All Info About Nursery Rhymes

During the reign of Henry VIII at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, many Roman Catholic priests were in fear of their lives. In order to curry favour with the King, Richard Whiting, the Abbot of Glastonbury in Somerset which was then the richest abbey in the kingdom, sent him a gift.
The gift was a pie which contained the title deeds to twelve manor houses, and the person entrusted with delivering this gift to the King was Jack Horner, the abbot's steward.
On his way to London, Jack Horner stole one of the deeds and soon after the Dissolution, the Manor of Mells became the residence of Thomas Horner, whose descendants lived there until 1975.v The Horners always claimed that Mells Manor was bought along with various other manors and nearby farms for the sum of £1,831,9s,3d 3farthings and that the rhyme has nothing to do with their ancestor. It is true that their ancestor's name was Thomas Horner but the common name for someone who was a rogue or a knave was then, (and is still now), Jack!
The idea of carrying such important items in a pie was not as silly as it may seem, for in those days the countryside was rife with highwaymen and common theives. In order to disguise their valuables, travellers used many different and ingenious ways of hiding them including sewing them to the inside of their clothes and putting them in pies.

It is an interesting addition to the story to note that Thomas Horner was in fact one of the jurors who condemned Abbot Whiting to death!