The Life and Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew (1690-1758)

One of our readers last week mentioned the somewhat larger than life Georgian character of Bampfylde Moore Carew via some feedback on our Gypsies of Georgian England article and we decided to see whether we could actually find any new information about him. He was reputed to be ‘King of the Gypsies,’ ‘King of Beggars,‘ a rogue and a scoundrel, but was, in all likelihood, simply a very well read travelling storyteller – but we will let you decide!

His is a romantic tale, if questionable in authenticity; after being sent to school at Tiverton in Devon at the age of 12 years he got into trouble for pursuing deer with hounds across the nearby land and, with his fellows, ran away to avoid getting into bother. They met with a tribe of Romany Gypsies, and Carew claimed that he travelled with his new companions for a year and a half. Returning home he commenced a career as an imposter and swindler and supposedly took in a journey to Newfoundland before eloping with a respectable girl who became his long-suffering wife.

Carew then took to the road once again and, when a Gypsy King named Clause Patch died, he was crowned as the new King. The authorities caught up with him and, after being convicted of vagrancy, he was sentenced to be transported to Maryland in Virginia. Various escapades and adventures followed in America, but, in short, he managed to escape back home where, once again with his wife and their daughter, he fell into a nomadic way of life, even reputedly having travelled with the Young Pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie, in 1745.

Prince Charles Edward Stuart by Louis Gabriel Blanchet; National Portrait Gallery

Where to begin with such a story! From our perspective as genealogists, we started by checking what sources of information were readily available and immediately came across entries for him on the usual websites such as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) which is widely acknowledged to contain the most accurate and thoroughly researched information and Wikipedia. Here the confusion began; Wikipedia states his years of birth and death as 1693 and 1759 respectively as does the ODNB but other sources gave his birth as 1690 and his death as late as 1770.

The opening lines of a book written about him, ‘The Life and Adventure of Bampfylde Moore Carew‘ stated that ‘Mr Carew was born in the month of July 1693’ and that he was from ‘the parish of Brickley‘.  The parish is actually Bickley, or Bickleigh as it is known as today, (there never was the letter ‘r’ in its name), a village in mid-Devon. So, right at the beginning, we have a discrepancy with the misspelling of his birthplace suggesting the book had been written by someone other than Bampfylde himself; clearly, we were not off to a good start. One would assume that in the first few lines of the account of his life that the basic facts were correct – not so!

So, without further ado let’s get the basics resolved.

His baptism took place at the parish church in the village of Bickleigh, Devon on 23rd September 1690, he was baptized Banfield Moore Carew, son of Rev. Theodore Carew and his wife Alice née Pearce (whom we found via the couple’s marriage record); quite possibly the vicar misspelt his name in the register.  According to his ‘Life and Adventure’, he was named in honour of his two Godfather’s, the Honourable Hugh Bampfylde and Major Moore.  Hugh Bampfylde was said to have died after falling from his horse, and this would seem to identify him as Colonel Hugh Bampfylde, eldest son on Sir Coplestone Bampfylde of Poltimore, Devon, who died in a riding accident in 1691, two years before the accepted birth date for Bampfylde.

The Bampfields are an old and established gentry family in Devon. Sir Coplestone Bampfylde (1637/8-1692) was the one who changed the spelling of the surname, possibly to distance himself from his direct ancestors who had fought on the side of Parliament rather than on that of the King during the Civil Wars.

Bampfylde’s marriage didn’t take place until he was in his 40s, when, at Stoke Damerel in Devon on the 29th December 1733, he married a Mary Gray; the name does tally with a Miss Gray named in the book, whether she was the daughter of an apothecary/surgeon from Newcastle-upon-Tyne (as claimed) or not, we simply don’t know. We do however know that the surname Gray was a popular one amongst the gipsy community, so it is feasible that she was actually a gipsy, given his supposed connection with those people.  According to Carew’s story, the couple married at Bath where they spent some time, the implication being that they were only young at the time, but, unless for some strange reason they married twice this account seems improbable!

