Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 10/A fruitful vine
A Fruitful Vine.—In the Harleian MSS. (No. 980-7) we find mention made of a certain Scottish weaver who had no less than sixty-two children, and all by one wife. This family included four daughters, who lived to be women, and the rest of the three-score and two were boys, who all lived to be baptised. Out of these, forty-six actually reached man’s estate. The writer, one Thomas Gibbons, adds, that during the time of this fruitfulness on the part of the wife, the husband was absent for some five years in the Low Countries, where he served under Captain Selby; and that after his return home his wife was again delivered of three children at a birth, and “continued in her due time in such births” until she ceased childbearing. The informant of Mr. Gibbons was John Delaval, Esq., of Northumberland, who was high sheriff of that county in 1625, and who, in 1630, rode from Newcastle to a place about thirty miles beyond Edinburgh to see this worthy and fruitful couple. Mr. Delaval, however, did not find any of the children then residing with their parents, though three or four of them were living at Newcastle at the time. It appears that Sir John Bowes, and other wealthy Northumbrian “gentlemen of quality” adopted and brought up the children in batches of ten and twelve a piece, and that the residue were “disposed of” by others among the Scottish and English gentlemen of the Border Country.
E. W.