TOL. XIX.J PHILOSOPHICAI, TRANSACTIONS. g3 



mind to examine him : I told him he was an old man who must soon expect to 

 give an account to God of all he did or said ; and I desired him to tell ine very 

 truly how old he was ; on which he paused a little, and then said, that to the 

 best of his remembrance he was about 162 or \63. I asked him what kings he 

 remembered : he said Henry VIII ; I asked what public thing he could longest 

 remember ? he said Flodden-field. I asked whether the king was there ? he 

 said No, he was in France, and the Earl of Surry was general. I asked liim 

 how old he might be then ? he said, he believed between 10 and 12 ; " for," 

 says he, " I was sent to Northallerton with a horse load of arrows, but they 

 sent a bigger boy from thence to the army with them." I thought by these 

 marks I might find something in histories, and looking in an old chronicle, I 

 found that Flodden-fieid wasabout 152 years before; so thatif he was lOor 11 years 

 old, he must be 162 or 163, as he said, when I examined him. I found by the 

 book, that bows and arrows were then used, and that the earl he named was 

 then general, and that King Henry VIII was then at Tournay ; so that I don't 

 know what to answer to the consistencies of these things, for Henry Jenkins 

 was a poor man, and could neither write nor read. There were also 4 or 5 in 

 the same parish, that were reputed all of them to be 100 years old, or within 

 2 or 3 years of it, and they all said he was an elderly man ever since they knew 

 him ; for he was born in another parish, and before any register was in churches, 

 as it is said ; he told me then too, that he was butler to the Lord Conyers, and 

 remembered the abbot of Fountains-abbey very well, who used to drink a glass 

 with his lord heartily, and that the dissolution of the monasteries he said he 

 well remembered. Ann Savife. 



This Henry Jenkins died Dec. 8, 1670, at Ellerton, on Swale. The battle 

 of Flodden-field was fought on the Qth of Sep. 1513. Henry Jenkins was 12 

 years old when Flodden-field was fought, so that he lived 169 years. Old Parr 

 lived 152 years g months,* so that Henry Jenkins outlived him by computation 

 16 years, and was the oldest man born on the ruins of this postdiluvian 

 world. 



This Henry Jenkins, in the last century of his life, was a fisherman, and 

 used to wade in the streams ; his diet was coarse and sour ; but towards the 

 latter end of his days he begged up and down ; he has sworn in chancery and 

 other courts, to above 140 years' memory, and was often at the assizes at York, 

 whither he generally went a-foot ; and I have heard some of the country gen- 

 tlemen affirm, that he frequently swam in the rivers after he was past the age 

 of 100 years. 



* See Vol. 1, p. 819, of this Abridgment. 



