Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/77

7 NOTES BY THE WAY. A CENTENARIAN.

The Athenæum for February 6th gave the following :

" For the information of Mr. Thoms, we may mention a case of a hundredth birthday being reached, which has been brought to our notice. Mrs. Coxeter, of Newbury, attained the age of one hundred on the first of this month. Her maiden name was Elizabeth Collier, and the day of her birth is given in the register of Witney Church, Oxfordshire, as Feb. 1, 1775. She is in full possession of her faculties, and repeated the 23rd Psalm from memory to the members of her family who came to congratulate her on the centenary of her birth."

As 'N. & Q.' may like to place on record some further particulars of this venerable lady, permit me to state that she was married to Mr. John Coxeter, at Witney Church, on the 5th of December, 1792, and has been a widow fifty-nine years, her husband having died at the age of forty-three, on the 24th of August, 1816; he was buried at Witney. Her eldest son, had he been living, would now be eighty years of age. He was born Jan. 28, 1794, christened at Witney Church, and died May 10, 1851, in America. On the 1st inst. many friends residing in Newbury and its vicinity called at her residence to offer congratulations. One old gentleman, aged ninety, walked a distance from his home and back, nearly two miles, for the purpose mentioned.

Mrs. Coxeter relates with peculiar interest the following remarkable occurrence in her late husband's history. The event was occasioned by a discussion which took place between Mr. Coxeter and Sir John Throckmorton, Bart., as to means being taken to encourage the growth of British wool. Mr. Coxeter was at the time (1811) the proprietor of the Greenham Mills at Newbury, and a manufacturer of Witney blankets. The extraordinary performance for so on the eventful day June 25, 1811, it was designated was as follows. On that day, at five o'clock in the morning, Sir John Throckmorton presented two South Down sheep to Mr. Coxeter. The sheep were immediately shorn, the wool sorted and spun; the yarn spooled, warped, loomed, and wove; the cloth burred, milled, rowed, dyed, dried, sheared, and pressed. The cloth, having been thus made in eleven hours, was put into the hands of the tailors at four o'clock in the afternoon, who completed the coat at twenty minutes past six. Mr. Coxeter then presented the coat to Sir John Throckmorton, who appeared with it the same evening at the "Pelican" Inn, Speenhamland. The cloth was a hunting kersey, of the admired dark Wellington colour. The sheep were roasted whole, and distributed to the public, with 120 gallons of strong beer. It was supposed that upwards of 5,000 people were assembled to witness this singular and unprecedented performance, which was completed in the space of thirteen hours and twenty minutes. Sir John and about forty gentlemen sat down to a dinner,