An Old Shropshire Oak ... Edited by R. Garnett

Front matter

VOL. I. BY THE LATE JOHN WOOD WARTER AUTHOR OF 'THE SEABOARD AND THE DOWN ' etc. EDITED BY RICHARD GARNETT, LL.D. VOL. I. LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO., i PATERNOSTER SQUARE (The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved) PREFATORY NOTE. The late Rev. John Wood Warter is perhaps most generally known to the world as the son-in-law of Southey, and editor of his ' Common-Place Book,' the latter volumes of his ' Doctor,' and selections from his correspondence. His ex traordinary acquaintance with literature, strong local attach ments, and love of nature and mankind have nevertheless been manifested in the sketches of his Sussex parish published by him under the title of ' The Seaboard and the Down,' and are displayed on a much more conspicuous scale in the work now presented to the public.

So copious is the amount of literary illustration amassed by the author's ceaseless study and indefatigable industry, that, extensive as the work still is, it has been found necessary to make very considerable retrenchments to adapt it in any degree to the exigencies of our busy and restless generation. The reader, it is believed, who can peruse it with the leisure and deliberation which the author brought to its composition, will not miss the enjoyment which attended the latter task. The work is published by the writer's children. The concluding portion will follow as soon as possible. October 1885. CONTENTS OK THE FIRST VOLUME.

Chapter I

V.I I. The Dream 3 II. The Age of the Old Shropshire Oak. . . . 15 III. The Old Shropshire Oak's Localitv . . .27 IV. Some Instructions of the Present Oak's Timfhonoured Father 39 V. Some Recollections of the Present Oak's Time-honoured Father 51 VI. The People generallv in the Days of the Present Oak's Father 65 VII. The Old Oak's Recollections of the Saxons . 77 VIII. The great Ignorance of the People, even after the Introduction of Christianity . . . . 102 IX. What the Old Oak's Time-honoured Father heard about the Druids on his asking after the Mines in the Districts of Shelve, Minsterley, and Pontesbury 127 X. The Old Romans — and how they worked the Lead Mines of the District 149 XI. Outlaws and Forestry. ... . . CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. CHAPTER PAGE XII. The Wild State of the Country about the Old Oak's Locality — and of England and Wales in general in Early Days 189 XIII.

The little River Rea 221 XIV. What the little River Rea saw when it entered the old British ' Pengwerne,' ' Scrobbesbyrig,' 1 Sciropesberie,' or the modern 'Shrewsbury' . 275 XV. Uriconium 317 XVI. Saxon and Norman 341 XVII. The Conquest AN OLD SHROPSHIRE OAK. 'T-r* aly,6xoio Aibs irepiKahhe'. ty-nyy. Lliad, E. 693. The air that floated by me seemed to say, ' Write ! thou wilt never have a better day. And so I did. Keats's Epistle to Charles Cowden Clarke, Sept. 1816. Pleraque eorum quæ retuli, quæque referam, parva forsitan et levia memoratu videri, non nescius sum. Tacit. Annal. iv. c. 32. Thus I entertain The antiquarian humour, and am pleased To skim along the surfaces of things, Beguiling harmlessly the listless hours. Wordsworth's Excursion, p. 92. Gravestones tell truth scarce forty years.

Generations pass while some trees stand, and old families last not three oaks. Sir T. Browne's Hydriotaphia, or Urn-burial, c. v. vol. iii. 491. Ed. Wilkins. A tree on which the host of dreams Low murmur mystic things. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton's Poems ; Love's Sudden Growth, p. 135. VOL.1. B

CHAPTER I. THE DREAM.

We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. The Tempest, iv. I. The dreams of sleeping men are, as I take it, all made up of the waking man's ideas, though for the most part oddly put together. — Locke, Essay con cerning the Human Understanding, II. i. § 17. Half our days we pass in the shadow of the earth ; and the brother of death exacteth a third part of our lives. A good part of our sleep is paid out with visions and fantastical objects, wherein we are confessedly deceived. — Sir Thomas Browne, On Dreams, vol. iv. 355. Jamque sopor mediis tellurem presserat horis, Et circum tacito volitabant somnia mundo. Val. Flac. Arg. iii. 417. One night — it was a November night, 1860 — I dreamed that the Old Oak by our old homestead in Shropshire — a grand fellow he is even to this day — stopped me on my way with a great rustling of his dried leaves — sparse and few, they were still lingering on the boughs — and told me he was very glad to see me, and that he had watched me from a boy, and that he never resented the great nails — stab-nails I thought he called them — which I had driven into his old trunk.

