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Press, Volume LX, Issue 18233, 18 November 1924, Page 8

Our reference the other day to centenarians and their records has had an interesting result. We have had brought to our notice by the Vicar of I'Vnr dalton the record of n. Yorkshireman who lived to be 21 years older than "Old Parr," who was buried in Westminster Abbey at the venerable age of 148. This man, Henry Jenkins, is described us "the oldest Yorkshireman of whom we have any record —some say the oldest Englishman; others the oldest man in the world since the days of the Hebrew patriarchs.'' And if this i? a claim that cannot roadily be proved it is at least a likely one. There is no proof of the date of Jenkins's birth, which occurred before parishes began to keep registers, but contemporary evidence fixes 1501 as the year, and Ellertoii-on-Swale as the place. Jenkins himself used to tell how as a boy of 10 or 12 he was sent with a horse load (Sf arrows for the archers who used them with such terrible effect on Flodden Field on September l{>th, 1513.

i Like "Old Parr," Jenkins was a man of simple tastes and capacities, and'would have died, as he had lived, jn obscurity but for the fact of his amazing longevity. His youth was spent in agriculture. Then he became butler to Lord Conyers,' of Hornby Castle, and so made the acquaintance of a hospitable abbot, who treated him on his duty visits to "wassel, a quarter of a yard of roas.t beef, and a great black jack of strong drink," a diet which should have killed him, of course, but which seems to have suited him very well. In' his old age ho turned to fishing and thatching houses —when he was not being hauled off to court to give evidence regarding some customary usage, when there would be an entry such as this: "Henry Jenkins, of Ellerton-upon-Swale, labourer, aged 157, or thereabouts, sworn and examined, says-—■" But though his evidence was of service to many a suitor at law, he was none the better off for it, and in his old age begged for charity. * If Jenkins had been an historian ho might have written a boob that would have made him immortal, for ho lived through stirring times under the rule of eight kings and one Protector. He was bora when the Roman Catholic religion was established by law; he saw tho dissolution of the monasteries and tho faith of the nation changed, the old faith re-established by Queen Mary, and Protestanism return again under Elizabeth. Ia his time the Invincible Armada was destroyed; plague and fire swept London. Three Queens were boheaded; a Kiug of Spain wag seated upon the throne of England; a King of Scotland was crowned at Westminster and hia son won executed before his own palace. And this old man could ncithor road nor write. Can it bo that we, who can do both, miss scenes no Icm stirring than the events

of those- days because we have given up eating beef by the yard and die at sixtv instead of a hundred and sixtynine?