Gipsy Camp; George Morland; The Stanleyand Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds

In 1734, virtually a year to the day after their marriage Bampfylde and Mary presented their son Theodore for baptism, again at the parish church in Bickleigh then tragically, a mere two days later, the records show a burial for the child.

Four years later according to records held by Devon records office, Carew was sentenced as a criminal for transportation to Virginia. It was usual for a person being transported to have a Bond and a Contract issued, however, for Carew he was only named on the Bond, leading to speculation as to whether he actually was transported or not.

Carew talked fondly in his story of a daughter, Polly (a nickname often used instead of Mary), but so far any baptism record for this daughter is proving somewhat elusive, despite a mention of her marrying. There is one possible marriage for a Mary Carew at about the right time, but it took place in London, which does not fit with his account of her marrying a young gentleman who lived nearby in Devon.

Despite not being able to find the baptism we know that the couple most definitely did have a daughter named Mary as she was named in a vagrancy order issued at Sherborne, Dorset, dated 21st November 1745, along with a Robert Jones who was travelling with them.

In part of his story, Carew says that he had ventured as far north as Scotland and was travelling with Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, and he specifically stated that he had accompanied the Young Pretender back through England to Carlisle and Derby. According to records, the Young Pretender entered Carlisle on 10th November 1745 and then travelled south reaching Derby on the 4th December 1745.  Given that Carew and his family were arrested as vagrants on the 21^st November 1745, at Sherborne in Dorset, it seems unlikely that this part of his story has any truth in it; more likely the authorities returned him from Sherborne to his birthplace of Bickleigh.

A later representation of Prince Charles Edward Stuart in Edinburgh, 1745; City of Edinburgh Council

There are known Jacobite sympathies in his family though; the son of Colonel Hugh Bampfylde who was stated to be godfather to Carew, another Sir Coplestone Bampfylde, this one the 3rd Baronet, was suspected of being a Jacobite in 1715 and imprisoned for a time.  Another Bampfield, Joseph Bampfield (1622-1685), who was dead some years before Carew was born but whose story was no doubt told to him, had, with his lover Anne Murray, helped James, Duke of York, second son of King Charles I and the future King James II, to escape in 1648 during the English Civil Wars, disguising the young man in women’s clothing.  Possibly Carew’s sympathies lay on the side of the Pretender in 1745 and he used anecdotes he’d heard in his youth to embellish his own tale.  It is not known to which family this Joseph Bampfield belonged but he is thought to slot into the Devonshire Bampfield’s somewhere.

We then moved on to searching for his burial, with dates for this varying between 1758 and 1770. To confirm it once and for all the actual date was the 28th June 1758 and he was buried at the same church in which he was baptized.

The London Chronicle dated 28th August 1759 reported his death, but as you will notice it was over a year after his actual burial!  His death must have gone unnoticed and unreported for over a year.

Bath, August 27th The well-known Bampfield Moore Carew, stiled the king of the Beggars died lately at Bicknel, Near Tiverton, in Devonshire in the 60th year of his age, after 50 years travel.

His life story is so complex that rather than try to provide a ‘potted’ version we simply offer you a link to the book should you wish to learn more about him.

If you prefer a shorter account, we came across this excellent website.

Each time we have found one fact that checked out we found so many more that simply didn’t. Carew provided us with so many names to try to validate, but each time we came across one and searched the internet we inevitably came back to his story, but rarely, if ever, was the person mentioned anywhere else!

He either had the most adventurous life that read like something from a ‘Boys Own’ comic, or most of it was total fiction.  As we really can’t decide, we simply offer you the information we have found and you make your own decision, we would, however, say that the reality probably falls somewhere in between the two!

