HOUSES WITH A HISTORY 
THE HORNER HOUSE AT MELLS 
By Mahlon Stacy 
''T'HIS IS THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT.” 
It is also a portion of the “plum” 
that little Jack Horner extracted with his 
thumb from the famous Christmas pie, accord¬ 
ing to the familiar rhyme of our nursery days. 
Few people perhaps know that the “Mother 
Goose Melodies” are anything more than 
a collection of rather meaningless folk-lore 
nursery rhymes, which the Boston printer, 
Fleet, first published either to ridicule his 
mother-in-law, Elizabeth Vergoose, or per¬ 
haps with an eye to the profits he actually 
realized from the sale of the publication. And 
the old lady, when she sang “Little jack 
Horner” and “The House that jack Built” 
to her little grandson, no doubt would have 
been vastly astonished if she had been told 
she was amusing the infant Fleet with two 
political lampoons of the sixteenth century. 
Yet so it was, and she was singing about a 
person who really had lived and whose doings 
these doggerel verses were intended to satirize. 
The house built by John Horner at Mells 
in the South of England is still owned and 
occupied by his descendants of the same 
name. 1 he story of the Christmas pie, which 
was the basis of his fortune, has been handed 
down through the successive generations of 
the family he founded, and it runs as follows: 
During the time when the monastic establish¬ 
ments in England were being suppressed by 
Henry VIII., and their property seized, John 
Horner is said to have been connected in some 
lay capacity with a certain wealthy monas¬ 
tery. The abbot, fearing a descent of the 
crown officers and wishing to place the title 
deeds of the monastery lands beyond their 
reach, caused to be made the empty pastry 
shell of a large venison pie; placing within it, 
instead of the usual contents, the parchment 
documents which represented the monastery’s 
wealth and which in those days constituted 
the proof of ownership, titles not being re¬ 
corded, but the actual possession of the deeds 
being essential evidence of claim. This pie 
with its valuable contents was intrusted to 
John Horner to be delivered, ostensibly as a 
Christmas gift, to some monkish brethren at 
a distance, in whose possession it was fondly 
hoped the deeds might be safely and secretly 
kept until the troublous times which were 
beginning for the Roman Catholic Church of 
England should be overpast. It is uncertain 
whether Horner knew of the ruse, or whether 
in ignorance of it he only suspected that the 
pie was not all it pretended to be, and pro¬ 
ceeded to investigate in the natural manner 
indicated in the nursery rhyme by prying up 
the lid of the pastry with his thumb. At all 
events, instead of taking the pastry to its des¬ 
tination, he turned the deeds over to the 
officers of the crown, who proceeded to dis¬ 
possess the monks and confiscate the monastic 
property, Horner receiving his share of the 
spoils. He is said to have been afterwards 
a crown officer himself. Perhaps he was so at 
the beginning and not connected with the 
monastery at all, only by a lucky stroke com¬ 
ing across the bearer of the pie in transit and 
divining what might be the real significance 
of his errand. At all events, the “ plum ” that 
fell to his share out of the famous Christmas 
pie seems to have been substantial and succu¬ 
lent, and was the foundation of his family for¬ 
tunes. 
As to “ the house that Jack built,” it appears 
to have had a very handsome church attached 
as a salve to the conscience, in the manner of 
the time, for having been concerned in divert¬ 
ing from the old church a large sum of which 
the builder had no scruple to keep a good pro¬ 
portion in his own pockets. The significance 
is doubtless now irretrievably lost of the malt 
and the rat, the dog and the cat, the cow with 
the crumpled horn, the man all tattered and 
torn, the maiden all forlorn, and the priest all 
shaven and shorn, which we read about in the 
little ballad. We might make a shrewd guess 
as to the man and the maid, perhaps as to the 
milking of the cow, and especially as to the 
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