Egyptians Act 1530

• 1. The Sixteen-Day Order

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  The Egyptians Act 1530 gave the people it targeted exactly sixteen days to leave England. Those people were Roma, a community Parliament labeled 'outlandish people calling themselves Egyptians.' The act also barred any future Roma from entering the realm. Roma who had traveled 'from shire to shire, and place to place' across England were being told by statute to go. Parliament's confidence in issuing that order rested on a specific set of charges it believed justified removing an entire community from the realm.

• 2. Palmistry and Felony

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  Palmistry sat at the center of Parliament's case. The act described Roma as 'bearing them in hand' that they could read men's and women's fortunes, extracting money from those they deceived. Parliament did not treat fortune-telling as the full extent of the problem. The act also charged Roma with committing 'many heinous felonies and robberies' against the people they encountered. The statute set out remedies for both wrongs. Goods that Roma had stolen were to be restored to their rightful owners. Any Roma who arrived in England after the act took effect faced a fifteen-day deadline to leave, under pain of imprisonment. Roma who violated the statute also faced confiscation of their own property. Those goods would be divided between the Sovereign and the arresting Justice of the Peace. That penalty, it turned out, was not enough to empty the realm of Roma.

• 3. When the Law Failed

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  Mary I passed the Egyptians Act 1554 roughly two decades after the earlier statute had tried to expel all Roma from England. The new act complained that 'Egyptians' were still plying their 'devilish and naughty practices and devices' across the realm. That language made the failure of the 1530 law plain. Yet the 1554 act did offer some Roma a path to avoid prosecution. The escape required abandoning a nomadic way of living. The act described that lifestyle as 'naughty, idle and ungodly life and company.' Section 1 of the Repeal of Obsolete Statutes Act 1856 finally struck the 1530 law from the statute book. That provision came into force on the 21st of July 1856, ending a statute that had survived three centuries of English legal history.