He has applied such tests, and has been fully satisfied with the result.
[8] There is a yew tree known to the writer, at present growing in the church yard of Sampford Arundel, in the county of Somerset, but now hollowed by age, respecting which there is certain evidence, that more than a century has passed over it, without producing seemingly any change whatever in its state of decay; it is now, to all appearance, as it was more than a hundred years ago.
[9] That a single tree may be so decayed by time as to be divided into parts, and that these living parts may have the appearance of separate trees, we have a remarkable proof in the famous chestnut on Mount Etna, which was alive in the close of the last century.
Gilpin in his “Forest Scenery” has the following description of it:—“It is still alive (1791), but it has lost much of its original dignity. Many travellers take notice of it. Brydone was the last who saw it. His account is dated about sixteen or seventeen years ago. It hath the appearance of five distinct trees. The space within them, he was assured, had been filled up with solid timber, where the whole formed only one tree. The possibility of this he could not at first conceive, for the five trees together contained a space of 204 feet in diameter. At length he was convinced, not only by the testimony of the country and the accurate examination of the Canon Recufero, a learned naturalist in those parts, but by the appearance of the trees, none of which had any bark on the inside. This chestnut is of such renown, that Brydone tells us he had seen it marked in an old map of Sicily, published an hundred years ago.”—(B. 1., p. 135.)
[10] There is little doubt that this castle stood on the picturesque rock which overhangs the Severn, near the Ferry. A few years since, the late Mr. Smallman opened the trench which partly surrounds it, and removed from it three hundred cart loads of rubbish; the whole of which had evidently been thrown in from the inside, the strata lying in that slanting direction; and underneath he found several Norman relics, and fragments of the same stone of which the church was built; and as this stone was brought from Gloucestershire, it affords a pretty plain proof that the building of the church and castle were cotemporaneous.
[12] “However odious Robert had now become; though his turbulent and vindictive character had left him but few friends, the scene which followed must have been affecting to those who could reflect, if such there were, on the instability of human grandeur. On the King’s approach to Shrewsbury, the Earl quitted the town, perhaps for the last time; bearing himself the keys of the gates, he threw himself at the Victor’s feet, acknowledging his treason, and sued for mercy.”—Blakeway’s History of Shrewsbury, Vol. 1, pp. 58-9.
[13] It is generally supposed that this Knight was Hugh de St. Clare; but Mr. Eyton proves that it could not have been he, if the transaction took place at the second siege of Bridgnorth Castle, as his death did not occur till after that date.—Vol 1, p. 248, note 19.
[14] It is very remarkable that King Henry II. was saved from death on another occasion by a singular accident, as he was entering the town of Limeoges, in Normandy. “From the Castle,” Daniel narrates, “is shot a barbed arrow, which had tooke him directly in the brest, had not his horse, by the sudden lifting up his head, received it in his forehead.”—Collection of the Historie of England, p. 91.
[15] One of the days on which King John was at Bridgnorth happened to be a fast day, notwithstanding which, he, being wearied most probably with his incessant marches, ate twice; for which supposed offence he atoned by feeding a hundred paupers with bread, fish, and beer.—(Antiquities of Shropshire, Vol. 1, p. 269.) His scrupulosity in this matter is the more remarkable from the fact, that however important the scriptural exercise of fasting may be on certain occasions, yet it has always been dispensed with under the circumstances in which John was then placed—viz: taking a fatiguing journey.—(Bishop Taylor’s Works, Vol. 3, p. 170.)