Age of Trees (Vol. iv., pp. 401. 448.).
—Since the note on the age of trees appeared, my attention has been called to a discussion of the subject in an article on Decandolle's Vegetable Physiology, written I believe by Prof. Henslow, in the Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. xi. p. 368-71. With respect to the yew near Fountains Abbey, he remarks as follows:
"In the first of these examples, we have the testimony of history for knowing that this tree was in existence, and must have been of considerable size, in the year 1133, it being recorded that the monks took shelter under it whilst they were rebuilding Fountains Abbey."—p. 369.
Query: Where is this historical testimony to be found? Nothing is said on the subject in the account of Fountains Abbey in Dugdale's Monasticon, vol. v., p. 286. ed. 1825.
With respect to the Shelton Oak (Vol. iv., p. 402.) the movements of Owen Glendower, at the time of the battle of Shrewsbury, are accurately detailed in the life of him inserted in Pennant's Tours in Wales, vol. iii., p. 355. (ed. 1810); and the account there given is inconsistent with the story of his having ascended a tree in order to count Percy's troops. It appears that at the time of the battle he was at Oswestry, at the head of 12,000 men.
Lord Campbell, in his Lives of the Chief Justices, describes the suicide of Sir William Hankford, Chief Justice in the reigns of Henry V. and VI., who is said to have contrived to get himself shot at night by his own keeper. Lord Campbell quotes Prince, the author of the Worthies of Devon, p. 362. as stating that—
"This story is authenticated by several writers, and the constant traditions of the neighbourhood; and I, myself, have been shown the rotten stump of an old oak under which he is said to have fallen, and it is called Hankford's Oak to this day."—See Lives of the Chief Justices, vol. i., c. 4. p. 140.
L.