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PLATE XXVI.—QUEEN ELIZABETH’S OAK. 
Tuts tree with all its peculiar features, and interesting tradition, is so well described by the Reverend 
Charles Davy, Rector of Onehouse in Suffolk, whose lines are quoted in the preceding article, that little apology 
will be necessary for inserting the account of it, in his own words. 
“The Queen’s Oak at Huntingfield (in Suffolk,) was situated in a park of the Lord Hunsdon, about. two 
bow-shots from the old mansion-house, where Queen Elizabeth is said to have been entertained by this noble- 
man, and to have enjoyed the pleasures of the chase in a kind of rural majesty. The approach to it was by a 
bridge, over an arm of the river Blythe, and, if I remember right, through three square courts. A gallery was 
continued the whole length of the building, which opening upon a balcony over the porch, gave an air of gran- 
deur with some variety to the front. The great hall was built round six straight massy oaks, which originally 
. supported the roof as they grew: upon these the foresters aud yeomen of the guard used to hang their nets, 
cross-bows, hunting-poles, great saddles, calivers, bills, &. The roots of them had been long decayed, when I 
visited this romantic dwelling ; and the shafts sawn off at bottom were supported either by irregular logs of wood 
driven under them, or by masonry. Part of the long gallery, where the queen and her fair attendants used to 
divert themselves, was converted into an immense cheese-chamber; and upon my first looking into it, in the dusk 
of a summer’s evening, when a number of these huge circular things were scattered upon the floor, it struck me 
that the maids of honour had just slipped off their fardingales to prepare for a general romping. 
“ Hlizabeth is reported to have been much pleased with the retirement of this park, which was filled with 
tall and massy timbers, and to have been particularly amused and entertained with the solemnity of its walks 
and bowers ; but this Oak, from which, the tradition is that she shot a buck with her own hand, was her favor- 
ite tree ; it is still in some degree of vigour, though most of its boughs are broken off, and those which remain 
are approaching to a total decay, as well as its vast trunk; the principal arm, xow bald with dry antiquity, shoots 
up toa great height above the leafage, and being hollow and truncated at top, with several cracks resembling 
loop-holes, through which the light shines into its cavity, it gives us an idea of the winding staircase in a lofty 
Gothic turret, which, detached from the ruins of some venerable pile, hangs tottering to its fall, and affects the 
mind of a beholder after the same manner by its greatness and sublimity.’”—Davy’s Letters, Vol. I. p. 289. 
This account was written about the year 1773. The principal arm, which is so accurately described in it, 
has suffered much since that time. The upper part of it is considerably shortened, probably having been brought 
to the ground by some of the many winter gales which have been weathered by the parent stem. The tree is 
nevertheless, from the associations connected with it, one of the most interesting objects in the pee of Lord 
Huntingfield, whose property it is. 
It measures thirty-four feet in girth, at five feet from the ground; Mr. Davy imagines it to have been five 
or six hundred years old, at the time he saw it, and its present appearance is sufficiently venerable to bear out 
the conjecture. 
PLATE XXVII.—SIR PHILIP SIDNEY’S OAK. 
Tue beautiful estate of Penshurst, on which this tree stands, may be deemed classic ground in every part, 
as the ancient property of the Sidneys, one of the most illustrious families of which England can boast. The 
tree itself has a’more particular claim on our veneration, having been planted at the birth of Sir Philip Sidney ; 
a name dear alike to valour and the muses, consecrated by every virtue that could adorn private life, and graced 
with talents that rendered their possessor the admiration of Europe, even in his bloom of vou ‘Every memorial 
of a birth so auspicious, every remembrance of a career bright, though, alas! brief 
“as the lightning in the coiled night,” 
is of value to the poet. Hence this oak has been celebrated by many of our best writers. Ben Jonson speaks 
of it as, 
«That taller tree which of a nut was set 
At his great birth where all the muses met.” 