To which he added, that if I would come and stop awhile in Shrop shire and recruit my health and spirits, he would tell me his own history of six hundred years past, at the least, and make me acquainted likewise with the reminiscences of his father. Such was the substance of the dream jotted down in the morning when I awoke. In the night, of course, one thought there was nothing odd or out of the way in being addressed by a venerable oak. It seemed no more unreal than the talk ii of animate and inanimate things in Æsop's Fables does to the child whose faculties are just awaking, and who syllogises rather than reasons. As when upon a tranced summer's night Those green-robed senators of mighty woods, Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, Dream, and so dream all night without a stir, Save from one gradual solitary gust Which comes upon the silence, and dies off, As if the ebbing air had but one wave ; So came these words and went, — and the Old Oak rustled no more, leaving me to sleep and dreamy meditation, such as Ovid implied in the words : — Constat Aventinæ tremuisse cacumina silvæ ; no doubt, that is, the topmost leaves had rustled, and that the words were such as the oak might give out in the silence of the night : Ilia dabat tacitis animo responsa quieto Noctibus.

Those who have read the ' Endymion ' of Keats will have noted the words which follow, and they are applicable here : The Morphean fount Of that fine element that visions, dreams, And fitful whims of sleep are made of, streams Into its airy channels with so subtle, So thin a breathing, not the spider's shuttle Circled a million times within the space Of a swallow's nest door, could delay a trace, A tinting of its quality. It is a pleasant thing to visit an old homestead and to tread over the haunts of one's youth once more — many, many times, again and again, are all too few. Every spot bears with it its tale. Hedgerows and hedges, woods and coppices, the streams with their shallows and their pools, the distant hills with their robe of blue, and the nearer ones with their hollows and outline clearly defined — the saddle-back of the district with the crags to which the fox took in extremities no less than the champaign where Puss disported herself at will till the cry of the harriers caught her ear ; no single spot, in fact, but it summons up cherished recollections, and the freshness of youth for a little while comes over the sobriety of eld, and one hears, or thinks one hears, the prattle of childhood and of joyous years.

Then again, if few out of many are left, sadder thoughts come over a man — not necessarily melancholy ones, how ever — for to look upon empty places once well filled, and to count the dead buried out of sight, assured that they have died in the Lord, this is no cause for sorrow of heart and sad ness. The reverse, rather, for there is life in their end, and one grasps the proverb in entire faithfulness, which says — ' A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children.' 4 No man,' said Jeremy Taylor in his ' Entail of Curses,' art. io, ' can be called happy till he be dead ; nor then neither if he lived viciously. Look how God handles him in his children, in his family, in his grandchildren.' ' Nobody knows,' as the same great writer speaks, ' what precious mercies a pious father of a family may devise upon his succeeding generations.

When a man teaches his family to know and fear God, then he scatters a blessing round about his habitation. No evil can come to the family whose stock is pious, and whose branches are holiness to the Lord. If any leaf or any bough shall fall untimely, God shall gather them up, to place them in His temple or at the foot of His throne ; and that family must needs be blessed whom infidelity itself cannot make accursed. To sum up all, holy parents never eat their meal of blessing alone, but they make the room shine like the fire of a holy sacrifice ; and a father's or a mother's piety makes all the home festival and full of joy from generation to generation.' Thus impressed, and looking back to the days of my youth, I turned over the visions in my mind, and I thought I might interweave many interesting details of general English, as well as county, history with the oracular responses of the venerable Old Shropshire Oak — a county in which there are many such, at Boscobel, at Shelton, at Cressage — a corruption of Christ's-ake or Christ's Oak — which could a tale unfold, had they the power of speech, whereat the hearers would be marvellously astonied.