Romany Gypsies of Georgian England

Well, we said that our blog was going to be about ‘All Things Georgian‘ and so far we have written about relatively mainstream topics. However, as well as historians we are also both keen gypsiologists  so we could not resist writing about a group of people who remained largely ‘under the radar’ during the Georgian era – the gypsy community.

Gypsies in a Landscape by George Morland, c.1790
(c) Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

Today and throughout history gypsies have received  ‘bad press’,  in part due to the nomadic lifestyle they led, but also for the fact that when things went missing the finger was immediately pointed at the local gypsies, often quite rightly so, as the press of the day confirmed. Given the amount of publicity their antics had it could be argued that it should make these nomadic people easier to trace for gypsiologists, sadly though, on the whole, quite the contrary is true as they prove to be a complete nightmare to track down.

Gipsy Encampment by George Morland, c.1790-1795; Walker Art Gallery.

Gypsies were renown for changing both their forenames and their surnames as well as using names that were almost unpronounceable making tracing their family history even more complex and difficult to track down than tracing your average family. There were several main groups that travelled around the countryside using the surnames Smith, Boswell and Grey (Gray), changing their names as quickly as the weather, presumably to avoid detection.

Many of the men were given biblical first names such as Elijah, Nehemiah, Absalom, Moses and Wisdom whereas the women had some beautifully exotic sounding names such as  Cinnamenta,  Trezi Ann , Lamentana or names taken from nature such as Ocean or Evening. One thing we have learnt about the gypsies through the numerous years we have spent researching our own families apart from their unique lifestyle, culture and language was their propensity for the re-use of first names which helps greatly when trying to link members of the same ‘tribe’ but equally provides gypsiologists with an immense headache when trying to untangle who the possible parents were.

The Gypsies by William Simpson
(c) Dumfries and Galloway Council (Kirkcudbright)

Baptisms – the vast majority of gypsy children were baptized and it was quite common for them to be presented for baptism on more than one occasion and at  more than one church. The reason for this being that it was accepted tradition for the ladies of the parish to give the children gifts, so the gypsies soon learnt which were the best parishes to get their offspring baptized at, having had the child baptized and received gifts, they swiftly moved on to another parish where they promptly repeated the exercise, thereby receiving more ‘goodies’ – a crafty scam if you could get away with it!

Their marriages were of course a great cause for celebration and equally their funerals were treated with much pomp and ceremony.

FAREWELL TO THE KING OF THE GYPSIES

Died on the 15th inst of February 1826 aged 60 Absalom Smith better known in the neighbourhood of Nottingham as “King of the Gypsies”, leaving behind him a wife and 13 children (to whom he is said to have left 100 pounds each)and 54 grandchildren. He was attended in his last illness in his camp in Twyford Lane, by doctor Arnold and two surgeons. He was followed to his grave in Twyford churchyard by a large retinue of gipsies on Friday last. He was interred in his coat the buttons of which are silver and marked A.S, lest his circumstance should be a temptation to disturb his body. His followers caused alternate layers of timber and straw to be put into the grave with the earth.

As well as their often unusual names their ‘occupations’ remained largely unique to their community – basket maker, besom maker, bone gatherer, cutler and grinder,  clothes peg maker, cane chair mender, skewer maker. The vast majority made objects they made were created from things produced by nature, they then sold them around the towns and villages, making their other occupation that of hawker or seller of goods. 

Travelling Gypsies by Thomas Barker c.1787
(c) The Holburne Museum

They were also renown for being horse dealers, though quite where they acquired these animals remains something of a mystery, or at least better left unsaid! At the beginning of June each year gypsies would travel from far and wide to the village of Appleby, Cumbria to trade their horses, this small village having being granted a Royal Charter to do so by James II in 1685.

