Henry Jenkins: The modern Methuselah who lived to 169. Possibly

Or thereabouts.

Indeed, this modern Methuselah could be the longest lived person ever to walk on the planet – he certainly smashes, as the 21st Century parlance would have it, the record of the oldest verified person who was Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 aged 122.

When Henry was laid to rest in St Mary’s churchyard in Bolton-on-Swale, near Scorton, he was described in the parish registers as “a very aged and poor man”. He was so poor that he didn’t leave enough money for a headstone but so convincing was the evidence that proved beyond all reasonable doubt his improbable longevity that the people of Richmondshire later paid for an impressive obelisk, pictured below, to be erected in the churchyard to ensure he was never forgotten.

Henry was probably born in 1501 in Ellerton – it did not become a legal requirement on a parish to keep a register until 1538, so his birth went unrecorded.

He came from a humble background, and never learned to read or write. He worked most of his life as a salmon fisherman in the Swale and as a thatcher. He put his longevity down to his simple diet of bread, cheese, raw onion and cold meat, and drinking plenty of nettle soup and tar water.

Tar water was made from a thick, sticky gloop extracted from pine wood. It was foul tasting, but apparently drove “strong spirits” from the body.

Plus, Henry always wore underwear made of flannel.

This made him into a remarkable physical specimen. Aged 100, he could easily swim across the Swale, even when it was in spate, and into his 168th year, his eyesight was so good he could still tie fishing flies.

His memory was also very good, and he was regularly called to court to give evidence to help settle land ownership disputes.

In 1620, he was a witness in a case about a road at York. When Henry claimed to have a living memory of the road being made, the judge censured him as it meant he was an impossible 120 years old.

However, the opposition had three 100-year-old witnesses who all agreed that throughout their lives Henry was known as an old man.

To further convince the judge, Henry said that when the road was made, he was employed as a butler to Lord Conyers at Hornby Castle, between Bedale and Catterick. The judge had an old register of Lord Conyers’ servants brought from the castle and in it appeared Henry’s name, just as he had claimed.

In a Chancery Court record of 1667, Henry stated on oath that he was “one hundreth fifty and seaven or theirabouts”.

Unable to physically labour at such an advanced age, Henry was reduced to calling at big houses in the neighbourhood and asking for money in return for telling the inhabitants curious old stories. One day, he called at Bolton Old Hall, which is a 14th Century mansion in the shadow of Bolton-on-Swale – indeed, not only is the old hall haunted by a ghostly grey lady but it is connected by a secret tunnel to a corner of the churchyard where John and Kit Wright, who were put to death for their parts in the 1603 Gunpowder Plot, had had a house.

Ann Saville, an educated lady, came to the door and became intrigued by the aged creature. Sceptical about his claims, she decided to investigate them.

She asked Henry what his first memory of a major event was, and he replied the Battle of Flodden, which had taken place in Northumberland on September 9, 1513. Henry claimed to have been between ten and 12. “I was sent to Northallerton with a horseload of arrows, but they sent a bigger boy from thence to the army with them,” Henry replied.

Ann asked him whether King Henry VIII had been present, and he replied: “No, he was in France, and the Earl of Surrey was general.”

She investigated, discovered that the king had indeed been over the channel and that archers had been crucial in defeating the invading king of Scotland. Uneducated Henry Jenkins could not possibly have known such details unless he had been present, she concluded, and she became convinced that he really was as old as he claimed to be.

In 1743, nearly 75 years after Henry’s death, Dr Thomas Chapman, a former pupil of Richmond Grammar School who had become the Master of Magdalene College at Cambridge University, started a fund-raising campaign to have the world record setter remembered in his home village. The campaign resulted in Henry’s grave being marked by the large obelisk, and Dr Chapman composed the convoluted words for a large plaque which can still be found inside St Mary’s.

His words begin: “Blush not, marble, to rescue from oblivion the memory of Henry Jenkins, a person obscure in birth, but of a life truly memorable… blessed with a patriarch’s health and length of days…”

Exactly 350 years after Henry’s death, he is still remembered – although perhaps at least partly for the outlandishness of his claim. Officially today, Charlotte Hughes is the oldest British person ever as she was 115 when she died in 1993, and the oldest British man is Henry Allingham, who was 113 when he died in 2009. Henry’s 167 years leaves those spring chickens in the shade.