THE BOSCOBEL OAK. 35 



a diameter of about fifteen ; so that when it 

 lay on the ground^ men on horseback could 

 not see each other^ if they placed themselves 

 on opposite sides of it. The Boddington oak^ 

 in Gloucestershire^ was^ at the lower part^ 

 fifty-four feet in circumference ; the principal 

 branches had long been decayed ; the inside 

 was hollow^ and, being covered over, formed 

 a room sixteen feet in diameter, with a door 

 and one window. But perhaps the largest on 

 record, at least in Britain, was that called 

 Damory's oaky which grew in Dorsetshire ; its 

 girth was sixty-eight feet, and the hollow 

 within, forming an apartment sixteen feet long 

 and twenty feet high, was used as a drinking- 

 room, for the entertainment of travellers in 

 Cromwell's time. In 1703, during that dread- 

 ful tempest, which ravaged many parts of Eng- 

 land, on the 27th November, this majestic tree 



D 2 



