3 i6 
Oak. 
wreaths of oak-leaves : the curious-shaped baskets in which 
they were immolated, and which bore no little resemblance to 
those still worn by “Jack-in-the-green ” upon May-day, were 
manufactured of oaken twigs quaintly interwoven, and even 
the very brands with which the sacrificial fires w'ere kindled 
were required to be of oak. 
It was beneath the branches of this same renowned tree that 
their criminal trials were held, the judge and jury being seated 
under the sacred shade, and the culprit placed in a circle made 
by the chief Druid’s wand. With the Saxons the oak retained 
its sacred character : beneath it they held their national meet¬ 
ings ; and it was below the oaks of Dartmoor that they had 
their famous conference with the Britons, whose country they 
were invading. 
Many of these magnificent sylvan princes have attained in 
England a fame truly national. Everybody knew of “ Herne’s 
moon-silvered oak,” and no one could restrain a sigh of regret 
when it was announced that its time-honoured stem had 
succumbed to the onslaughts of Time. Three venerable oaks 
in Donnington Park, spoken of by Martyn, were believed to 
have been planted by Chaucer; the famous oak at Morley, in 
Cheshire, supposed to have existed upwards of eight hundred 
years, tradition asserted once afforded shelter to Edward the 
Black Prince ; Evelyn tells of one of these denizens of our 
ancient woodlands, growing at Rycote, which was able to 
afford a cover to upwards of four thousand men. The circum¬ 
ference of the boughs of the celebrated Fairlop Fair Oak was 
three hundred feet, and that of its massive trunk thirty-six ; 
whilst the stem of Queen Elizabeth’s Oak, in Suffolk, measured 
thirty-seven feet round : “ Good Queen Bess,” as some folks 
like to term her, is reported to have often taken her stand 
beneath its wide-spreading arms, in order to shoot at the deer 
as they fled timidly by. 
There is, or was some few years since, on the road to Tun¬ 
bridge, an enormous tree, known as Fisher’s Oak, and within 
its hospitable trunk thirteen men on horseback are said to 
have found shelter: it is also recorded that when James I. 
was travelling along that road, a schoolmaster of the neigh¬ 
bourhood, and a great number of his pupils, decked with oaken 
garlands, came out of this tree, and greeted the King with an 
appropriate address. 
