Bampfylde Moore Carew

Bampfylde Moore Carew (1693 – 1759), was an English rogue, vagabond and imposter, who claimed to be King of the Beggars.

He was the son of Reverend Theodore Carew, rector of Bickleigh. The Carews were a well-established Devonshire family. Although they had a reputation for adventurousness Bampfylde Moore Carew took this to extremes, if his picaresque memoirs are to believed. Little is known about his life beyond these, in which he is described on the title-page as "the Noted Devonshire Stroller and Dogstealer".

The Life and Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew

Literary History

"The Life and Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew" was first published in 1745. Although it states that the contents were "noted by himself during his passage to America" and it is likely facts were supplied by Carew, the author was probably Robert Goadby, a printer in Sherborne, Dorset, who published an early edition in 1749. It has been suggested that Carew dictated his Life to Mrs. Goadby.

The Life and Adventures continued to be a best seller throughout the next hundred years, in numerous editions as books and chapbooks. He became a nationally known character, appealing to a provincial audience. One edition of his life was printed in Hull in 1785.

How much of the Life is true is impossible now to know. Carew certainly travelled and is likely to have indulged in some minor crimes but many of the stories seem too fantastic or literary to be true. It appealed to the market which has always existed for mild rogue literature and many editions included a canting dictionary. The particular appeal of The Life must have been that an educated man from a good family spent his life ingeniously and audaciously outwitting the establishment, including people who should have recognised him but without ever doing anything really bad.

It does seem that Carew settled down in Bickleigh towards the end of his life. This may have been because of an offer of support from his relative Sir Thomas Carew of Bickerton, winning a lottery or just age and weariness. Some editions of The Life and Adventures suggest he reflected with sadness on how “idly” he had spent his life but this sounds like the common method of making a racy story acceptable by adding a moral ending. Carew died at Bickleigh in 1759, leaving a daughter.

Contents

Carew claims to have taken to the road after he ran away from Blundell's School in Tiverton. With friends he had chased a deer through fields causing damage which caused the farmers to complain to the headmaster. He ran away and at an alehouse fell in with a band of “gypsies”. These were almost certainly not Romany but vagabonds living off their wits. Carew travelled widely, at first around Devon and then around England, supporting himself by playing confidence tricks on the wealthy.

His first trick involved a “Madam Musgrove”, who asked for his help in discovering some treasure she believed was hidden on her land. Carew, consulting “the secrets of his arts”, informed her that it was under a laurel tree but that she should not seek it until a particular day and hour and for which he was paid 20 guineas. Of course by the appointed hour Carew and her money were long gone. This was a well-known and documented trick from a period when cunning folk were often consulted about lost items.

Carew claimed to be a master of disguise, in which he followed the tradition of counterfeit rogues dating back to Thomas Harman. He masqueraded as a shipwrecked sailor (a popular way to claim alms), a clergyman and defrauding “Squire Portman” twice in one day, first as a rat-catcher and then a woman whose daughter had been killed in a fire, (another staple of fraudulent beggars). He then travelled to Newfoundland, where he stayed a short time. On his return he pretended to be the mate of a vessel and eloped with the daughter of a respectable apothecary of Newcastle on Tyne, whom he afterwards married. After further years as a vagabond he claimed to have been elected King of the Gypsies, on the death of Clause Patch. The ceremony described reproduces one from Thomas Harman’s "Caveat for Common Cursitors", via the popular play The Beggars' Bush by Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher and Philip Massinger in which Clause is a character. He was then convicted of being an idle vagrant and sentenced to be transported to Maryland. He attempted to escape, was captured, escaped again and fell in with friendly Indians. He then went to Pennsylvania, swam the Delaware, adopted the guise of a Quaker and made his way to Philadelphia and New York. Having embarked for England he escaped being pressed to serve in the Navy by pricking his hands and face and rubbing in bay salt and gunpowder, so as to simulate smallpox. Such tricks were commonplaces of rogue literature. On returning to England, he claims to have found his wife and daughter and then travelled to Scotland by 1745 in time to accompany Charles Edward Stuart to Carlisle and Derby.

ources

*"The life and adventures of Bamfylde Moore Carew, the noted Devonshire stroller and dogstealer" (1745)
*"An apology for the life of Bampfylde-Moore Carew (son of the Rev. Mr. Carew, of Bickley)" (1749?)
*Nooney, M.A., "The cant dictionary of Bampfylde-Moore Carew: a study of the contents and changes in various editions" (1969)
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/education/betsie/parser.pl/0005/www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/myths_legends/england/devon/article_1.shtml King of the Beggars] BBC
*Some of the cant words are listed and explained at [http://www.fullbooks.com/Musa-Pedestris--Three-Centuries-of-Canting4.html]

External links

* [http://www.mysteriouspeople.com/king_of_the_gypsies.htm Bamfylde Moore Carew - King of the Gypsies]