before the garrison surrendered. At the
martyrdom of King Charles I she was
nineteen years of age ... She hath an only
daughter living, age 103.”
Another case of this ilk was that of
Mary Cameron, of Braemar, Inverness,
who died “aged near 130 years” in 1785. “She
remembered the rejoicings at the Restoration
of Charles II,” reported the Gentleman’s
Magazine in July 1785. “Her house was an
asylum to the exiled Episcopal clergy at
the Revolution, and to the gentlemen who
were proscribed in the years 1715 and 1745.
Upon hearing that the forfeited estates
were restored, she exclaimed, ‘Let me now
die in peace; I want to see no more in this
world’.” The story of Donald McKean, alias
McDonald, of Morven, Argyleshire, reported
two months later who died in his 109th year
in August 1785, sounds more plausible: “He
escaped from Glencoe, at the time of the
massacre there, in 1692.”
Farming seems to have been a healthy
occupation. William Truman of Whatley,
near Frome in Somerset, died, “an industrious
and honest man” who “had nearly completed
his 104th year”. He particularly remembered
weeding corn during the 1715 total eclipse,
“when the darkness obliged him and his
companions to leave the field”. He was hale
enough to milk his own cows until two years
before his death. Another farm labourer who
remembered the solar eclipse of April 22, 1715,
was Joseph Lemon of Shenton, Leicester.
“He was a schoolboy going from Belfont
to Hounslow ... and was so alarmed at the
extreme darkness that he hid under a hedge
till it was over.” Lemon died “in his 107th
year” in 1808.
Mrs Jane Williams was one of the few
authenticated cases of extreme old age. Jane
Chassereau was baptised on the day after her
birth at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London,
on November 14, 1739 (roughly the same
year as Jane Austen’s mother Cassandra
Leigh). She was the daughter of Francis
and Ann Chassereau (or Chattereau). Her
father had fled from France, age 14, after the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In 1764,
Jane married the banker Robert Williams.
They lived in Moor Park, Hertfordshire, and
later at Bridehead in Dorset. Mrs Williams
was old enough to remember making social
calls on “the people living in the houses
on Old London Bridge”, homes that were
demolished between 1757 and 1758.
Her son Robert Williams later testified
that he had dined on Christmas Day with