94 FAMILIAR TREES 



Abraham, Moses, and David, this tree was felled by 

 Solomon to form a beam in the temple ; but his car- 

 penters, finding it impossible to shape it as they 

 wished, laid it aside, and, after forming a bridge over 

 the brook Kedron, and being thrown into the Pool of 

 Bethesda, to which it imparted its heahng virtues, it 

 ultimately furnished the wood of the Cross. 



The actual date of the first introduction of the 

 Cedar into England is uncertain. A most improbable 

 tradition assigns the planting of the celebrated trees 

 at Enfield and Hendon to Queen Elizabeth, and the 

 tree at Oatlands Park, Weybridge, is said to have been 

 planted by Prince Henry about 1640, but Evelyn in his 

 "Sylva" (1664) speaks of the tree as not grown in 

 England, though he had received cones and seeds of it 

 from Lebanon, so that it is most likely that men so 

 interested in trees as were he and Henry Compton, the 

 Bishop of London, would soon have grown it from 

 seed. The Cedar on the rectory lawn at Childrey 

 in Berkshire is said to have been grown by Dr. 

 Pocock, the first Laudian Professor of Arabic, from 

 a cone brought by him from Lebanon in 1646; and 

 another of the oldest existing Cedars in England is 

 the Enfield tree, planted by Dr. Uvedale, head master 

 of the Grammar School, apparently between 1665 and 

 1670, from seed said to have been brought to him from 

 Lebanon by a pupil, but possibly given him by Evelyn. 

 The Cedar at Bretby Park, Derbyshire, is said to be 

 proved by the gardener's accounts to have been 

 planted in 1676. Its girth is now nearly sixteen feet, 

 and its branches, though many have been lost, still- 

 spread about 100 feet. William Ashby, a Turkey 



