So that a person living in 1786 conversed with a man that fought at
Flodden Field.
Mr. Gibson then passes on to some remarkable instances of longevity from
the Scrope and Grosvenor Roll, the record of the celebrated cause in the
reign of Richard II., when, among the noble and knightly deponents who
gave evidence in the following year, 1386, were:
Sir John Sully, Knight of the Garter and a distinguished soldier of the
cross, who had served for eighty years, was then, by his own account,
105 years of age, and who is supposed to have died in his 108th year.
But, more remarkable, John Thirlwall, an esquire of an ancient
Northumbrian house, deposes to what he heard from his father, who died
forty-four years before, at the age of 145.
Not far from Thirlwall Castle, at Irthington, Mr. B. Gibson has seen the
register of the burial of Robert Bowman, one of the most remarkable of
the long-lived yeomen of that parish, who died in the year 1823, at the
age of 118.
Mr. John Bruce, F.S.A., has also illustrated our subject by the
following curious evidence. Lettice, Countess of Leicester, was born in
1539 or ’40, and was consequently 7 years old at the death of Henry
VIII. She may very well have had a recollection of the bluff monarch,
who cut off the head of her great-aunt, Anne Boleyn. She was thrice
married, and had seen six English sovereigns, or seven if Philip be
counted; her faculties were unimpaired at 85; and until a year or two of
her death, on Christmas-day 1634, at the age of 94, she “could yet walk
a mile of a morning.” Lettice was one of a long-lived race: her father
lived till 1596; two of her brothers attained the ages of 86 and 99.
There is nothing (says Mr. Bruce) incredible, or even very
extraordinary, in Lettice’s age; but even her years will produce curious
results if applied to the subject of possible transmission of knowledge
through few links. I will give one example: “Dr. Johnson, who was born
in 1709, might have known a person who had seen the Countess Lettice. If
there are not now (1857), there were amongst us within the last three or
four years, persons who knew Dr. Johnson. There might, therefore, be
only two links between ourselves and the Countess Lettice, who saw Henry
VIII.”[38]
Mr. John Pavin Philips writes from Haverfordwest: “A friend of mine, now
(1857) in his 80th year, knew an old woman resident in his parish who
remembered her grandmother, who saw Cromwell when he was in
Pembrokeshire, in 1648. I myself, when a student in Edinburgh in 1837,
knew a centenarian lady, named Butler, who well recollected being taken
by her mother to witness the public entry of Prince Charles Edward into
the city in 1745.” And in Haverfordwest might be seen daily walking, in
1857, in perfect health, a man who was born four years previous to the
death of George II.[39]
Mary Yates, of Shiffnal, Salop, who died 1776, aged 128, well remembered
walking to view the ruins of the Great Fire of London, 1666.
In the _News Letter_ of June 1st, 1724, Bodl. Mss., Rawl. C., it is
related, that on the King’s birthday, as the nobility and others of
distinction passed through Pall Mall to Court at St. James’s, there sat
in the street one Elinor Stuart, being 124 years old. She had kept a
linen-shop at Kendal, and had nine children living at the time King
Charles I. was beheaded, and was undone by adhering to the royal cause.
“She is reckoned,” says the account (Jane Skrimshaw, who was now dead,
being 128), “the oldest woman in London.”[40]
Margaret Mapps, of Eaton, near Leominster, who died in 1800, aged 109,
had so retentive a memory, that to her last hours she could relate many
incidents which she had witnessed in the reign of Queen Anne.
In 1858 died Mrs. Milward, of Blackheath, at the age of 102. She was,
consequently, born four years previous to the accession of George III.;
she saw the separation of the American colonies from the mother country;
the three French revolutions, and the great war with France; she well
remembered the London riots of 1780, and was placed in some jeopardy in
Hyde-park in one of the incidents.
Jane Forrester, of Cumberland, is stated in the _Public Advertiser_,
March 9th, 1766, as then living in her 138th year: she remembered
Cromwell’s siege of Carlisle, in 1646; and in 1762 she gave evidence in
a Chancery-suit of an estate having been enjoyed by the ancestors of the
then heir 101 years.
One Evans, of Spitalfields, who died 1780, is stated to have reached the
age of 139 years: he remembered the execution of Charles I., at which
time he was 7 years old.
In the London newspapers of November 7th, 1788, is recorded the
celebration of the centenary of the Revolution, at which was present a
person who remembered that glorious event; he was 112 years old, and
belonged to the French Hospital, Old Street-road, where were then ten
persons whose ages together were 1000 years.
In 1826 there died at Corby, near Carlisle, aged 102, one Joseph Liddle,
a shoemaker, who was at work in his shop, in the market-place of
Carlisle, when the Scotch rebels entered the town, in 1745; he was very
fond of horticulture, and, with little help, kept in order a large
garden nearly until the day of his death.
