You almost certainly remember the
nursery rhyme of Little Jack Horner who sat in a corner eating his
Christmas pie. “He stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum, and said,
“What brave boy am I,” but do you know “the rest of the story?”
During the reign of Henry VIII of England, the church owned vast amounts
of property throughout the realm. Church/state relations gradually soured
to the point where the king required the church to cede much of its
property.
According to the legend, the Bishop of Glastonbury sent the title deeds to
twelve estates to the king. For safety, he had these deeds hidden inside a
Christmas pie and sent the pie to the king in the care of his steward—one
Jack Horner. En route, Horner lifted the crust, lifted out one of the
deeds, a real “plum,” indeed. He kept the deed for himself, and the Horner
family still owns the Mells Park Estate.
Lee Edmunson related the following story: “When we started The Researcher,
we tried to find an image that conveyed some feeling of genealogical
accomplishment. When we came across this woodcut of a child pulling an
official-looking document out of a pie, it reminded us of the legend of
Jack Horner, and, simultaneously, of some of the genealogical ‘plums’ that
we have discovered while digging through courthouse records, library
stacks, and miscellaneous family information. It seemed ‘just right;’ we
used it, and we enjoyed it very much.”
The little boy has been in hiding for several years, but once again he
will be appearing on the last page of The Researcher.
