Gubbins, a half-savage race in Devon, are mentioned by the pastoral poet, William Browne, in 1644, in a poem on Lydford Law, printed in Westcote's Devon. He says:
This town's enclosed with desert moors,
But where no bear nor lion roars,
And nought can live but frogs;
For all o'erturned by Noah's Flood,
Of fourscore miles scarce one foot's good,
And hills are wholly bogs.
And near hereto's the Gubbins Cave;
A people that no knowledge have
Of law, of God, or men;
Whom Cæsar never yet subdued;
Who've lawless lived; of manners rude,
All savage in their den.
By whom, if any pass that way,
He dares not the least time to stay,
For presently they howl;
Upon which signal they do muster
Their naked forces in a cluster,
Led forth by Roger Rowle.
Old Fuller says of this district: 'Gubbin's Land is a Scythia within England, and they pure heathens therein. . . . Their language is the drosse of the dregs of the vulgar Devonian. . . . They hold together like burrs; offend one, and all will revenge his quarrel.' They lingered on, becoming more and more absorbed into the general mass of the less uncultured, till the present time. The last remnants, probably, but not certainly descendants, were in Nymet Roland, in North Devon, and bore the name of Cheriton. They lived in semi-nakedness and in utter savagery in an old cottage of clay, of which one wall had fallen and most of the roof had given way, so that in the only room grass grew on the earth floor. They claimed a small tract of land as their own, upon which probably their forefathers had squatted. They stole what clothes they required, and were continually getting into trouble with the police, one of whom was felled to the earth by a blow of the fist of one of the girls. They were finely built, muscular, and strong. The patriarch of the family died at Whitstone, having spent the decline of his days in an old cider cask. After the death of the grandmother, about 1860, the family got into difficulties of one sort or another, and were dispersed.