The Old Rhyme of Little Jack Horner

And its dark origins

The rhyme that we know today was first made popular in the eighteenth century. It was documented in a nursery rhyme collection called Mother Goose Melody around 1765. It goes:

Little Jack Horner

Sat in a corner

Eating his Christmas pie

He put in his thumb

And pulled out a plum

And said, ‘what a good boy am I!’

One tale of its origins reveal more than just a simple rhyme for children. It suggests dark political machinations in Tudor England at the time of the Reformation. The Act of Supremacy in 1534 made Henry VIII the Head of the Church of England, heralding the dissolution of the monasteries.

Richard Whiting was the abbot of Glastonbury — and the last, as it turns out. He watched in horror and growing trepidation as Henry VIII sacked and pillaged abbeys, churches and monasteries up and down the land. The king’s plan to nationalise the church and all its land and properties included…