THE LONGEVITY OF TREES. 105 
monks, being the first of this Monastery of Fountains; with 
whom they withdrew into this uncouth desert, without any 
house to shelter them in that winter season, or provisions to 
subsist on, but entirely depending on Divine Providence. 
There stood a large Elm in the midst of the vale, on which 
they put some thatch or straw, and under that they lay, ate, 
and prayed; the Bishop for a time supplying them with 
bread, and the rivulet with drink. But it is supposed that 
they soon changed the shelter of their Elm for that of seven 
Yew-trees growing on the declivity of the hill on the south 
side of the abbey ; all standing at this present time [1658], 
except the largest, which was blown down about the middle 
of the last century. They are of an extraordinary size; the 
trunk of one of them is twenty-six feet six inches in circum- 
ference at the height of three feet from the ground; and 
they stand so near each other as to form a cover almost equal 
to a thatched roof. Under these trees, we are told by tradi- 
tion, the monks resided till they built the monastery ; which 
seems to be very probable, if we consider how little a Yew- 
tree increases in a year, and to what a bulk these are grown.” 
(Burton, Monast., fol. 141.) 
We have Pennant’s measurements of one of these trees, 
taken in 1770, giving it a diameter of eight feet five inches, 
or 1212 lines. Hence, according to De Candolle’s rule, it 
was then 1200 years old. 
The fine Yew at Dryburgh Abbey, which is supposed to 
have been planted when the abbey was founded, in 1136, and 
which is in full health and vigor, has a trunk only twelve feet 
in circumference ; its estimated age would, therefore, be less 
than six hundred years. 
The “ Ankernyke Yew,” near Staines, a witness of the con- 
ference between the English barons and King John, and in 
sight’of which Magna Charta was signed (between Runny- 
mede and Ankernyke House), and beneath whose shade the 
brutal Henry the Eighth first saw gospel light in Anna 
Boleyn’s eyes, measures twenty-seven feet eight inches in cir- 
cumference, and should therefore be 1100 years old, which is 
about the age that tradition assigns to it. The trunk of the 
