5 
The Yew-tree lives to a great age ; indeed it can scarcely ever be said to die, new shoots perpetually springing 
out from the old and withered stock. The Yew-tree at Ankerwyke House, near Staines, the seat of John 
Blagrove, Esq., is supposed. to have flourished there upwards of a thousand years. Tradition says, that Henry VIII. 
occasionally met Anne Boleyn under the lugubrious shade of its spreading branches, at such times as she was 
placed in the neighbourhood of Staines, in order to be near Windsor; whither the king used to love to retire from 
the cares of state. TIll-omened as was the place of meeting under such circumstances, it afforded but too appro- 
priate an emblem of the result of that arbitrary and ungovernable passion, which, overlooking every obstacle in 
its progress, was destined finally to hurry its victim to an untimely grave. It is more pleasing, however, to 
view this tree as the silent witness of the conferences of those brave barons who afterwards compelled King 
John to sign Magna Charta, in its immediate vicinity, between Runnymede and Ankerwyke House, than as 
the involuntary confidant of loves so unhallowed, and so unblest, as those of Henry and Anne Boleyn. Both 
events are happily alluded to in the following lines : 
“ What scenes have pass’d, since fitst this ancient Yew And yet that neck, round which he fondly hung, 
In all the strength of youthful beauty grew! To hear the thrilling accents of her tongue ; 
Here patriot Barons might have musing stood, That lovely breast, on which his head reclined, 
And plann’d the Charter for their Country’s good; Form’d to have humanized his savage mind ; 
And here, perhaps, from Runnymede retired, Were doom’d to bleed beneath the tyrant’s steel, 
The haughty John, with secret vengeance fired, Whose selfish heart might dote, but could not feel. 
Might curse the day which saw his weakness yield O had the Yew its direst venom shed 
Extorted rights in yonder tented field. Upon the cruel Henry’s guilty head, 
Here too the tyrant Henry felt love’s flame, Ere England’s sons with shuddering grief had seen 
And, sighing, breathed his Anna Boleyn’s name : A slaughter’d victim in their beauteous queen !” 
Beneath the shelter of this Yew-tree’s shade, 
The royal lover woo’d the illestarr’d maid : 
_ The girth of this tree, at three feet from the ground, is tweitty-seven feet eight inches} at eight feet, thirty- 
two feet five inches. Immediately above the latter height there are five ptincipal branches, which shoot out 
from the stem in a lateral direction ; the respective girths of which are, five feet five inches; six feet ten inches ; 
five feet seven inches; five feet seven inches; and five feet nine inches. Above these branches, the trunk 
measures in the girth twenty feet eight inches. At twelve feet from the ground various branches proceed in every 
direction, aspiring to the height of forty-nine feet six inches; and spreading their umbrage to the circumference of 
two hundred and seven feet. 
PLATE IX.—THE SALCEY FOREST OAK. 
Tuis magnificent tree, still flourishing, even under apparent decay, stands in the forest of Salcey, in 
Northamptonshire ; between the forests of Rockingham to the North, and of Whittlebury to the South-west, by 
which the woodland part of that county is divided into three main parcels. Of these, Salcey Forest is the - 
smallest; being not more than a mile in breadth, and scarcely a mile and a half in length: but its verdant 
appearance, enlivened by the variety of spreading thorns, which spring among its majestic oaks, renders it, par- 
ticularly in the beginning of the summer, when they put forth their white blossoms, and scent the air with their 
fragrance, a delightful haunt for the lovers of sylvan scenery. Camden speaks of it as a place set apart for game ; 
and even in the present day, its numerous troops of fallow deer, its tempting copses, and picturesque herds of 
cattle, give it an animation not less attractive to the sportsman than to the painter. 
The Oak which maintains so proud a pre-eminence over all its brethren in this forest, was, in 1794, accord- 
ing to the account of H. Rooke, Esq. F.S.A., in circumference at the bottom, where there are no spurs, forty. 
six feet.ten inches; at one yard from the ground, twenty-four feet seven inches; at two yards, eighteen feet 
six inches; at three yards, sixteen feet two inches. The height within the hollow was at that time fourteen 
feet eight inches, and the height of the tree itself thirty-nine feet three inches. Of its age, a calculation may 
be formed from the following observations of the ingenious Thomas South, Esq., communicated in his fourth 
Letter on the growth of Oaks, addressed to the Bath Society. Speaking of an ancient hollow tree on Oakley 
Farm, he informs us, that about twenty years before the time of his writing, he had the curiosity to measure 
this tree. “Its head,” he proceeds to relate, “was as green and vigorous last summer, as it was at that time; 
and though hollow as a tub, it has increased in its measure some inches. Upon the whole, this bears every 
mark of having been a short-stemmed, branchy tree, of the first magnitude ; spreading its arms in all directions 
round it. Its aperture is a small, ill-formed gothie arch, hewn out, or enlarged with an axe, and the bark now 
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