96 THE OAK TREE IN ESSEX. 



him the last green sprig off the end of the branches, and when the drawing was 

 made for the vignette in the August following there was not a leaf on it." 



Some years before the fall of the tree Mr. Forsyth's composition 

 was applied to its decayed branches to preserve them from further 

 injury, and a board was fixed to one of its limbs bearing the 

 following inscription : 



" All good foresters are requested not to hurt this old tree, a plaster having 

 been lately applied to its wounds." 



In the year 1805 tlie trunk of the Fairlop Oak took fire in con- 

 sequence of the carelessness of a party of cricketers who had spent 

 the day in the vicinity and had left a fire burning too near it. The 

 fire was discovered the same evening, and although a number of 

 persons did their utmost to extinguish the flames, it continued burn- 

 ing till the morning. This untoward accident so weakened it that, 

 as Professor Burnet informs us, " the high winds of February, 1820, 

 stretched this forest patriarch to the ground after having endured the 

 storms of perhaps a thousand winters." 



It is stated in Loudon's " Arboretum " that the Fairlop Oak, at 

 3 feet from the ground measured 36 feet, near the ground 48 feet. 

 The boughs were 10 to 12 feet in girth and covered 300 feet in 

 circuit. The pulpit and reading-desk in the new church of St. 

 Pancras were constiucted out of its remains. A picture of this tree 

 is given from the plate in the " European Magazine" (1802), kindly 

 lent for reproduction by Mr. Walter Crouch, and copy of another 

 early engraving appeared at page 169, vol. v., of The Essex 

 Naturalist. 



King's Oak, High Beach. — There was formerly an oak tree of 

 some historical interest at High Beach, Epping Forest. It is stated 

 that King Henry VIII. sat under this tree waiting to hear the cannon 

 fired which announced the death of Anne Boleyne. The tradition 

 is thus related by Tytler in his "Life of King Henry VIII." 

 (1837), who appears to have drawn the story from Nott's "Life 

 of Surrey " : 



" That Henry waited with unfeeling impatience for the death of .\nne is 

 certain ; and a tradition is yet preserved in Epping Forest, which strikingly 

 illustrates this fact. On the morning of the day which was to be her last (May 

 19th, 1536) he went to hunt in that district ; and as he breakfasted, surrounded by 

 his train and his hounds, under a spreading oak which is still shown, he listened 

 from time to time with a look of intense anxiety. At length the sound of a 

 distant gun boomed through the wood. It was a preconcerted signal, and marked 



