ACORN. ]3 



gave rise to the name of Fairlop, bestowed upon this cele- 

 brated oak. Some of Mr. Day's friends having promised 

 that he should be buried in a coffin made from that tree, 

 lopped off one of the branches, for which trespass an 

 action was brought against the party, fortunately for whom 

 some flaw was found in the pleadings, and the plaintiff 

 was nonsuited. It was, however, proved that the fact 

 committed was not injurious to the tree, but a fair lop. 

 Mr. Day was buried in Barking Church-yard. As lately 

 as 1794, this venerable oak, in the meridian of the day, 

 shadowed an acre of ground, although then greatly de- 

 cayed. 



Fisher's oak, about seventeen miles from London, or 

 halfway to Tunbridge, is of a monstrous bulk ; the trunk 

 only remaining, of above four fathoms in compass. When 

 King James the First made a progress that way, a school- 

 master of the neighbourhood, and all his scholars, dress- 

 ed in oaken garlands, came out of this tree in great num- 

 bers, and entertained the King with an oration. They 

 have a tradition at Tunbridge, that thirteen men on horse- 

 back were once sheltered in this oak. Marty n. 



Hern's oak, celebrated by Shakspeare, is still in ex- 

 istence in the Little Park at Windsor. The remains of 

 an other oak stand at Heveningham, in Suffolk, called 

 Queen Elizabeth's oak, which was hollow when that 

 Princess was in her youth, and who, it is said, used to 

 take her stand in this tree, and shoot the deer as they 

 passed. 



The large oak in Whinfield Forest, near Appleby, in 

 Westmoreland, belonging to the Earl of Thanet, is also 

 a great curiosity ; a part of the trunk being broken away 

 forms a portal, into which a person may ride on horse- 

 back and turn about at pleasure ; it forms a convenient 

 receptacle for deer in stormy weather. It is supposed to 

 be upwards of 300 years old. 