Who, when he read Evelyn's ' Sylva ' for the first time, was not delighted with his account of old trees, their history and their localities ? The scholar was sure once more to turn to his Ovid's ' Metamor phoses ' and to his Lucan for ' the destructive fact that the enraged Cæsar perpetrated on the Massilian trees.' Much cause had he to say, ' To enumerate the incomparable uses of the oak were needless.' It was evidently his favourite tree. ' So precious was the esteem of it, that,' he adds, ' of old there was an express law amongst the Twelve Tables con cerning the very gathering of the acorns, though they should be found fallen on another man's ground.' Then again, there is a solemnity about great trees and forests with which one easily couples ancient superstitions, without referring to which even history is seldom well read or understood.

Many years ago I gave considerable attention to the history of Scandinavia, as I was searching deep into the roots of our mother-tongue, and I never recollect to have been so much impressed upon some points as I was on travelling through the dark forests of Norway and Sweden, into which it was as much as the July sunbeam could do to pene trate. What feelings of awe did their deep silence inspire — not a note of a bird to be recognised in the vast pine forests mile after mile ! Not only does a dead silence imbue the mind with all solemn thoughts, but it is no mean portion of the sublime. Virgil never showed himself a greater master of his craft than when amid his search into the wreck of Troy-town he put these words into the mouth of Æneas : Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent.

Hence it is that if the reader of Congreve's ' Mourning Bride' recollects no more of that drama he is sure to bear in mind the two passages which follow : Almeria. It was a fancy'd noise, for all is hush'd. Leonora. It bore the accent of a human voice. Almeria. It was thy fear, or else some transient wind Whistling through hollows of the vaulted aisle. We '11 listen. Leonora. Hark ! Almeria. No, all is hush'd and still as death. 'Tis dreadful ! How reverend is the face of this tall pile, Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads To bear aloft its arched and ponderous roof, Uy its own weight made steadfast and immovable, Looking tranquillity. It strikes an awe And terror on my aching sight. The tombs And monumental caves of death look cold, And shoot a chillness to my trembling heart. Give me thy hand, and let me hear thy voice ; Nay, quickly ! speak to me, and let me hear Thy voice ; mine own affrights me with its echoes.

Leonora. Let us return ; the horror of this place And silence will increase your melancholy. I was but a boy when these lines were read to me first, and not many miles from the spot where the Old Oak stood, but I never could forget them. The other passage alluded to is less memorable. It is Zara, the captive queen, who is speaking : Silence and solitude are everywhere ! Thro' all the gloomy ways and iron doors That hither lead, nor human face nor voice Is seen or heard. A dreadful din was wont To grate the sense, when enter'd here, from groans And howls of slaves condemn'd, from clink of chains And crash of rusty bars and creaking hinges : And ever and anon the sight was dash'd With frightful faces, and the meagre looks Of grim and ghastly executioners. Yet more this stillness terrifies my soul Than did that scene of complicated horrors.

Hence the dead silence of interminable forests influenced the comparatively few inhabitants that surround it. From their dreaded solemnity it is that woods and marks (as our forefathers spake) and fens are the habitation of dragons, wild beasts, and fire-drakes. Worm, indeed, which is the old name for serpents and dragons, still gives name to many a village and town. Ormskirk, in Lancashire, is only Worms kirk, and he who shall stand upon that grand headland, ' The Great Ormshead,' may think of the great dragon that once kept there, as well as of the great sea serpent, which was driven from the land to the ocean, and has never since been seen on those shores, the nearest approximation being the Kraken, in Pontoppidan. He that will see more about the confusion of Orm and Worm has only to turn to the Danske Folkesaga.1 Since I knew Shakespeare well, which is from my boyhood upwards, the venerable old oak with which these pages are connected always called to my mind the old huntsman's oak in the ' Merry Wives of Windsor,' one out of a thousand instances of those superstitions which hang about old trees, whether in the New Forest, or in Windsor Forest, or in any other.

