These writers probably based their ideas for characters on information about the Gubbins provided by Fuller’s The History of the Worthies of England written in 1662. He did not have a good word to say about them! The following is an example:
‘We call the slaverings of fish (which are of little worth) Gubbings; and sure it is they are sensible that the Word importeth shame and disgrace…….
……..the Gubbings land is a Scythia within England, and they pure heathens therein. It lyeth near Brentor, in the edge of Dartmore. It is reported that some two hundred years since, two strumpets being with child, fled hither to hide themselves, to whom certain lewd fellows resorted, and this was their first original. They are a peculiar of their own making, exempt from Bishop, Archdeacon, and all authority either ecclesiastical or civil. They live in cotts (rather holes than houses) like swine, having all in common, multiplied, without marriage, into many hundreds.’
Fuller went on to say that their language was ‘vulgar Devonian,’ they lived by ‘stealing sheep on the More,’and they worked together to outwit any lawful attempt to prevent or sanction their crimes.
Not all historians agree with Fuller. Patricia Milton quotes Edward Gibson, who wrote in 1695 that:
‘……there is a village nam’d the Gubbins, the inhabitants whereof are by mistake represented by Fuller as a lawless Scythian sort of people.’