their want by a wooden dish with a moveable cover, which they clacked, to show that their vessel was empty. This appears from a passage quoted on another occasion by Dr. Grey. Dr. Grey's assertion may be supported by the following passage in an old comedy called the Family of Love,

1608:

"Can you think I get my living by a bell and a clack-dish?

By a bell and a clack-dish? How's that?

Why, begging, Sir," &c.

And by a stage direction in the second part of King Edward IV. 1619" Enter Mrs. Blague, very poorly,-begging with her basket and a clack-dish.”

Sir Thomas Browne, in his Vulgar Errors, p. 286, gives this general account of the gipsies: "They are a kind of counterfeit Moors, to be found in many parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. They are commonly supposed to have come from Egypt, from whence they derive themselves. Munster discovered, in the letters and pass which they obtained from Sigismund the Emperor, that they first came out of Lesser Egypt; that having turned apostates from Christianity and relapsed into Pagan rites, some of every family were enjoined this penance, to wander about the world. Aventinus tells us, that they pretend, for this vagabond course, a judgment of God upon their forefathers, who refused to entertain the Virgin Mary and Jesus, when she fled into their country."

Blackstone, in his Commentaries, has the following account of them: "They are a strange kind of commonwealth among themselves of wandering impostors and jugglers, who first made their appearance in Germany about the beginning of the sixteenth century. Munster, it is true, who is followed and relied upon by Spelman, fixes the time of their first appearance to the year 1417:1 but as he owns that the first he ever saw were in 1529, it was probably an error of the press for 1517, especially as other historians inform us, that when Sultan Selim conquered Egypt, in 1517, several of the natives. refused to submit to the Turkish yoke, and revolted under

1 Sir Thomas Browne, ut supra, p. 287, says: "Their first appearance was in Germany since the year 1400. Nor were they observed before in other parts of Europe, as is deducible from Munster, Genebrard, Crantsius, and Ortelius."

one Zinganeus, whence the Turks call them Zinganees; but being at length surrounded and banished, they agreed to disperse in small parties all over the world, where their supposed skill in the black art gave them an universal reception in that age of superstition and credulity. In the compass of a very few years they gained such a number of idle proselytes (who imitated their language and complexion, and betook themselves to the same arts of chiromancy, begging and pilfering) that they became troublesome and even formidable to most of the states of Europe. Hence they were expelled from France in the year 1560 and from Spain 1591 and the government of England took the alarm much earlier, for in 1530 they are described, stat. 22 Hen. VIII. c. x., as an ' outlandish people calling themselves Egyptians, using no craft, nor feat of merchandize, 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, and also have committed many heinous felonies and robberies.' Wherefore they are directed to avoid the realm, and not to return under pain of imprisonment and forfeiture of their goods and chattells; and upon their trials for any felony which they may have committed, they shall not be intitled to a jury de medietate linguæ. And afterwards it was enacted by statutes 1 and 2 Ph. and Mary, c. iv., and 5 Eliz. c. xx., that if any such persons shall be imported into the kingdom, the importers shall forfeit forty pounds. And if the Egyptians themselves remain one month in the kingdom, or if any person, being fourteen years old, whether natural-born subject or stranger, which hath been seen or found in the fellowship of such Egyptians, or which hath disguised him or herself like them,

'Spelman's portrait of the gipsy fraternity in his time, which seems to have been taken ad vivum, is as follows: "EGYPTIANI. Erronum impostorumque genus nequissimum: in Continente ortum, sed ad Britannias nostras et Europam reliquam pervolans :-nigredine deformes, excocti sole, immundi veste, et usu rerum omnium fœdi.-Fœminæ, cum stratis et parvulis, jumento invehuntur. Literas circumferunt principum, ut innoxius illis permittatur transitus.-Oriuntur quippe et in nostra et in omni regione, spurci hujusmodi nebulones, qui sui similes in gymnasium sceleris adsciscentes; vultum, cultum, moresque supradictos sibi inducunt. Linguam (ut exotici magis videantur) fictitiam blaterant, provinciasque vicatim pervagantes, auguriis et furtis, imposturis et technarum millibus plebeculam rodunt et illudunt, linguam hanc Germani Rotwelch, quasi rubrum Wallicum, id est Barbarismum; Angli Canting nuncupant."

shall remain in the same one month at one or several times, it is felony without benefit of clergy. And Sir Matthew Hale informs us that at one Suffolk assize no less than thirteen persons were executed upon these statutes a few years before the Restoration. But, to the honour of our national humanity, there are no instances more modern than this of carrying these laws into practice." Thus far Blackstone.

