Note 10b — PREFACE.

I have commented on the assertion of Mr. Groome, that “John Bunyan, from parish registers, does not appear to have had one drop of Gipsy blood,” as if that could have been ascertained from parish registers! I did not expect to find such a loose idea as that in the Encyclopædia Britannica, taken from a casual or stray contributor to Notes and Queries. But I find an English journal quoting it as a proof that Bunyan was not of the Gipsy race; and supporting it by Mr. Froude’s ignoring the question in his highly conventional work on Bunyan.—The Scottish Churches and the Gipsies, pp. 11, 52 and 59.