een the fitful and uncertain efforts of the
missionary, the relentless hands of persecution, the policeman, and the
stage.

From the time the Gipsies landed in this country in 1515, down to the
time when Raper's translation of Grellmann's work appeared in 1787, a
period of 272 years, nothing seems to have been done to improve the
Gipsies, except to pass laws for their extermination. The earliest
notice of the Gipsies in our own country was published in a quarto volume
in the year 1612, the object of which was to expose the system of
fortune-telling, juggling, and legerdemain, and in which reference is
made to the Gipsies as follows:--"This kind of people about a hundred
years ago beganne to gather an head, as the first heere about the
southerne parts. And this, as I am imformed and can gather, was their
beginning: Certain Egyptians banished their country (belike not for their
good conditions) arrived heere in England, who for quaint tricks and
devices, not known heere at that time among us, were esteemed and had in
great admiration; insomuch that many of our English loyterers joined with
them, and in time learned their crafty cosening. The speech which they
used was the right Egyptian language, with whom our Englishmen conversing
at least learned their language. These people continuing about the
country and practising their cosening art, purchased themselves great
credit among the country people, and got much by palmistry and telling of
fortunes; insomuch they pitifully cosened poor country girls, both of
money, silver spoons, and the best of their apparalle or other goods they
could make." And he goes on to say, "But what numbers were executed on
these statutes you would wonder; yet, notwithstanding, all would not
prevaile, but they wandered as before uppe and downe and meeting once a
year at a place appointed; sometimes at the Peake's Hole in Derbyshire,
and other whiles by Ketbroak at Blackheath." The annual gathering of the
Gipsies and others of the same class, who make Leicestershire,
Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and neighbouring counties,
their head-quarters, takes place at the well-known Bolton Fair, held
about Whitsuntide, on the borders of Leicestershire, a village situated
in a kind of triangle, between Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and
Derbyshire. Spellman speaks of the Gipsies about this time as
follows:--"The worst kind of wanderers and impostors springing up on the
Continent, but yet