Henry Jenkins, buried in Bolton-on-Swale, North Yorkshire, is said to have been 169 years old at his death.[1]
He claimed to have been born in 1500, although parish registers were not required to be maintained until 1538. It is known that he lived at Ellerton on Swale, Scorton, North Yorkshire[1] and claimed to have been butler to Lord Coniers, of Hornby Castle, where the Abbot of Fountains was a frequent guest, and "did drink a hearty glass with his Lordship."[2] He later followed the occupation of a fisherman and ended his life begging for alms.[3]
Chancery Court records show that in 1667 he stated on oath that he was aged "one hundreth fifty and seaven or theirabouts";[1] when asked by the judge which notable battle he remembered, he named Flodden Field, of 1513 and claimed to have carried arrows to the English archers.[4][5]
Although his birthdate is undocumented, the date of his death is known to within days, as his burial is recorded in the register of Bolton-on-Swale as having occurred on 9 December 1670 and in which he is described as "a very aged and poor man".[1] In 1743 a black marble obelisk in his memory was erected in Bolton-on-Swale churchyard;[1] the inscription on it, composed by Dr Thomas Chapman, Master of Magdalen College, Cambridge,[6] reads
| “ | Blush not, marble, to rescue from oblivion the memory of Henry Jenkins, a person obscure in birth, but of a life truly memorable, for he was enriched with the goods of nature if not of fortune, and happy in the duration if not the variety of his enjoyments. And though the partial world despised and disregarded his low and humble state, the equal eye of Providence beheld and blessed it with a patriarch's health and length of days, to teach mistaken man these blessings are entailed on temperance, a life of labour, and a mind at ease. He lived to the amazing age of 169; was interred here, December 6, 1670, and had this justice done to his memory, 1743.[3] | ” |
A journal of 1829, "The Mirror of Literature", claims that had Jenkins followed legal requirements, he would have lived long enough to have changed his religion eight times between the reigns of Henry VII and Charles II.[7]
T. H. White's 1957 science fiction novel The Master: An Adventure Story compares the eponymous character (aged 150) with Jenkins.