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Sir John Thomas Horner
b.Abt 1515
d.
- Sir John Thomas HornerAbt 1515 -
Facts and Events
| Name |
Sir John Thomas Horner |
| Alt Name |
Jack _____ |
| Gender |
Male |
| Birth? |
Abt 1515 |
|
| Marriage |
|
to Amy Games |
| Death? |
|
Y |
| Other[1] |
|
Misc |
References
- ↑ Rhyme
Little Jack Horner sat in the corner,
Eating a Christmas pie:
He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum,
And said, “What a good boy am I!”
Origins
Jack was actually Thomas Horner, steward to Richard Whiting, the last Abbot of Glastonbury . Legend has it that, prior to the Abbey's destruction during the Dissolution of the Monasteries commanded by Henry VIII the Abbot tried to avoid the event by sending Horner to London with a huge Christmas pie that had the deeds of a dozen manors hidden in it. During the journey Horner opened the pie and extracted the deeds of the Manor of Mells in Somerset While records do indicate that Thomas Horner became the owner of the manor, both his descendants and subsequent owners of Mells Manor have claimed that the legend is untrue.
A 16th-century rhyme noted
"Hopton, Horner, Smyth and Thynne:
When Abbotts went out, they came in."
The first publication date for "Little Jack Horner" is 1725, but all the common English nursery rhymes were long in circulation before they appeared in print.
Bob Dylan referred to the rhyme in a lyric, "Little Jack Horner's got nothing on me," from the song Country Pie, off of his album, Nashville Skyline.
As of 1996, the Horner descendents still occupy the land. It is located in Mell, England.
Sidenote: The English term for getting something for nothing was called "picking a plum" - thus "he stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum...".
John (Jack) Horner was our (my generation's) 11th Great Grandfather.
Sidenote: Just as an added "FYI": the poem about "Ring around the Rosie" is also an allusion to an event of the day. The "rosie" referred to the redness people developed with Scarlett Fever which was in epidemic stages. "Ashes, ashes, they all fall down" refers to the fact that everything had to be burned and that people were dropping dead everywhere.
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