KING OF THE GIPSIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 July 1940, Page 7

KING OF THE GIPSIES

BAMPFYLDE CAREW'S CAREER. It is very possible that little Bampfylde Moors Carew may once have sung: My mother said that I never should Play with the gipsies in the wood. Whether he did or not we do not know, but we know that this son of a Devon rector ran away from home when only a schoolboy, and that he joined the gipsies. Home, education, prospects, all these he threw away, and gave himself up to caravanning. He became a swindler. He made a practice of imposture. Ingenious and daring and utterly careless, he lived a wild life, went off to Newfoundland, came sailing home again, and, pretending to have been mate of the vessel. eloped with the daughter of a Newcastle chemist. Even she could not persuade him to give up his vagabond life. He. stayed on with the gipsies, and was so popular with them that when old Clause Patch died, he was unanimously elected king. Whatever the gipsies thought of Bampfylde Carew, law-abiding citizens thought little; and after being charged as an idle vagrant, he was transported to America. The minute he set foot in the New World he macle a desperate attempt to escape, and was brought: back. He tried again, and failing to get away found himself saddled with a heavy iron collar. Even that could not deter this astonishing fellow. He macle another attempt, and got clean away, making friends with some Indians who removed his collar. Leaving them in haste, he scurried off to Pennsylvania, pretended to be a Quaker, and made a pious journey to New York, 'and then embarked for England. After escaping the pressgang by pretending he had smallpox, he appeared in Scotland, joined forces with the Young Pretender, and marched as far as Derby with him in the rebellion of 1745. After that he carried out a long series of frauds, and is thought to have finished his wanderings about 1770, when he must have been nearly 80.