I have to dispute this, it certainly was a crime just to be born a Gypsy in England, under the Tudor Egyptian Acts, carrying the death penalty, and this was not repealed until the 1780s.
It was not a crime to be 'born a Gypsy', it was a crime to be involved in 'palmistry' & other similar 'frauds' and this applied to non Gypsies too.
The 'Egyptians Act' (1530)
...statute forbade any more Gypsies from entering the realm and gave those already in England sixteen days' notice to depart from the realm.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptians_Act_1530The above does not equate to a 'death penalty' for being 'born a Gypsy'
I have seen early 'Egyptian' criminal & other records and it is often unclear as to whether
1 They are actual Gypsies or a mixture of Gypsies and other itinerant locals, who are both living 'outside the law'. The Winchester Confessions clearly documents the latter, & early intermarriage
http://website.lineone.net/~rtfhs/pubs5a.html2 Whether or not the sentences were actually carried out.
Many early Romany probably soon went native and intermarried with the locals, itinerant agricultural labourers for example or metal workers who they could share their skills with. Like any new arrival, they would have been compelled to do this in order to 'fit in' and spare themselves being deported later.
The last execution were reportedly carried out in the 1650s.
'reportedly' ?
Do you have a source for the report?
I will shortly be publishing my own research into the early British Gypsy communities, undertaken over last decade, and these contain abundant examples of Romanies transported to the colonies, the earliest dated to 1669, following an order made the same decade suggesting the Gypsy 'problem' was solved this way, rather than by executions.
Yes some Romany were transported, but they were transported because they had broken the same laws that applied to everyone else in the country. The vast majority of transported convicts were not Gypsies and unfortunately many, both Gyspy and non Gypsy, were just beggars, orphans or petty criminals stealing to buy food and shelter. Although it has to be said that many convicts had also been found guilty of extremely serious crimes
Romany surnames are also present in the lists of vagrants earlier rounded up in the capital and transported 1618-1620. There is also clear evidence of transportations from Scotland in the early 18th century.
How do you know they were Gypsies just by their surnames? Gypsies had already adopted English surnames . Just because someone had the surname Boswell or Cooper it does not necessarily follow that they were Romany. It is not that simple. I have Coopers in my family, but they were lead miners from Derbyshire and not likely to have been Romany. I also have 'Gypsies' intermarrying in my family but their names hardly ever appear on Romany records and are not common or well known 'Romany' names at all.
Also not to forget that probably the most common Romany surname is Smith. How at these dates can you tell if a Smith is Romany or not?
Scotland had/has different systems of law and did not use convict transportation as much as England
There can be no doubt that those in America carrying H1a1- H-M82 are direct paternal descendants of the the original proto-Gypsy communty that left India circa 1000 AD, as that is well established by various genetic studies, and though some will be from later migrations, a good many will and do descend from individuals transported there from 1660-1774.
Some Americans might well be descended from a Romany convict transportation, many millions in the USA are descended from everyday transported convicts as well, but there are also other possibilities. The British Empire spanned half the globe, it employed many Indians and Africans in its Royal, and also merchant, navy. Lascars for example.
Most British Romany migrated to the USA long after convict transportation had ended. You can see they are Romany quite clearly because of the 19th century detail in the records. But earlier records are not detailed
In returning to the original post, my Gypsy ancestry is quite far back on maternal line, 19th century, but shows up in my mtDNA haplogroup U3b, which is the dominant maternal haplogroup for Romany people in Western and Northern Europe, and is also present in Eastern Europe in rates significantly greater than surrounding non-Gypsy populations. I also get 1.1% South Asian on the autosomal.
I am unclear as to why you think this mtDNA haplogroup U3b result means your ancestor was 'Romany'?
https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/mt-dnau3/about/backgroundI also get 1.1% South Asian on the autosomal.
'autosomal' tests cannot tell you your 'ethnicity', especially below 15%.
