, "very curious in working in several Handicraft Matters, and had
made good Proficiency in them, witness the nice way he had found to cut
asunder one of the Iron Bars in his Window in the Tower, by some small
Instrument, scarce perceivable." It was on 4th August 1716 that Lord
Wintoun made his escape, but, like everything else in his life, it is
wrapped in obscurity. For, according to the Diary of Mary Countess
Cowper for 19th March 1716, the last day of his trial, "My Lord _Winton_
had sawed an iron Bar with the Spring of his Watch very near in two, in
order to make his Escape; but it was found out." So, possibly, there is
something in the story told by the author of _Rab and his Friends_, that
he was carried out of the Tower in a hamper, supposed to be full of
family charters, by John Gunn, "the head of a band of roving gipsies."
Anyhow, ever afterwards he lived at Rome, where in 1737 he was great
master of the Lodge of Freemasonry. He died unmarried, though Lady
Cowper alleges "he has eight Wives."

Charles Bosvile, the scion of a good old Yorkshire house, is another who
must have known much about the Gypsies. He was buried at Rossington,
near Doncaster, on 30th January 1709; and more than a hundred years later
the Gypsies would visit the churchyard, and pour out a flagon of ale on
his grave by the chancel door. Joseph Hunter, the historian of South
Yorkshire, tells how he had

"established a species of sovereignty among that singular people, the
Gypsies, who before the enclosures frequented the moors round
Rossington. His word with them was law, and his authority so great
that he perfectly restrained the pilfering propensities for which the
tribe is censured, and gained the entire good-will for himself and his
subjects of the farmers and people around. He was a gentleman with an
estate of about 200_l._ a year; and his contemporary, Abraham de la
Pryme of Hatfield, describes him as 'a mad spark, mighty fine and
brisk, keeping company with a great many gentlemen, knights, and
esquires, yet running about the country.'"

Bamfylde Moore Carew (1693-? 1770), the son of the rector of Bickleigh,
near Tiverton, is semi-mythical, though we know that a man of that name
did really marry at Stoke Damerel, near Plymouth, one Mary Gray on 29th
December 1733. Gray is an old Gypsy surname, but the Gypsies of his
_Life and Adventures_ are just as unreal as those of any melodrama or
penny dread