National Portrait Gallery NPG 1469; John Clare by William Hilton

Gypsies were and still are today regarded by many as ‘curiosities’ for their nomadic and  seemingly unorthodox lifestyle, none more so than by the Georgian poet John Clare (1793 –  1864), also known as ‘ The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet’ who frequently met up with and wrote poems about the gypsy community. Clare was not judgmental about them, but merely described their nomadic lifestyle through his poems such as this one:   

The Gipsy Camp

The snow falls deep; the Forest lies alone:
The boy goes hasty for his load of brakes,
Then thinks upon the fire and hurries back;
The Gipsy knocks his hands and tucks them up,
And seeks his squalid camp, half hid in snow,
Beneath the oak, which breaks away the wind,
And bushes close, with snow like hovel warm:
There stinking mutton roasts upon the coals,
And the half roasted dog squats close and rubs,
Then feels the heat too strong and goes aloof;
He watches well, but none a bit can spare,
And vainly waits the morsel thrown away:
‘Tis thus they live – a picture to the place;
A quiet, pilfering, unprotected race.

Clare also noted in his diary on 3rd June 1825:

‘Finished planting my auriculas – went a-botanizing after ferns and orchises and caught a cold in the wet grass which has made me as bad as ever – Got the tune of Highland Mary from Wisdom Smith a gipsey and pricked another sweet tune without a name as he fiddled it’.  As Wisdom Smith was a direct ancestor he warranted specific mention.

Gypsies in a Landscape by Alexander Fraser
(c) Paisley Art Institute Collection, held by Paisley Museum and Art Galleries; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

This is an excerpt about Ryley Boswell, born 1798 from the book by George Smith, ‘Gipsy Life, being an account of our Gipsies and their children.’

Ryley, like most of the Bosvils, was a tinker by profession; but though a tinker, he was amazingly proud and haughty of heart.  His grand ambition was to be a great man among his people, a Gipsy king (no such individuals as either Gipsy kings or queens ever existed).  To this end he furnished himself with clothes made after the costliest Gipsy fashion; the two hinder buttons of the coat, which was of thick blue cloth, were broad gold pieces of Spain, generally called ounces; the fore-buttons were English “spaded guineas,” the buttons of the waistcoat were half-guineas, and those of the collar and the wrists of his shirt were seven-shilling gold-pieces.  In this coat he would frequently make his appearance on a magnificent horse, whose hoofs, like those of the steed of a Turkish Sultan, were cased in shoes of silver.  How did he support such expense? it may be asked.  Partly by driving a trade in “wafedo loovo,” counterfeit coin, with which he was supplied by certain honest tradespeople of Brummagem; partly and principally by large sums of money which he received from his two wives, and which they obtained by the practice of certain arts peculiar to Gipsy females.  One of his wives was a truly remarkable woman.  She was of the Petalengro or Smith  Her Christian name, if Christian name it can be called, was Xuri or Shuri, and from her exceeding smartness and cleverness she was generally called by the Gipsies Yocky Shuri—that is, smart or clever Shuri, Yocky being a Gipsy word signifying “clever.”  She could dukker—that is, tell fortunes—to perfection, by which alone, during the racing season, she could make a hundred pounds a month.  She was good at the big hok—that is, at inducing people to put money into her hands in the hope of it being multiplied; and, oh, dear! how she could caur—that is, filch gold rings and trinkets from jewellers’ cases, the kind of thing which the Spanish Gipsies call ustibar pastesas—filching with hands.  Frequently she would disappear and travel about England, and Scotland too, dukkering, hokking, and cauring, and after the lapse of a month return and deliver to her husband, like a true and faithful wife, the proceeds of her industry.  So no wonder that the Flying Tinker, as he was called, was enabled to cut a grand appearance.  He was very fond of hunting, and would frequently join the field in regular hunting costume, save and except that instead of the leather hunting cap he wore one of fur, with a gold band round it, to denote that though he mixed with Gorgios he was still a Romany chal.

In this series we will recount some of the stories of gypsy life, so watch this space.

Gipsy Camp; George Morland; The Stanleyand Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds