Age of Trees (Vol. iv., p. 401.).
—I am rather surprised that your correspondent L., in his enumeration of remarkable trees, and collections of trees, in Great Britain, makes no mention, whilst on the subject of yew, of the splendid collection of old yew trees in Kingley Bottom, near Chichester, in Sussex. Should L. never have visited this charming spot, and its green antiquities, I can promise him a rich treat whenever he does so. Common report of the neighbourhood, from time immemorial, gives these venerable trees a date as far back as the landing of the sea-kings on the coast of Sussex; and sundry poems by local bards have been written on this theme.
On one of the most prominent of the South Down Hills, rising immediately above the yew-tree valley, and called Bow Hill, are two large, and some smaller tumuli, which are always called by the natives the graves of the sea-kings, who with their followers are supposed to have fallen in a battle fought under these very yew trees.
Can anybody tell me if the age of any of these trees has ever been ascertained? Kingley Bottom, or, as people now-a-days prefer calling it, Kingley Vale, is so much frequented as a spot for pic-nics and festive days, that I have no doubt many of your readers have seen the trees to which I refer, and can bear me out in asserting that they are worthy of ranking, in age and beauty, with any of their species in the kingdom.
SCANDINAVIAN.
The "Hethel Thorn," so well known to many Norfolk people, is on a farm now the property of that munificent patron of historical literature, Mr. Hudson Gurney, by whom it was purchased from Sir Thomas Beevor. The first Sir Thomas always said it was mentioned in a deed of 1200 and odd, as a boundary, under the appellation of "the Old Thorn." It is stated, also, that it is mentioned in some chronicle as the thorn round which a meeting of insurgent peasantry was held during the reign of King John (can any readers of "NOTES AND QUERIES" give a reference to the precise passage?). An etching of this interesting relic has been made by Mr. Ninham. The involution of its branches, which are all hollow tubes, as heavy as iron, is most curious; and although the tree is certainly diminished of late years, it still puts out leaves and berries vigorously.
W. J. T.
Treatise against Equivocation (Vol. iv., p. 419.).
—Your correspondent EUPATOR has, in his examination of the MS. of this treatise, overlooked a title prefixed by Garnet, which furnishes the heading by which the book is correctly entered in the Catalogue of the Laudian MSS. as A Treatise against (not of or for) Lying and Fraudulent Dissimulation. "Of" was first written, but at once crossed out, and "against" written after it, not interlined. Of the two errors which EUPATOR points out, the one was made at the press, by failure in reading the contraction for "verbo," which is printed correctly at length at p. 43., and the other was a mistake on the part of the transcriber.
W. D. M.