Smugglers, Rogues and maybe a Gypsy

My father's father's father was a tin miner from a small town in Northern Cornwall.  His name was Ned.  He moved to Looe, Cornwall to find work as a young man where luck would have it he met Mary Wilcox who would eventually become his wife and my father's Grandmother. Interesting, true, but so far, none of that has anything to do with gypsy blood.

Except that Mary's father was William Wilcox of Polperro, Cornwall. William was a river pilot from Polperro and he was also a smuggler and a rogue of some renown who was also known as Willy Wilcox.  He was drowned in a cave close to their family home and according to the legend which exists to this day his ghost continues to haunt the cave and the family home. 

The Wilcox family had long ties to Cornwall.  The rumour in our family is that they were, in fact, ancestors of Spanish soldiers washed ashore during the Spanish Armada.  The operative word here is rumour, but it could be true, and there are gypsies in Spain and some of those gypsies could have been soldiers and so, some of that gypsy blood could have made it's way into the Wilcox family.

That's my thinking anyway.

Just to make it very clear, there is no Spanish or Gypsey blood in my mother's heritage.  At least none that I know of.  Maybe a drop or two of Scottish rebel blood on my grandfather's side, but that is another story.