344 Passing Children through a cleft Ask Tree to cure Rupture. 
for the King; after his submission he took both the oaths. He 
hath an estate of lands in fee to the value of £240 per annum—old 
rents, £18 per annum—and in reversion after one life £55 per 
annum; out of which issues an annuity of £30—which leaves 
his fine to be £635. He had a son of the same name, who bore the 
rank of colonel, but took no part in the contest for which his 
father paid so dearly. During the Commonwealth and the Pro- 
tectorate he remained abroad, under the patronage of William, Lord 
Herbert; and on his return home found that the family estates had 
been lessened two-thirds in the cause of Charles I. and Charles II. 
Passing Children through x cleft Ash Cree to 
cure Arnpture. 
Nore to “ Wiltshire Superstitions,” Mag. No. 65, Dec., 1885, 
vol, xxii., p. 332. 
Deak Mr. EpiTor, 
As one of the objects of an Archxological Magazine is to gather up 
examples and illustrations of those local ways of thinking and feeling which 
through the changes going on all around may perhaps seem likely before long to 
pass away and be forgotten, you may possibly think the following worth recording 
in addition to the instances noted in pp. 331, 332, of vol. xxii. 
H. N. Goddard, Esq., of Clyffe Manor, Clyffe Pypard, Wootton Bassett, tells 
me that on one of his farms (Lower Wood Street Lane Farm) is an ash tree still 
well known and pointed out as “ Doddell’s Tree,” é.e., Dodwell’s tree. It gained 
its name from a son of the tenant of this farm, who held under Mr. Goddard’s 
father; the boy, ruptured at birth, was—as a supposed cure—passed through a 
sapling ash tree, which was split asunder for the purpose: the two parts were 
afterwards tied together, and as they united so was the cure effected. The tree 
is now a flourishing good-sized tree, with the mark of the split remaining in its 
bark, The Dodwells left the farm when the present Mr. Goddard was very 
young, but the tree was often pointed out by their successors and others, who 
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