There is an old tale goes, that Herne the hunter, Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest, Doth all the winter time, at still midnight, Walk round about an oak with great ragg'd horns ; And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle, And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain In a most hideous and dreadful manner : You have heard of such a spirit ; and well you know The superstitious idle-headed eld Received, and did deliver to our age, This tale of Herne the hunter for a truth. To which Page makes answer — and his answer, for aught I know, holds true still — Why, yet there want not many that do fear, In deep of night, to walk by this Herne's oak. Just above, I mentioned the word ' mark,' and probably the Old Oak's father stood on what was the original ' mark ' of our Saxon forefathers, before, in after days, it became a private estate or an alod.

Even in his day he might have gone by the name of ' The Mark-Ira,' so many of which are to be found mentioned in old documents. This, however, is 1 Many readers will call to mind Scott's lines in Marmion relative to St. Hilda's Monastery at Whitby : In Saxon strength the abbey frown 'd, With massive arches broad and round, That rose alternate, row and row, On ponderous columns short and low, Built as the art was known, By pointed aisle and shafted stack The arcades of an alleyed walk To emulate in stone. Canto II. x., 'The Convent.' an historical point which need not be referred to now, and those who would like to pursue the subject will find a very good guide in Kemble's ' Saxons in England,' from which I give the two following extracts, suggestive of after-inquiries. ' It is certain that our forefathers depended very materially for subsistence upon the herds of oxen, sheep, and especially swine, which they could feed upon the uninclosed meadows or in the wealds of oak and beech which covered a large pro portion of the land.

From the moment, in short, when we first learn anything of their domestic condition, all the German tribes appear to be settled upon arable land, sur rounded with forest pastures, and having some kind of property in both.' - Such was the old mark, on which many a good old boundary oak was left to stand ; a word applied, in after times, to much smaller inclosures, such as commons and town-fields, which where I see needlessly inclosed I am ready to exclaim — so applying the old saw — ' Save the mark ! ' Those who have visited Copenhagen will well remember the marks there, and the grand review days in the time of good old Frederick the Sixth ! But are any of the old marks — not unconnected with the terms, Mercia, Marches, Marchstone, and Marcstones — dis coverable now ? The second extract from Mr. Kemble's work must answer that question. ' It is more than one could now undertake to do, without much local co-operation, as is not to be expected in England yet, but I am certain that the ancient marks might still be traced.

In looking over a good county map, we are surprised by seeing the systematic succession of places ending in don, holt, wood, haul, said, and other words which invariably denote forests and outlying pastures in the woods. These are all in the mark, and within these we may trace, with equal certainty, the hams, tuns, wordigs, and stedes, which imply settled habitations. There are few counties which are not distributed into districts whose limits may be assigned by the observation of these peculiar characteristics. I will lay this down as a rule, that the ancient mark is to be recognised by following See Book I. c. ii. 'The Mark,' vol. i. 38. the names of places ending in den (neut), which always denoted cubile ferarum, or pasture, usually for swine. Denu, a valley (fern.) a British, and not a Saxon, word, is very rarely, perhaps never, found in composition.' - On the etymology of the word — finding that doctors dis agree — I had better reserve my opinion, but I may observe that 'Longedune, or ~Longden, not far from where the Old Oak stood, had its wood capable of fattening sixty swine, as the reader may see in that very valuable book, Eyton's ' Antiqui ties of Shropshire,' in his account of Longden.

In an earlier volume, speaking of Stoddesden, he says that the Saxon terminations den and dun are often interchanged, though the former indicates a valley, and the latter a hill or down. But if the reader turns to Bosworth's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, as easily accessible, he will find that under the word Dene, he is referred to Denu, which is explained to be a plain, vale, dale, valley. To which he adds, ' It is often used as the termination ofthe names of places situate in a. plain or valley, as Tenterden, &c. To which I may add that in the Anglo- Saxon version of Luke iii. 5, ' every valley ' is given in the words æle denu. But etymology is a deep limbo, and I may say, in the words of one of Shakespeare's sonnets : Why should my heart think that a several plot Which my heart knows the wide world's common place ?

