1884]. THE BOYAL OAK OF BOSCOBEL. 425 



THE ROYAL OAK OF BOSCOBEL. 



JN ' Chips and Slips ' of the December number of ' Fokestry,' a 

 contributor, writing on the above mentioned subject, says ' it is 

 only one grown from an acorn of the celebrated tree that afforded 

 the fugitive king shelter,' &c. There is a difference of opinion 

 on this point, and in the neighbourhood of the tree, opinion is 

 against the theory in question. 



There are several old men here who have lived and worked besid 

 the tree since they were lads who affirm that they know no difference 

 between its size now and when they first saw it. 



One farmer who has seen it almost daily for the last eleven years 

 is of opinion that it gets to look worse all the while ; nay, more 

 we have the Earl of Bradford, who is a keen observer of trees, 

 saying that he remembers this tree for the last fifty years, and knows 

 no difference in it; and he has heard his father say that it had 

 been handed down from father to son for several generations as the 

 veritable tree in which the king took shelter. 



I have measured the tree, and compared it with others that have 

 been cut down within half a mile of Hubbal Grange, which were 

 probably trees of the same forest, and which looked about the same 

 size and age. They had two hundred and fifteen concentric rings of 

 years of growth. Some of these trees had the dead tops (or stag 

 head) cut off them over thirty years ago, showing that they had been 

 at maturity many years before that: an Oak tree does not reach 

 maturity much before three hundred years, although it may stand 

 alive for one hundred years maturing its timber without adding any 

 thing percei3tible to its size. Under these circumstances, and at the 

 lowest calculation, the tree now enclosed at Boscobel cannot be far 

 short of four hundred years old ; and it looks all that age. 



I have read many accounts of the tree, written by different people 

 at different periods, from Lord Clarendon's ' History of the Eebellion ' 

 down to those of later years ; and it is singular that no two of them 

 give the same description of the tree ; and some of them are so sensa- 

 tional about owls, hollow tree, and troopers, that they show their 

 descriptions to be mere imagination, for the sake of making it readable. 

 One describes it as a large Oak with spreading top about the year 1660, 

 pent up, and enclosed with a high pole fence. Another writer says 

 it was blown down by a storm in 1700 ; another writer speaks of it as 

 a fair spreading tree in 1703, and in 1713 enclosed with a brick waU ; 

 another, after remarking on the tree enclosed with a brick wall, says, 

 near to it grows a young sapling from one of its acorns ; another writer 

 suggests that the Oak now shown must be the sapling referred to by 



