344 Passing Children through a cleft Ash 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. 



Cpbttti %o«j$ a ddt %%\ %xu to 



Note to " Wiltshire Superstitions/' Mag. No. 65, Dec, 1885, 

 vol. xxii., p. 332. 



Deae Mr. Edxtoe, 



As one of the objects of an Archaeological 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," i.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 nourishing 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 



