JACK HORNER AND HIS “PLUM.”

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3828, 7 August 1928, Page 1

JACK HORNER AND HIS “PLUM.”

It is said that a direct descendant of the original Jack Horner, who “put in his thumb and pulled out a plum,” has been found. He is Julian, grandson and heir of the late Earl of. Oxford and Asquith, whose mother was formerly Miss Horner, of Metis Manor, Somerset. His father, Raymond Asquith, was killed in the battle of the Somme. Legend has it that the famous Horner of the nursery rhyme was steward to the Bishop of Glastonbury, in the reign of Henry VIII. The Bishop, a lover of good fare, built a kitchen with a stone roof and .boasted that it could not he burned down by “all the King’s men,” to which the King replied, ominously: “Is that so?”

Fearing to lose his estates, the Bishop sent his steward, Horner to Henry with an enormous pie, but liis emissary’s curiosity was such that during the journey he pried beneath the crust and found the deeds of twelve manors belonging to his master. A prudent man, Horner extracted only one deed, that of the Manor of Mells, now the Horner family’s seat. That was the • “plum.” The King was satisfied, the Bishop kept his kitchen, and Master Horner became accustomed to his new station.