Samuel Rogers, the banker-poet, who died on December 18th, 1855, aged
96, among many accomplishments possessed a most retentive memory; and
his sweep of recollections was very wide.
He remembered when one of the Rebels’ heads remained on Temple Bar;
when schoolboys chased butterflies in the fields in cocked hats;
when gentlemen universally wore wigs and swords; when Ranelagh was
in all its glory, and ladies going thither had head-dresses so
preposterously high that they had to sit on stools placed in the
bottom of the coach; when Garrick crowded the theatre, Reynolds
crowded the lecture-room, and Johnson crowded the club; he had heard
the Duke of York relate how he and his brother George, when young
men, were robbed by footpads on Hay-hill, Berkeley-street; he had
shaken hands with John Wilkes, dined with Lafayette, Condorcet, &c.
at Paris, before the great Revolution began, and been present at
Warren Hastings’ trial in Westminster Hall; he had seen Lady
Hamilton go through her “attitudes” before the Prince of Wales, and
Lord Nelson spin a teetotum with his _one_ hand for the amusement of
children.—_R. Carruthers._
Mr. Peter Cunningham noted, a few days after the death of our Poet:
“When Rogers made his appearance as a poet, Lord Byron was
unborn—and Byron has been dead thirty-one years! When Percy Bysshe
Shelley was born, Rogers was in his 30th year—and Shelley has been
dead nearly thirty-four years! When Keats was born, _The Pleasures
of Memory_ was looked upon as a standard poem—and Keats has been
dead thirty-five years! When this century commenced, the man who
died but yesterday, and in the latter half too of the century, had
already numbered as many years as Burns and Byron had numbered when
they died. Mr. Rogers was born before the following English poets:
Scott, Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Moore, Campbell,
Bloomfield, Cunningham, Hogg, James Montgomery, Shelley, Keats,
Wilson, Tom Hood, Kirk White, Lamb, Joanna Baillie, Felicia Hemans,
L. E. L.; and he outlived them all.”
On April 24th, 1858, died Mr. James Nolan, at Auchindrane, Carlow,
Ireland, aged 115 years and 9 months. There is something more
interesting than his being the oldest subject of her Majesty, who had
lived in the reigns of five sovereigns of England; and no doubt it is
curious to be carried back by two lives—Mr. Nolan and his father—to the
reign of Charles II., and almost to the time of Cromwell.
Here is a remarkable instance: Commander Pickernell, R.N., who died
April 20th, 1859, aged 87, knew well in his youth a man who was a
soldier encamped on Hounslowheath at the time of the Revolution in 1688.
This same man played an instrument in the band at Queen Anne’s
coronation, and served through Marlborough’s wars; in his old age he
returned to the neighbourhood of his native place, Whitby, where he
died, considerably over a century, when Commander Pickernell was a boy
about 7 or 8 years old.[41]
The venerable President of Magdalen College, Oxford, Dr. Routh, who died
1855, in his hundredth year, brought up old memories of times and men
long passed away. Dr. Routh had known Dr. Theophilus Lee, the
contemporary of Addison; had seen Dr. Johnson “in his brown wig
scrambling up the steps of University College;” and had been told by a
lady of her aunt who had been present when Charles II. walked round the
parks at Oxford.
Dr. Routh had maintained an immediate and personal connexion with the
University of Oxford for upwards of 80 years; and his long life supplied
many instructive links between the present and the past. He was born in
the reign of King George II., before the beginning of the Seven Years’
War; before India was conquered by Clive, or Canada by Wolfe; before the
United States ever dreamt of independence; and before Pitt had impressed
the greatness of his own character on the policy of Britain. The life of
this college student comprehended three most important periods in the
history of the world. Martin Routh saw the last years of the old state
of society which introduced the political deluge; he saw the deluge
itself—the great French Revolution, with all its catastrophes of thrones
and opinions; and he lived to see the more stirring but not less
striking changes which forty years of peace had engendered. It is
therefore not a little curious to read of such a man, that the times on
which his thoughts chiefly dwelt were those of the Stuarts; which is
not, however, altogether surprising, as he might himself have shaken
hands with the Pretender. This Prince did not die till young Routh was
ten years of age; so that, if accident had put the chance in his way, he
might easily have had an interview with the representative of James
II.[42] What an interval was there between this epoch and Dr. Routh
sitting for a photograph on his hundredth birthday!
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Footnote 38:
See _Notes and Queries_, 2d series, Nos. 51 and 53.
Footnote 39:
Ibid. No. 58.
Footnote 40:
W. D. Macray; _Notes and Queries_, 2d series, No. 23.
Footnote 41:
_Notes and Queries_, 2d series, No. 169.
Footnote 42:
Condensed from the _Times_ journal.
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