The words of the phantom Gypsy were ominous. Gypsy Will was eventually executed for a murder committed in his early youth, in company with two English labourers, one of whom confessed the fact on his death-bed. He was the head of the clan Young, which, with the clan Smith, still haunts two of the eastern counties. SOME FURTHER PARTICULARS RESPECTING THE ENGLISH GYPSIES It is difficult to say at what period the Gypsies or Rommany made their first appearance in England. They had become, however, such a nuisance in the time of Henry the Eighth, Philip and Mary, and Elizabeth, that Gypsyism was denounced by various royal statutes, and, if persisted in, was to be punished as felony without benefit of clergy; it is probable, however, that they had overrun England long before the period of the earliest of these monarchs. The Gypsies penetrate into all countries, save poor ones, and it is hardly to be supposed that a few leagues of intervening salt water would have kept a race so enterprising any considerable length of time, after their arrival on the continent of Europe, from obtaining a footing in the fairest and richest country of the West. It is easy enough to conceive the manner in which the Gypsies lived in England for a long time subsequent to their arrival: doubtless in a half-savage state, wandering about from place to place, encamping on the uninhabited spots, of which there were then so many in England, feared and hated by the population, who looked upon them as thieves and foreign sorcerers, occasionally committing acts of brigandage, but depending chiefly for subsistence on the practice of the ‘arts of Egypt,’ in which cunning and dexterity were far more necessary than courage or strength of hand. It would appear that they were always divided into clans or tribes, each bearing a particular name, and to which a particular district more especially belonged, though occasionally they would exchange districts for a period, and, incited by their characteristic love of wandering, would travel far and wide. Of these families each had a sher-engro, or head man, but that they were ever united under one Rommany Krallis, or Gypsy King, as some people have insisted, there is not the slightest ground for supposing. It is possible that many of the original Gypsy tribes are no longer in existence: disease or the law may have made sad havoc among them, and the few survivors have incorporated themselves with other families, whose name they have adopted. Two or three instances of this description have occurred within the sphere of my own knowledge: the heads of small families have been cut off, and the subordinate members, too young and inexperienced to continue Gypsying as independent wanderers, have been adopted by other tribes.