You say that the “rank” Bunyan spoke of was “the rank of tinkers, not the race of Gipsies.” But tinkering was his calling, while the word rank was only applicable to “his father’s house,” who probably did not all follow tinkering for a living. I do not think that Bunyan used the word tinker anywhere in his writings; the only allusion to it apparently being at the scene before Justice Hale, when his wife said, “Yes, and because he is a tinker, and a poor man, therefore he is despised and cannot have justice.” In my Disquisition on the Gipsies and elsewhere I attached weight to the fact of Bunyan having been a tinker, as illustrative and confirmatory proof of his having been a Gipsy, when the name of Gipsy was so severely proscribed by law; in consequence of which the Gipsies would call themselves tinkers, to evade the legal and social responsibility. At the present day it is exceedingly difficult to ascertain who English tinkers are or were originally. They will all deny that they are or were ever related to the Gipsies; and the Gipsies proper will do the same. I attach no weight to the loose assertions either way made by people promiscuously, who know little or nothing of the subject, or merely have a theory to maintain. All this I have already very fully put in print. In your letter is a phrase that sounds a little unpleasantly to my ear. You say, “However, whatever may have been Bunyan’s pedigree, he merits honour as a man;” which seems to imply that his memory would have been disgraced if he had been of the Gipsy race. Why should that have been a disparagement? This is the entire question at issue. How could we have expected Bunyan to have said plainly that he was a member of the Gipsy race in the face of the legal and social responsibility attaching to the name, as I have illustrated at great length on various occasions?