The Tudor law (22 Henry VIII., c. 10) was repealed as "of excessive
severity" in 1783 (23 George III., c. 51). The later legislation provides
that persons wandering in the habit and form of Egyptians, and pretending
to palmistry and fortune-telling, are to be deemed rogues and vagabonds
(17 Geo. II., c. 5., 3 Geo. IV., c. xl.), and is liable to three months'
imprisonment (5 Geo. IV., c. lxxxiii.), and encamping on a turnpike road
involved a penalty of forty shillings (3 Geo. IV., c. cxxvi., 5 and 6
William IV., c. 50). Some of the older enactments remained on the statute
book, though not enforced, until the passing of the statute law Revision
Act of 1863, by which many obsolete parliamentary enactments were swept
away.
By the famous Poynings Act, English laws were declared applicable to
Ireland. The gipsies were never common in the Isle of Saints, but by a
special act they were, in 1634, declared to be rogues and vagabonds (10
and 11 Car. I., c. 4).
There are acts of the Scottish Parliament as early as 1449, directed
against "sorners, overliers, and masterful beggars with horse, hounds, or
other goods," and that this would well describe the earlier gangs of
gipsies is undeniable, but whether they were Romanis or Scots is a matter
of controversy not easily decided in the absence of more definite
evidence. A tradition of the Maclellans of Bombie says that the crest of
the family was assumed on the slaying of the chief of a band of saracens
or gipsies from Ireland. The conqueror received the barony of Bombie from
the king as a reward. Having thus restored the fortunes of the family, the
young laird of Bombie took for his crest a moor's head with the motto
"Think on." If this legend was evidence, which it is not, there were gipsy
marauders in Galloway in the middle of the fifteenth century. But in 1505,
we have the entry of a gift by the King of Scotland of seven pounds to the
"Egiptianis." In the same year there is a letter already named, in which
"Anthonius Gagino," or Gawino, is recommended to the King of Denmark. In
1527, Eken Jacks, master of a band of gipsies, was made answerable for a
robbery from a house at Aberdeen. In 1539, a similar charge was brought,
but not proved, against certain friends and servants to "Earl George,
callet of Egipt." This chieftain was one of the celebrated Faa tribe. In
1540, George and John Faa were ordered by the bailies of Aberdeen to
remove their company and goods from the town. This is the first action of
a Scottish authority against the gipsies as gipsies. But, by a charter
dated four days before the municipal decree, James V. confirms to "our
lovit Johnne Faw, lord and erle of Little Egipt," full power to execute
justice over his tribe, some of whom had rebelled and forsaken his
jurisdiction. In 1541, an act of the Lords of Council and Session decreed
the banishment of the gipsies from the realm within thirty days, because
of "the gret theftes and scathis" done by them. Some of them passed over
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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