HENRY JACOB

Born - Died

 

A son of Henry Jacob, congregationalist. He became a fellow of Merton college in Oxford. He died at the house of Dr. William Jacob in Canterbury, who had taken him in due to his dire financial circumstances. What follows is an account contained in Wood's Ath 7 Fasti Oxon, Part 2, p90/91, as also in John Aubrey's (1626-1697) "Miscellanies upon various subjects"

"About a week after his death, the doctor being in bed and awake, and the moon shining bright, he saw his cousin Henry standing by his bed, in his shirt, with a white cap on his head and his beard-mustachoes turning up, as when he was alive. The doctor pinched himself, and was sure he was awaked: he turned to the other side from him; and, after some time, took courage to turn the other way again towards him, and Henry Jacob stood there still; he should have spoken to him, but he did not; for which he has been ever since sorry. About half an hour after, he vanished. Not long after
this, the cook-maid, going to the wood-pile to fetch wood to dress supper, saw him standing in his shirt upon the wood-pile.* This account I had in a letter from Doctor Jacob, 1673, relating to his life, for Mr. Anthony Wood; which is now in his hands."

When Henry Jacob died, he would fain have spoken to the Doctor, but could not, his tongue faltered, + 'Tis imagined he would have told Doctor Jacob, with what person he had deposited his manuscripts of his own writing; they were all the riches he had, 'tis suspected that one had them and printed them under his own name. --- This very story Dr. Jacob told me himself, being then at Lord Teynham's, in Kent, where he was then physician to my eldest son; whom he recovered from a fever, (A. Wood's note.)

He is described as being a cousin of William Jacob, but this is not so; they were not related. Dr William Jacob was descended from Huguenots who had come to Ashford and Canterbury some two generations before.