where it is said the wind never blew nor the cock ever crew, was your Most Gracious Majesty’s humble servant born; and at the very hour that your Majest ascended the Throne, p. 93a kind, good Yorkshire mother was rocking her baby in an old oak cradle, while the father was treading the treadles and picking the shuttle of his old hand-loom to the tune of “Britons never shall be slaves”; and I am proud to convey to your Majesty that the child in the old oak cradle was no less a person than your Majesty’s humble and obedient servant, Bill o’th’ Hoylus End, Poet and Philosopher to the plebians of Keighley, and who now rejoices in the fiftieth year of your Majesty’s reign that he has been blessed with good health during that long period, having had at no time occasion to call in a physician. John Barleycorn has been my medical adviser, and when I begin to review the fifty years of your most illustrious reign, from my birth, I feel grateful indeed, for great and mighty men and nations have risen and fallen; but I am proud to think that your Most Gracious Majesty and your humble servant have weathered the storm, and I also can assure your Majesty that the lukewarm loyalty of the upper ten is not a sample of people here, for during the latter half of your Majesty’s reign up to now prosperity has shone upon the once crooked, old, mis-shapen town, for wealth has been accumulated to the tune of millions, which I am sorry to inform your Majesty is in the hands of those who mean to keep it. One portion of your Majesty’s lukewarm loyal subjects have the advancement of art and science so much on the brain that it is feared they will go stark mad. I have also much pleasure in informing your gracious Majesty that His Grace the Duke of Devonshire has presented the people of Keighley with a plot of ground to be called the Devonshire Park, which will be opened on the occasion of your Majesty’s Jubilee; also that Henry Isaac Butterfield, Esquire, p. 94of bonny Cliffe Castle, has erected a noble-looking structure, to be called the Jubilee Tower, which will be opened on the day of your Majesty’s Grand Jubilee, to commemorate your Majesty’s glorious reign. This gentleman is a native of Keighley, and fairly entitled to be knighted by your gracious Majesty, seeing that he has done more to beautify the town than all the rest. It has also been given out that the town has to be honoured by a royal visit from your Majesty’s grandson, Prince George. But pray take a fool’s advice, your Majesty, and don’t let him come unless he is able to pay his own expenses; for I can assure His Royal Highness that this is the city of number oneism. Yet with the exception of parting with the bawbees, I dare be sworn that your Majesty’s subjects in Keighley are the grand and genuine men of the
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