In the Art of Jugling and Legerdemaine," by S. R., 1612, is the following account: "These kinde of people about an hundred yeares agoe, about the twentieth yeare of King Henry the Eight, began to gather an head, at the first heere about the southerne parts, and this (as I am informed, and as I can gather) was their beginning. Certaine Egiptians banished their cuntry (belike not for their good conditions) arrived heere in England, who, being excellent in quaint tricks and devises, not known heere at that time among us, were esteemed and had in great admiration, for what with strangeness of their attire and garments, together with their sleights and legerdemaines, they were spoke of farre and neere, insomuch that many of our English loyterers joyned with them, and in time learned their craft and cosening. The speach which they used was the right Egyptian language, with whome our Englishmen conversing with, at last learned their language. These people continuing about the cuntry in this fashion, practising their cosening art of fast and loose and legerdemaine, purchased themselves great credit among the cuntry people, and got much by palmistry and telling of fortunes insomuch they pitifully cosened the poore contry girles, both of money, silver spones, and the best of their apparrell, or any good thing they could make, onely to heare their fortunes.”. Giles Hather (for so was his name) together with his whore Kit Calot, in short space had following them a pretty traine, he terming himself the king of the Egiptians, and she the queene, ryding about the cuntry at their pleasure uncontrolld." He then mentions the statute against them of the 1st and 2d of Philip and Mary, on which he observes: "But what a number were executed presently upon this statute, you would wonder: yet, notwithstanding, all would not prevaile: but still they wandred, as before, up and downe, and meeting once in a yeere at a place appointed: sometimes at the Devils Ain Peake in Darbishire, and otherwhiles at Ketbrooke by Black

:

This

heath, or elsewhere, as they agreed still at their meeting." Speaking of his own time, he adds: "These fellows, seeing that no profit comes by wandring, but hazard of their lives, do daily decrease and breake off their wonted society, and betake themselves, many of them, some to be pedlers, some tinkers, some juglers, and some to one kinde of life or other."

Twiss, in his Travels, gives the following account of them in Spain: "They are very numerous about and in Murcia, Cordova, Cadiz, and Ronda. The race of these vagabonds is found in every part of Europe; the French call them Bohemiens; the Italians Zingari; the Germans, Ziegenners; the Dutch, Heydenen (Pagans); the Portuguese, Siganos; and the Spaniards, Gitanos; in Latin, Cingari. Their language, which is peculiar to themselves, is everywhere so similar, that they are undoubtedly all derived from the same source. They began to appear in Europe in the fifteenth century, and are probably a mixture of Egyptians and Ethiopians. The men are all thieves, and the women libertines. They follow no certain trade, and have no fixed religion. They do not enter into the order of society, wherein they are only tolerated. It is supposed there are upwards of 40,000 of them in Spain, great numbers of whom are innkeepers in the villages and small towns, and are everywhere fortune-tellers. In Spain they are not allowed to possess any lands, or even to serve as soldiers. They marry among themselves, stroll in troops about the country, and bury their dead under water. They are contented if they can procure food by showing feats of dexterity, and only pilfer to supply themselves with the trifles they want; so that they never render themselves liable to any severer chastisement than whipping for having stolen chickens, linen, &c. Most of the men have a smattering of physic and surgery, and are skilled in tricks performed by sleight of hand. The foregoing account is partly extracted from Le Voyageur François, xvi., but the assertion that they are all so abandoned as that author says is too general.”

In a provincial council held at Tarragona in the year 1591 there was the following decree against them: "Curandum etiam est ut publici Magistratus eos coerceant qui se Ægyptiacos vel Bohemianos vocant, quos vix constat esse Christianos, nisi ex eorum relatione; cum tamen sint mendaces, fures, et deceptores, et aliis sceleribus multi eorum assueti.'

The Gipsies are universally considered in the same light, i. e. of cheats and pilferers. Witness the definition of them in Dufresne, and the curious etchings of them by Callot. Ægyptiaci," says Dufresne, "vagi homines, harioli ac fatidici, qui hac et illac errantes exmanus inspectione futura præsagire se fingunt, ut de marsupiis incautorum nummos corrogent." The engraver does not represent them in a more favorable light than the lexicographer, for, besides his inimitable delineations of their dissolute manner of living, he has accompanied his plates with verses which are very far from celebrating their honesty.

Pasquier, in his Recherches de la France, has the following account of them: "On August 17, 1427, came to Paris twelve Penitents (Penanciers) as they called themselves, viz., a duke, an earl, and ten men, all on horseback, and calling themselves good Christians. They were of Lower Egypt, and gave out that not long before the Christians had subdued their country, and obliged them to embrace Christianity, or put them to death. Those who were baptized were great lords in their own country, and had a king and queen there. Some time after their conversion, the Saracens overran their country and obliged them to renounce Christianity. When the Emperor of Germany, the King of Poland, and other Christian princes, heard this, they fell upon them and obliged them all, both great and small, to quit their country and go to the Pope at Rome, who enjoined them seven years' penance to wander over the world without lying in a bed; every bishop and abbot to give them once 10 livres tournois, and he gave them letters to this purpose, and his blessing.

They had been wandering five years when they came to Paris. They were lodged by the police out of the city, at Chapelle St. Denis. Almost all had their ears bored, and one or two silver rings in each, which they said was esteemed an ornament in their country. The men were very black, their hair curled; the women remarkably ugly and black, all their faces scarred (deplayez), their hair black, like a horse's tail, their only habit and old shaggy garment (flossoye) tied over their shoulders with a cloth or cord-sash, and under it a poor petticoat or shift. In short they were the poorest wretches that had ever been seen in France; and, notwithstanding their poverty, there were among them women who, by looking into