Little Jack Horner
Sat in a corner
Eating a Christmas pie.
He put in a thumb
And pulled out a plum
And said “What a good boy am I!”
This familiar nursery rhyme has its origins in the 16th
century and the Dissolution of the Monasteries during the reign of King Henry
VIII.
The Abbot of Glastonbury in Somerset, Richard Whyting, was
determined to resist the dissolution of his own monastery, which was an
extremely wealthy one. He thought that he could get round King Henry by
offering him a bribe, in the shape of twelve manor houses that were owned by
the abbey.
Whyting therefore sent his steward, Thomas Horner, to
Hampton Court Palace with the deeds of the manor houses. The law at the time
stipulated that the holder of a deed was the owner of the property, so it was
essential that the deeds did not fall into the wrong hands. They were therefore
hidden in a large pie.
However, Thomas Horner was not as trustworthy as the abbot
had imagined. During the journey Thomas Horner lifted the crust of the pie and
removed one of the deeds, namely that of Mells Manor. King Henry was therefore
offered eleven deeds, not twelve.
Whether the full bribe would have worked is a matter for
conjecture, because the slightly reduced one did not. Glastonbury Abbey was
dissolved, along with the rest, and Abbot Whyting was put on trial for having
dared to set himself against the will of King Henry. One of the jurors at the
trial was Thomas Horner, now the master of Mells Manor. Richard Whyting was
found guilty and sentenced to death, being hanged, drawn and quartered at the
top of Glastonbury Tor.
Interestingly, the slang word for £1000 in the 16th
century was “plum”, although any sum of money that an ordinary person would
regard as being way beyond their reach could also be called a plum. We still
use the term “plum job” to describe one that seems to offer a good return for
doing very little. Thomas Horner’s plum was the large house that he now
occupied.
The Horner family still owns Mells Manor, although they
dispute the story of how it came into their possession, preferring to state
that Thomas Horner acquired the deeds by purchase or as a gift from the king.
However, the story of the pie clearly went the rounds at the time, in the form
of the famous rhyme, and everyone prefers a tale of skulduggery to one of
honesty, every time!
© John Welford
