From the time the Gipsies landed in this country in 1515, down to the time when Raper’s translation of Grellmann’s work appeared in 1787, a period of 272 years, nothing seems to have been done to improve the Gipsies, except to pass laws for their extermination. The earliest notice of the Gipsies in our own country was published in a quarto volume in the year 1612, the object of which was to expose the system of fortune-telling, juggling, and legerdemain, and in which reference is made to the Gipsies as follows:—“This kind of people about a hundred years ago beganne to gather an head, as the first heere about the southerne parts. And this, as I am imformed and can gather, was their beginning: Certain Egyptians banished their country (belike not for their good conditions) arrived heere in England, who for quaint tricks and devices, not known heere at that time among us, were esteemed and had in great admiration; insomuch that many of our English loyterers joined with them, and in time learned their crafty cosening. The speech which they used was the right Egyptian language, with whom our Englishmen conversing at least learned their language. These people continuing about the country and practising their cosening art, purchased themselves great credit among the country people, and got much by palmistry and telling of fortunes; insomuch they pitifully cosened poor country girls, both of money, silver spoons, and the best of their apparalle or other goods they could make.” And he goes on to say, “But what numbers were executed on these statutes you would wonder; yet, notwithstanding, all would not prevaile, but they wandered as before uppe and downe and meeting once a year at a place appointed; sometimes at the Peake’s Hole in Derbyshire, and other whiles by Ketbroak at Blackheath.” The annual gathering of the Gipsies and others of the same class, who make Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and neighbouring counties, their head-quarters, takes place at the well-known Bolton Fair, held about Whitsuntide, on the borders of Leicestershire, a village situated in a kind of triangle, between Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Spellman speaks of the Gipsies about this time as follows:—“The worst kind of wanderers and impostors springing up on the Continent, but yet rapidly spreading themselves through Britain and other parts of Europe, disfigured by their swarthiness, sun-burnt, filthy in their clothing and indecent in all their customs.” Under these circumstances it is not to be wondered at, in these dark ages, that some steps should be taken to stop these lawless desperadoes and vagabonds from contaminating our English labourers’ and servant girls with their loose ideas of labour, cleanliness, honesty, morality, truthfulness, and religion. It was soon manifest what kind of strange people had begun to flock to our shores to make their domiciles among us, as will be seen in