36 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
him on no account to come down from the tree until they returned 
to him and tell him all was safe. They then went as if to their 
work or ordinary occupation. The troopers of the Parliament fell 
in with them, made all sorts of inquiries about the house and its 
inmates and its neighbourhood, and ultimately rode on without 
discovering how near they were to the king. The Penderils 
returned in due time, and conducted the king back to the 
house.” 
The tree stands in a field near the garden of Boscobel house, 
and is surrounded by an iron palisading. It has a circumference, 
at 4 feet up, of 12 feet 3 inches. That the tree now standing is 
the same in which the king was concealed has been questioned, 
and that it is only a seedling from the ‘“ Royal,” some authorities 
alleging that it is only 160 or 170 years of age, whilst others put 
it between 400 and 500. On this point it may be as well to quote 
again Lord Bradford’s letter, and to mention that his seat of 
Weston Park adjoins Boscobel: he says, ‘‘ The tree was from that 
time well known to them (that is, the Penderils), and doubtless to 
the owner, Mr Giffard, and other loyal friends in the immediate 
neighbourhood ; and after the Restoration, which was only nine 
years afterwards, probably numbers of people visited the tree, 
although at that time in a thick coppice with only woodmens’ 
paths or very bad cut roads in the neighbourhood. The coppice 
was subsequently cleared, I apprehend, in the time of the Fitz- 
herberts, who inherited from the Giffards, but the tree into which 
the king climbed was left standing and regarded with pride and 
affection. It has been known from father to son by succeeding 
generations from that time to this. As to its being a substitute 
of any sort, least of all an acorn from the original tree, I discard 
the idea as ludicrous and absurd. J have known the tree 
myself for half a century.! It looks now very much as it did 
then ; and nearly as long ago as that I remember my father 
speaking of the absurdity of the stories then current as to the owl 
flying ont of the decayed tree, the present tree being an acorn 
from the old one, and such like. He used to say that he had 
heard his father, and, I think, his grandfather, speak in the same 
sense ; and the recollection of the tree by his grandfather (my 
great-grandfather) would easily carry him back as far as 1740, 
which would be less than ninety years after the king sat in the 
tree.” 
' Karl Bradford was born in 1819. 
