AGED 169 YEARS

Evening Star, Issue 19789, 13 February 1928, Page 14

AGED 169 YEARS

[By Harwood Brieruet, in the ' ‘Weekly Scotsman.’]

remarkable longevity of HENRY JENKINS

Henry Jcnkii.is, the Patriarch of England, lived seventeen years longer than his contemporary, Thomas Parr, a Shropshire man. . Jenkins, who lived in Yorkshire ail his life, was horn at Ellerton-in-Swale, opposite ’ Catterick, and'six miles from Richmond, in 1500, when King Henry (Tndor) the Seventh sat on the throne. He died some years after the restoration of King Charles (Stuart) the Second. Our insulated minds arc quite staggered by longevity of this kind. By the time other men had reached the allotted span of three-score years and ten Henry Jenkins was just_ putting his hands on the elixir of life, of which present-day philosophers have lost the compound. Sir Tancred Robinson, M.D., F.R.S., physician to King George 1., and brother of Sir William Robinson. Bart., of Newby Hall, advanced Jenkins’s claim to bo regarded as “the oldest man born on the ruins of the postdiluvian world.” HIS MYTHOPSHC FACULTY. Before adducing the “proofs” of this long life in the reigns of eight sovereigns—Henry VII., Henry Vlll., Edward Vly Mary, Elizabeth, Janies 1., Charles 1., Charles IT.—we will just glance at the sceptical observations of W. J. Thoms, F.S.A., long editor of the useful ‘Notes and Queries’ periodical. Having investigated, as he thought, all the available data and “wild stories” of Jenkins’s career, ho claimed that the carecrer had-been born fifty rears too soon, or died fifty years too late. He showed, as conclusively as it was possible to prove a negative, that Mr Jenkins had drawn on his “ mythopseic faculty”—that is the polite scientific way of given the lie by more assertion. Or perhaps ancient Henry suffered from a memory which was apt at times to be a bit treacherous! The nation’s sympathies, notwithstanding, are not with the learned Mr W. J. Thoms, F.S.A. He was one of the iconoclasts who marred the splendid reputation of Thomas Parr, the Shropshire patriarch, who lived in the reigns of ten monarchs, died in 1635 at the age of 152 years 9 months, and was put to rest among the eminent dead at Westminster Abbey. Then who was it who settled the hypothetical age of the frolicsome Countess of Desmond, who died from a fall out of a cherry tree at the age of 140? Somebody has sent out tlio joke that if the Into Mr Methuselah had been a woman the world would never have known how old she really was! RECORD UK BURIAL.

Now, the parish burial register of Bolton-on-Swalc, under the date of December 9, 1.670, imports nothing at all about the Yorkshire Methuselah's age, and there was no particular reason why it should do so. The oft-consulted entry, which is in the neat handwriting of the Rev. Charles Anthony, then vicar of Chattorick. is given in these few simple words:—“Henry Jenkins, a very aged and poo re man, buryod.” Between 1664 and 1084 the Bolton-on-Swalo register was kept with almost meticulous care by this same minister, no fewer than fifty-five persons being entered as aged, ancient, or very aged, but the exact ago is never given until about a century later. - It is very remarkable that the entry ol our patriarch's wife occurs in Bifid, only two years before her life partner’s; hut, then, this Mrs Jenkins may have been a fifth or even a tenth spouse! JE N K INS INTERVI EWE D, Ami Savile, daughter of Sir John Savilo, of Methley, and an ancestress of the Earl of Mexborough, wrote an account of the interview she once had with Henry Jenkins, about the year 1605. In this account she stated;— “ f asked him what kings he remembered? Ho said Henry the Eighth. I asked him what public thing lie could longest remember? He said Flnddcn Field (September 9, 1513). .1 asked him whether the King was there? He said no; he was in France, and the Earl of Surrey was general. I- asked how old ho might be then. He said between ten ami twelve; ‘for,’ says lie, ‘ t. was sent tn Northallerton with a horse-load of arrows, hut they sent a, bigger hoy from thenee to the army with them.’ ” RACE OF ANTEDILUVIAN'S. Up to 1667 Henry Jenkins gave, evidence in tithing matter before a commission issued out of the Court ot Exchequer. The following seems to bo a first-class joke, hut it illustrates his glorious long memory and suggests that very long life was hereditary in his family.

An attorney came to Jenkins's thatched dwelling at EUci'ton-on-Swale respecting a matter of grave dispute at York, and, observing an elderly gentleman seated in the doorway, began to put questions. The elderly gentleman at last said: “1 know nothing about it, sir. Will you be pleased just to step inside the house and have a few words with my father.” Marvelling that this particular Mr Jenkins slum Id have a father living, tlic attorney entered the cottage and ton ml a decrepit person wanning his hands at the hearth, to whom he again made known his wants. All the attorney got out of him was that ho had rather lost In's memory, but that his honored father had got a very good memory indeed, mid Henry Jenkins would he found somewhere about the stackgatli. So did the dumbfounded lawyer’s agent come to tlio conclusion that he had discovered a race of antediluvians. Having at .length found the patriarch he was in search of, the attorney elicited from him such information as served his clients’ every purpose, and the legal dispute was eventually settled in their favor. ANCIENT ANGLER.

Sir Tancred Robinson, M.D., F.K.S., said he had heard county gentlemen affirm that Henry Jenkins often swam across the Swale and in other rivers at all times of the year long after he was a centenarian; and that, being a great fisherman, he waded in the Swale till ho was quite 120.

Jenkins scarcely knew what it was like to feel ill. "His diet was coarse, sometimes sonx - nettle broth being one of his stand-by, and tar-water his chief medicine. Ho could „ not afford to “ apply rebellions liquor to his blood.” Tn his time he had been farm laborer, butler, th,atelier, trader in firearms, and salmon fishing expert. Without the aid of spectacles he dressed artificial flies, and at 165 could “dub a hook with any man in the country.” tn the year 1743—i.0., seventy-three years after Jenkins had been put to rest—his admirers subscribed for the erection of two memorials to his immortal memory. Upon his grave in Bolton-le-Swale churchyard is a clumsy obeliscal monument of freestone, lift high, standing upon a square pedestal. In the church itself will bo found a mural tablet of black marble bearing an epitaph done by Dr Thomas Chapman, master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, in the usual verbose style of that period, which states that Henry Jenkins “ lived to the amazing age of 169, was interred here, December 6, 1670, and had this justice done to his memory, 174>.”