THE QUEEN’S OAK RUINS AND OLD TREES ASSOCIATED WITH REMARKABLE EVENTS IN ENGLISH HISTORY LONDON: HARVEY AND DARTON, GRACECHURCH STREET. RUINS AND OLD TREES, ASSOCIATED WITH MEMORABLE EVENTS IN ENGLISH HISTORY. BY MARY ROBERTS, AUTHOR OF “THE PROGRESS OF CREATION, CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE EARTH,” “CONCHOLOGIST’S COMPANION,” &c. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DESIGNS BY GILBERT, ENGRAVED BY FOLKARD. LONDON: JOSEPH RICKERBY, PRINTER, SHERBOURN-LANE....

“I stood in the ruined hall where my ancestors once dwelt. I asked for the noble owners. Where are they?—and the echo replied, Where are they?” In the midst of the lone forest which shadowed in ancient times a large portion of the country of the Dobuni, [1] and which extended over hill and dale, far as the distant mountains of the Silures, [2] and on either side the river that waters this part of Britain, stood a solitary yew. On the verge of the forest, and in places cleared of timber for the p

A rocky bank, with scattered sheep, are objects on which the mind loves to rest. Such is the back-ground of Bradgate ruin, the birth-place of the beautiful Jane Grey, the illustrious and ill-fated scion of the house of Suffolk, concerning whom it was related by one who had seen and loved her, that even in her eighteenth year she had the innocence of childhood, the beauty of youth, the solidity of middle, and the gravity of old age; the life of a saint, and yet the death of a malefactor. On that

Such is the Oak of Chertsey, that celebrated tree, over which the storms of many centuries have passed. The sunny bank on which it grows is covered with primroses and cowslips, and among them the little pimpernel and violet lift up their modest heads. Tufts of eyebright, with cuckoo-flowers and sweet woodroof, grow also, beside the hollies and stunted hawthorns, which are seen upon the common; their fragrant flowers and green leaves present a striking contrast to the time-worn tree; the one tell

The busy hum of men has long ceased from the spot where stand the fraternal yew-trees. Ages have passed away since the illuminator sat intent on his pleasant labours in the ruin hard by—since he put aside his liquid gold and Tyrian purple, and laid him down to rest in the burying-place beside the abbey. The copier of manuscripts closed his book there, more than five hundred years ago; he, too, is gone, and with him all those who lived while he was living. The abbot, who presided in regal state;

How beautiful is this wild spot, with its accompaniments of lawn and thicket, with its clear stream, now prattling over a rocky bed, and now dancing in playful eddies beside the tufts of grass and yellow flowers, that skirt the margin of the water! Innumerable boughs shut out the distant prospect, and neither a church-spire, nor curling smoke, ascending from some lone cottage, betoken the abode of men. In the midst of this fair spot stands a “caverned, huge, and thunder-blasted oak;” its dry bra

Such is Winfield castle; and its noble oak, the old oak which bears its name, stands within sight of the long suite of rooms where Mary Stuart passed nine years of her sad captivity; for even nine years, however passed, teaches many a heavy lesson. Much of grief and sorrow, and those strange reverses which only the great may feel in all their fulness and their bitterness, had been comprised in the short life of this unhappy princess, once the Queen of France, then of Scotland, but at length a pr

The great Chesnut of Tortworth stood where now it stands, far back as the reign of John, at which period it bore the name that still distinguishes it among trees of the same species. It was then in all its grandeur and luxuriance, and its noble branches cast a deep and lengthened shade upon the waste beneath, for grass and flowers do not readily vegetate under the shadow of the chesnut. But the deer of the forest resorted thither to feed on the nuts, when shaken from the boughs by autumn winds;

The noble Oak of Ellerslie sheltered the birth-place of Wallace. Centuries have passed since then, and now it stands in the centre of a small common, time-worn and reft of all its greatness, a magnificent ruin; although, within the memory of man, its ample branches extended over a Scotch acre of ground. Wallace, and the children of the village, used to play beneath its shelter: they would gather acorns for cups and balls, and rest on the green sward when they were hot and weary. A poet, perhaps,