That is, why should I look upon that as an inclosed field — separate or severed (so the Scripture speaks of Azariah or Uzziah's 'severed house,' which, as a leper, he occupied to the day of his death, 2 Kings xv. 5 ; 2 Chron. xxvi. 21) — which my heart all the while tells me is open as the mark or common field ? 'Wake, Dreamer, wake!' So said a voice at my elbow as I was penning these lines, and by my side lay the Celtic, Breton, Anglo-Saxon, and Icelandic dictionaries, together with the old Gothic version of the Gospels, for I had been looking into them all, not at all sure whether there was not a clerical error, or a printer's, in the extract from Mr. Kemble's work. So it is, one has Sec Book I. ch. ii. ' The Mark,' vol. i. 38. day dreams as well as the dreams ofthe night, and time slips away and minutes perish and are imputed !

And I awoke as if from sleep, and to the question put, ' What are the headings of all these chapters for, and all these collected extracts ? ' I replied, ' The dream about the Old Oak of which I wrote, I am going to commit to paper. I have many cares and troubles in my vocation, and it will tend to ease them. There is nothing like a book, and a pen, and a garden to divert the mind. Bed a rose, prune a tree, dig a trench, or clean a flower border, and it is astonishing what relief it will give to a troubled spirit. It brings a man to himself, and Nature is beautiful always, even if the world is cross-grained, crooked, and awry. Horace had a good notion of this when he thus commenced his epistle to his steward, and you, as a scholar, will anticipate the words : Villice silvarum et mihi me reddentis agelli, Quern tu fastidis, habitatum quinque focis, et Ouinque bonos solitum Variam dimittere patres Certemus, spinas animone ego fortius an tu Evellas agro ; et melior sit Horatius, an res.' And a kindly voice replied, ' Our county is full of old oaks, and each perhaps has its history — why then tell of another which can convey no particular interest ? ' To which I answered, ' A few years more, and what pertains to out-of the-way tradition will be past and gone, and with it much curious history, such as White Kennett preserved in his " Parochial Antiquities," attempted in the history of Am brosden, Bicester, and other adjacent parts in the counties of Oxford and Bucks.

I may venture to say that I have done the same good turn, in a small way, for the parishes of West Tarring, Heene, and Durrington — i.e. mine, and my intention is to throw what light I can on the parish where the Old Oak stands, on the adjoining parish of Henwood, on the old county town, and on some county worthies also. Meanwhile, like an old Roman, I will say Præfiscine ! warding off the evil eye, and all commonplace objections, with the concluding paragraphs of White Kennett's Preface. " I am sure that there be some who slight and despise this sort of learning, and represent it to be a dry, barren, monkish study. I leave such to their dear enjoyments of ignorance and ease. But I dare assure any wise and sober man that historical antiquities, especially a search into the notices of our own nation, do deserve and will reward the pain's of any English student ; will make him understand the state of former ages, the constitution of governments, the funda mental sources of equity and law, the rise and succession of doctrines and opinions, the original and ancient, and the composition of modern tongues, the tenure of property, the maxims of policy, the rites of religion, the characters of virtue and vice, and indeed the nature of mankind.

I wish the excellent parts of many other writers were not spent upon more frivolous arguments, where by subtilties, and cavils, and controverting quibbles, they serve only to weaken Chris tianity, and, what otherwise were pardonable, to expose one another." ' ' Very good and salutary words,' said the same friendly voice, ' and one might think he lived in the time of " Essays and Reviews," with which, as indeed with all sceptical objec tions, I feel greatly disinclined to become acquainted. For, as a very sensible friend writes me word, so I too think. " I consider," says he, " that the Church, according to my ex perience, will always be troubled by some form or other of heretical or perverse opinion — and I am old enough to have seen many of these epidemics die away and come to nothing — except in doing mischief to individuals."

But, to put aside all such rubbish and perverted learning, if you are determined to let an " Old Shropshire Oak " speak his mind, or rather your own, I dare say you will contrive to bring together curious facts, and to make heavy parts lighter by the introduction of out-of-the-way detail.' To which he added, ' This very morning the grand Old Oak of the homestead was called to my mind by reading a passage in " Gilpin's Forest Scenery," which lay upon the drawing-room table, and in which he speaks of the picturesqueness of high-rooted trees. None indeed could ever pass by the Old Oak you have in your mind's eye without being struck with his gigantic wide spreading nodulet, arched like those Pliny speaks of in the Hercynian Forest — the first syllable of which you South Saxons will retain in Hurstmonceaux, Horsebridge, Horsham, Hurst, and all such woods.

