OF FOREST-TREES. 205 



kingdom, for the mutual supply of the most useful productions, espe- cHAP. III. 

 cially those of the forest, without which there could be no commerce '^-^^"'^ 

 in the world ; for so has Providence ordained. 



There were in Cunsborough (sometime belonging to my Lord of Dover) 

 several trees bought by a cooper, of which he made ten pounds per yard 

 for three or four yards, as I have been credibly assured. But w^here 

 shall we parallel that mighty tree which furnished the main-mast to the 

 sovereign of ovir seas, which being one hundred feet long save one, bare 

 thh*ty-five inches diameter ; yet was this exceeded in proportion and use 

 by that Oak which afforded those prodigious beams that lie 'thwart her. 

 The diameter of this tree was four feet nine inches, which yielded four 

 square beams of four and forty feet long each of them. The Oak grew 

 about Framlingham, in Suffolk; and, indeed, it would be thought 

 fabulous to recount only the extraordinary dimensions of some timber- 

 trees growing in that country, and the excessive sizes of these materials, 

 had not mine own hands measured a plank, more than once, of above 

 five feet in breadth, nine and a half in length, and six inches thick, 

 all entire and clear, not reckoning the slab. This plank, cut out of a 

 tree felled by my grandfather's order, was made a pastry-board, and 

 lay on a frame of solid brick-work at Wotton, in Surry, where it was so 

 placed before the room was finished about it, or wall built, and yet 

 abated by one foot shorter, to confine it to the intended dimensions of 

 the place ; for at first it held this breadth, full ten feet and a half in 

 length : by an inscription cut in one of the sides, it had lain there 

 above a hundred years. To this may be added that table of one plank, 

 of above seventy-five feet long, and a yard broad through the whole 

 length, now to be seen in Dudley Castle-hall, which grew in the park 

 described by Dr. Plot in his Natural History of Staffordshire. 



To these I might add a Yew-tree q in the church-yard of Crowhurst, 

 in the county of Surry, which I am told is ten yards in compass ; but 

 especially that superannuated Yew-tree growing now in Braburne church- 

 yard, not far from Scot's-Hall, in Kent ; which being fifty-eight feet 



1 The ingenious Mr. Pennant, in his Tour in Scotland, mentions a Yew-tree in Fotheringal 

 church-yard, whose ruins measured fifty-six feet and a half in circumference. 

 Volume II. D d 