“Away with that unseemly object!” said the stern St. Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, to the sisters of Godstow Nunnery, when he came in the course of visitation to their quiet dwelling among the rich meadows of Evenlod. “Away with that unseemly object! the hearse of one who was a Magdalen, is not a fitting spectacle for a quire of nuns to contemplate, nor is the front of the holy altar a proper place for such an exhibition.” The sisters dared not refuse, and the coffin which contained the remains of Fa

Dancing lights and shadows are playing on the tomb of Lady Marian. [32] They are cast by the old tree whose waving branches, seen through the lofty window, with its tracery and mullions, grey and time-worn, recall to my mind the day in which it stood with its brotherhood beside the little church of Dunmow, when bold Robinhood, the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon, passed and repassed with his lady and their archers through the green recesses of Sherwood forest. The contiguous priory was standing then

Britain was anciently divided into a variety of states, which bore the names of those who dwelt in them, or else had reference to some peculiarity of situation or of climate. When the Romans gained the ascendancy, they put aside the way-marks of the olden times, and divided their new territories into Britannia Barbara, Prima, and Secunda, with such lesser partitions as pleased them best. Then came the Saxons. They, too, made changes, and he who returned after some years’ absence to the shores of

Little now remains of the old palace where King John and Edward I. resided. Creeping ivy covers the once strong walls, and large elder bushes springing from out the rents which time has made, afford a shelter to such birds as like to build their nests in solitary places. The goatsucker is one of these; you may hear her mournful voice at night, as if she bewailed and lamented the downfall of the once stately building; the gray owl is also there; the jackdaw and carrion-crow; they are never seen b

The memorial-tree, from which the arrow of Sir Walter Tyrrel glanced, and beside which the king lay extended on the ground, is now exceeding old, and scarcely a trace remains of its former greatness. It stood in this wild spot, when the stern decree went forth, which enjoined that throughout the whole extent of the south-western part of Hampshire, measuring thirty miles from Salisbury to the sea, and in circumference at least ninety miles, all trace of human habitation should be swept away. Will

Hyde Park was covered in ancient times with a dense growth of tall trees and underwood, which extending from sea to sea, shaded a large portion of the states of the Iceni and Trinobantes, the Cantii and the Regni. But the aspect of external nature has changed since; instead of noble trees and all the varied undulations of innumerable boughs, now gently waving in the breeze of summer, and now furiously wrought upon by the northern blast, great London has arisen where all was wood and swamp, and o

[Queen Elizabeth is said to have been seated beneath the shade of Hatfield Oak when she received intelligence of the death of her sister Mary.]   The Beech of the Frith Common....

Let him who loves to mark the changes of the seasons, and to watch the alternations which spring and summer, autumn and winter, produce in the vegetable kingdom, stand beside one of those magnificent columns which spring from out the parent earth, and bear on high a canopy of branches. Let him choose that season when the leaves are just beginning to expand, when the swelling buds assume a reddish tint, and here and there a young green leaf has unfolded, in all its freshness and its beauty, as ye

By virtue of those indices which naturalists discover in the trunks and boughs of aged trees, it is conjectured that the autumns of fifteen hundred years have visited the Oak of Salcey. Standing remote from those frequented parts of Britain, where a thronging population causes the increase of buildings and the making of new roads, protected also by the inland situation of the little forest by which it is surrounded, the old tree has remained entire. It stands a living cavern, with an arched entr

Valleys and cultivated fields, have each their characteristics of richness or of loveliness, but they have no beauty in comparison with that of woodland scenery. The wild thyme and moss, the short-cropped herbage, the tufts of fern and golden-blossomed gorse, that vary the ground on which we tread; the solemn depth of the lone forest, the noble groups of trees that diversify the open spaces, and the clear streams that flow silently through the deep soil, bordered with cowslips and wild marigolds

What see you in that old oak more than in any other tree, except that its trunk is white with age, and that gray lichens hang in tufts from out the interstices of the bark? That tree, stranger, was a silent witness of scenes long past. It stood when England was rent asunder during the fearful contest of the Roses; and beside its noble trunk met those, in all the pride of chivalry and loveliness of beauty, who now are resting from life’s weary pilgrimage beneath the tomb of Quentin Matsys. Who ha