In some of your former numbers (Vol. iii., pp. 206. 237. 289.) allusions
have been made by your correspondents, showing that traditions may come
down from remote periods through very few links. Having myself seen a
man whose father lived in the time of Oliver Cromwell, I trust I shall
be excused for stating some particulars of this fact, which I think will
be considered by your readers as one of the most remarkable on record.
In the year 1844 died James Horrocks, a small farmer, who lived at
Harwood, a short distance from Bolton, in Lancashire, having completed
his hundredth year. This circumstance, however, was not so remarkable as
that of his own birth, his father, William Horrocks, having been born in
1657, one year before the death of Cromwell, and having married in 1741,
at the advanced age of eight-four, a second wife, a young and buxom
woman of twenty-six, by whom he had one child, the above James Horrocks,
born March 14, 1744, and baptized at Bradshaw Chapel, near Bolton.
It is believed that the first wife of William Horrocks had been employed
in the well-known family of the Chethams, at Castleton Hall, near
Rochdale (a branch of that of Humphrey Chetham), by whom they were both
much respected; and soon after the second marriage, he and his youthful
wife were sent for to Castleton Hall by the Chethams, by whom they were
treated with much kindness; and the remarkable disparity of years in
their marriage having no doubt created great interest, a painter was
employed to take their portraits, which are still in existence, with the
ages of the parties at the time, and the dates, when taken, painted upon
them.
I paid the son, James Horrocks, more than one visit, and on the last
occasion, in company with James Crossley, Esq., of Manchester, the
Reverend Canon Parkinson, Principal of St. Bees' College, and one or two
other gentlemen, I took my son with me. It happened to be the very day
on which he completed his hundredth year, and we found him full of
cheerfulness and content, expecting several of his descendants to spend
the day with him. I possess a portrait in crayons of this venerable
patriarch, taken on that day by a very clever artist, who accompanied us
on our visit, and which is an extremely faithful likeness of the
original. Should it please Providence to spare my son to attain to his
seventieth year, he also will be enabled, in the year 1900, to say that
he has seen a man whose father lived in the time of Oliver Cromwell;
thus connecting events, with the intervention of _one_ life only,
comprehending a period of very nearly two centuries and a half.
P.S. A very interesting narrative of all the facts of this case was
published in the _Manchester Guardian_ a few years ago, comprising many
curious particulars not noticed by myself, a copy of which I shall be
glad to send you, if you think it worthy of insertion in "NOTES AND
QUERIES."
THOMAS CORSER.
Stand Rectory.
[We accept with thanks the offer of our valued correspondent.]