1392 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART ITI. 
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a courtier of King Henry VII., whilst that king kept his court there, and yet 
(in Oldys’s time) in its prime. The row of elms on that side of the Mall in 
St. James’s Park next to the palace are some of them about 160 years of age. 
One, which stood at the upper end, turning to the Green Park, being blown 
down, was found to be above 60 ft. in height, and near 12 ft. in circumference. 
near the root. They are now (in 1805) considerably more than 200 years 
old; but very few are remaining [in 1836, none], and those very much de- 
cayed. Two elms, at St. John’s College, Oxford, were sizeable trees in the 
reign of Queen Mary. Stately rows of elms, at Hillhall, in Essex, are said 
to have been planted by Sir Thomas Smith. (Mart. Mill.) On the 29th 
of November, 1836, some of the largest elms in St. James’s Park, and 
also in Kensington Gardens, were blown down during a tremendous hur- 
ricane, which made dreadful havock among large trees in most parts of 
England. Mr. Coxe, in his account of Monmouthshire, mentions an ancient 
elm at Ragland Castle, which was 28 ft. 5in. in circumference near the root 
(Ibid.) Mr. Boutcher informs us that he sold a line of English elms, about 
60 in number, at a guinea a tree, at 24 years’ growth: they were about 
18 in. in diameter at 1ft. above ground, and 40 ft. high. It is probably the 
tree mentioned in the above quotation from Martyn’s Miller, as having been 
planted by a courtier of Henry VIL., that Mr. Jesse alludes to in the 2d series 
of his Gleanings. He says, “At the north-west angle of Richmond Green may 
now be seen the trunk of an ancient elm, called the Queen’s Elm, from 
having, it is said, been a favourite tree of Queen Elizabeth’s. Some kind hand, 
with equal good taste and feeling, has planted ivy round its naked trunk; and 
the inhabitants of Richmond, much to their credit, have protected it from 
injury by surrounding it with a paled fence. The ivy has thriven, and the 
Jately naked trunk is now richly covered with a verdant mantle.” (p. 268.) 
Mr. Jesse also mentions an elm tree in Hampton Court Park, called King 
Charles’s Swing, which, he says, “ is curious from its size and shape. At 8 ft. 
from the ground, it measures 38 ft. in circumference. ...It is, perhaps, not 
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