Since the above was written I have read with great interest the letter from “Thomas Bunyan, chief warder, Tower of London, and born in Roxburghshire,” in the _Daily News_ of the 17th. The origin which he gives of the _name_ is apparently the correct one, viz.: that “the first Bunyan was an Italian mason, who came to Melrose, and was at the building of that famous abbey in the year 1136;” and that “the oldest gravestone in the graveyard around Melrose Abbey has on it the name of Bunyan.” In my Disquisition on the Gipsies, published in 1865, I said:—“The name Bunyan would seem to be of foreign origin” (p. 519). It does not necessarily follow that the blood of the Italian mason flowed in John Bunyan’s veins, except by it having in some way got mixed with and merged in that of the Gipsy race. {11a} II. {11b} The following letter, which I addressed to-day to a clergyman of the Church of England, applies so well to the Rev. John Brown of Bunyan Church, Bedford, that it may be considered as the first part of my reply to his letter in the _Daily News_ of the 22d August. The remainder will follow soon. I have to thank you for your letter of the 22d August containing a newspaper slip. You say that the idea of Bunyan having been of the Gipsy race; “from absolute want of evidence is totally incapable of proof,” and “from beginning to end is no better than a conjecture”; and that as proof to the contrary is “the fact that before the birth of Bunyan his ancestors are known to have resided in Bedfordshire for many generations, some of them having been landed proprietors.” Now read what Bunyan said of himself:— “For my descent, it was, as is well known to many, of a low and inconsiderable generation, my father’s house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the families in the land.”