So at least, I recollect that good man and excellent scholar, Archdeacon Hare, to have said, quite as much in earnest as in joke. What would Max Miiller say ? ' And I turned to dear old Mr. Gilpin's book, and I recollected how kind he was to Caroline Bowles in her younger days, and how, when I visited the old church at Boldre, the symbol of ' The Fish ' for the weathercock struck me forcibly, calling to mind that Holy Name — IX0T2 — of which it and the Vesica piscis are an emblem, together with these old words, Vos pisciculi de aqua nati, applied to the newly baptised into Christ. But I am forgetting William Gilpin's words. 'The rooting idea of trees is a circumstance on which their beauty greatly depends. I know not whether it is reckoned among the maladies of a tree to leave his root above the soil.

Old trees often do. But whether it be a malady or not, it is certainly very picturesque. The more they raise the ground around them, and the greater number of radical knobs they heave up, the firmer they seem to esta blish their footing upon the earth, and the more dignity they assume. An old tree rising tamely from a smooth surface (as we often find it covered with earth on artificial ground) loses half its effect ; it does not appear on the level of the soil, but to be stuck into it, and would have a still worse effect on canvas than it has in nature.' After which words he refers to the passage of Pliny above mentioned. ' Pliny gives us an account of the roots of certain ancient oaks in the Hercynian Forest which appears rather extravagant, but which I can easily conceive to be true. These roots, he says, heave the ground upwards, in many places, into lofty mounts ; and in other parts, where the earth does not follow them, the bare roots rise as high as the lower branches ; and, twisting round, form, in many places, portals so wide that a man and horse may ride upright through them : much more indeed, according to the original, which has " ut turmas equitum transmittant " — i.e. troops of horse.

I may add in passing that anyone who can turn to Hunter's edition of Evelyn's " Sylva " may see a horseman passing under, not the roots, but the bole of the Green Dale Oak, near Welbeck. It is calculated that 225 beasts might stand under its branches.' And thus a pleasant interview and our pleasant conversa tion ended, and then there came the parting. A volume of St. Jerome's works was lying on the study table, and oddly enough, I lighted on the words which follow : ' Tamen longo a me spatio sejunctus, non minus mihi dereliquit abeundo desiderium, quam attulerit veniendo lætitiam.' Certainly it was something like a pleasant ' Sors Virgiliana ' ; and the more I thought of the Old Oak of the old Shropshire homestead, the more vividly ' the dream ' seemed to develop itself before my waking eyes, and chapter after chapter mentally took form and shape, and I repeated to myself poor Keats's words : Yet it was but a dream ; yet such a dream That never tongue, although it overteem With mellow utterance like a cavern spring, Could figure out, and to conception bring All I beheld and felt.

Chapter II. The Age Of The Old Shropshire Oak

Prætextaque quercu Stat domus. Ovid, Fast. iv. 953. His head was silvered o'er with age, And long experience made him sage. Gay's Fables, Shepherd and Philosopher. The seeds of herbs and plants at the first are not in act, but in possibility, that which they afterwards grow to be. — Hooker, Eccl. Pol., Book V. Iii. § 3. The longest life is but a little short parenthesis in the broad page of time, which is itself a mere preface or prologue to eternity. — Mrs. Piozzi's Auto biography, ii. 267. Let all men know That tree shall long time keep a steady foot, Whose branches spread no wider than the root. Webster's Vittoria Corombona, i. 124, Ed. Dyce. IN the foregoing chapter I alluded to ' the dream,' and wrote down the exact words of it. In the chapters which are to follow — time and health and the gracious use of the under standing and mental faculties permitting — the dream is supposed to be more or less continuous, night after night, during the period I was enabled to stay in the neighbourhood of the patronising good old oak — the ' Talking Oak,' I must venture to call him with Tennyson ; for whatever deductions I may make from his remarks, and whatever matters or quotations of varied date I may venture to interweave, the time-honoured old tree is supposed to enter into the dialogue and to utter his antiquated say.