Thomas Bonyon seems to have been born about 1502, {14b} and was apparently of the native race, as was probably his wife; but between him and Thomas (John’s grandfather), whose will was dated in 1641, there were doubtless several generations. Without asking with whom each generation of this family married, Mr. Brown says:—“Here, then, we have a family living certainly in the same cottage and cultivating the same land from 1542 to 1641, and probably much earlier, a fact which seems to me utterly fatal to the theory of Gipsy blood”—assuming that the blood of the family through marriage was native English all the way down; and that they cultivated the nine acres of land, and did not rent or sell it, for Thomas Bunyan by his will, dated in 1641, leaves “the cottage or tenement wherein I doe now dwell.” This Thomas could not have been less than the grandson of the first-mentioned Thomas, and described himself in his will, dated November 20th, 1641, as a “pettie chapman”—a calling that is very common with Gipsies of mixed blood. The will of his son Thomas (John’s father) is dated May 28th, 1675, in which he describes himself as a “braseyer”—which is a favourite word with the Gipsies, and sounds better than tinker, and is frequently put on their tombstones. Mr. Brown says:—“From this it appears that Bunyan’s father was the first tinker in the family.” Instead of that, he should have said that it was the first one _found in a will_. Again he says that he has discovered from the annual returns of the parishes in Bedfordshire between 1603 and 1650, that “the families both of Bunyan’s father and of his mother, Margaret Bentley, were living there all this time as steadily as any of the other village families, and as unlike a Gipsy encampment as can well be conceived.” He found no such information in “annual parish returns,” but perhaps merely the fact of Bunyan’s father having had his legal and general residence at the cottage, while he followed his calling of tinkering all over the neighbourhood, as regulated by the chief of the tinkers or Gipsies for the district. Beyond the cottage being the residence of Thomas, we know nothing of his movements, nor of the company coming to his house; and if Mr. Brown had known anything of the subject of the Gipsies, or been willing to learn it from others, he would not have concluded that the Bunyans were not of that race, merely because they might not (as they probably did not) use a tent. It would appear that Mr. Brown has not mastered even the first principle of this subject, so as to be able to define what is meant by it being said that Bunyan was or was not of the Gipsy race.