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 tells of other days, of ages that have passed since its stately stem arose in all the grandeur of sylvan majesty; the other, in their freshness and their loveliness, breathe only of youth and beauty.

The view is somewhat confined, but the eye that likes to rest on a quiet home-scene finds much in it to admire. An ample river winds through green meadows, with trees on either side, and, in the distance, is a church with its solitary turret, and rude porch of the olden time. The gentle murmur of a stream is heard at intervals, and the sighing of the wind among the branches of the aged oak; on high the lark lifts up his song of joy, and the warbling of birds breaks upon the stillness of the place; that of the chaffinch and the throstle, the goldfinch and the linnet, and the sweet full tone of the contented blackbird. They much affect this spot, it is so lone, yet cheerful.

Time was when the site of the old tree resounded with the clang of arms, and rueful sights were seen from its topmost boughs, for the Oak of Chertsey was then in its prime; the now rough and quarried bark was smooth and glossy, and its ample branches sheltered an extensive space, where sheep could lie down at noon.

A dreadful battle was fought between Henry IV. and Hotspur a short way off, and scarcely had any battle occurred in those ages of which the shock was more terrible. Furious and repeated vollies of “arrowy sleet,” discharged from the strong bows of Hotspur’s archers, did great execution in the royal army; they were showered from a rising ground covered with green sward, on which the shepherds loved to pasture their flocks, and where the village children used to gather cowslips and yellow-cups. But the flocks had been driven off, and the frightened children were in their homes; the rising ground was no place for them. The arrows that were thus furiously discharged did their work, and many fell; the king’s bowmen were not wanting in return, and the battle raged with great fury. Henry was in the thickest of the fight, and his gallant son, who afterwards carried misery and desolation throughout the fields of France, signalized himself that day. Percy, too, supported the fame which he had earned in many a hard-fought battle, and Douglas, his ancient enemy, though now his friend, still appeared his rival, amid the horror and confusion of the scene. He raged through the field in search of the king, and as Henry, either to elude the vigilance of the enemy, or to encourage his own men by the belief of his presence everywhere, had accoutred several captains in the royal garb, the sword of Douglas rendered this honour fatal to many. At length the standard of the king, fluttering high in air, recalled Douglas to the spot, and little heeding the flight of arrows, which rattled on his armour like hail, nor yet the chosen band who were appointed to guard the banner, he and his associate Hotspur pierced their way thither. Henry was thrice unhorsed, and would have been either taken or slain, had not his men kept back, with desperate valour, the furious onset of the assailants, while the Earl of March forced him from the scene of danger. Yet still they sought him, and having beaten down his banner, and slain its bearer, with many of the faithful band appointed to guard the royal flag, victory began to swerve in favour of the rebel army. But in one moment a loud voice sounded far and wide over the dreadful scene. It proclaimed, “Hotspur is dead,” and with this thrilling cry ended the conflict of the day. Douglas, was taken prisoner, and there fell, on either side, near two thousand three hundred gentlemen, beside six thousand private men.

Owen Glendour heard the shout which proclaimed that his friend had fallen, for he witnessed the battle from the top of the lofty oak. He had marched with a large army to within a mile of Shrewsbury, and if the king had not proceeded thither with great haste, he would have joined his friend Hotspur. A broad and rapid river lay in front, and he pressed on to cross, if possible, before the beaming helmets, which he saw advancing rapidly over the plain country, could reach the town. But a heavy rain had fallen, and the water was exceedingly high; the ford at Shelton was, in consequence, impassable, and the bridge at Shrewsbury was strongly guarded. Owen Glendour therefore halted. He saw with grief the forces of Hotspur drawn up in order of battle immediately before him, for he knew that he could lend no assistance, and, when the next morning dawned, the armies had joined fight.

Owen Glendour then climbed the large oak; of which the topmost branches afforded a full view of the battle-field and the surrounding country. He saw from thence the furious onset, and heard the shock of battle; horses and men contending, and the dreadful shouts which, reverberating from the hollows of the hills, sounded like distant thunder; he heard, too, the one loud voice which told that his friend had fallen.

Owen Glendour returned to his castle in the Vale of Glyndwrdwey: it was situated amid the wildest and the sternest scenery, beside the torrent’s roar, and surrounded with all the magnificence of rock and fell. There did he soon assemble to his standard those ardent spirits who preferred death to slavery, and who vowed that the blue hills and the pleasant valleys of their fathers’ land should never be subjected to the yoke of a usurper. Daring adventures, and strange escapes by flood and field, marked his onward course. The English regarded him with superstitious dread; the Welch looked to him as one possessed of more than mortal power; and thus during fifteen years did he resist the aggressions of a monarch, whose prowess had long been known, the efforts too of a chivalrous nobility, and a martial people.

Yet Glendour was not designed by nature for a life of daring hardihood and of murderous intent. He was amiable and beloved in private life, and, his parents having designed him for the bar, he was qualifying himself as an able lawyer, when intelligence was brought that Henry IV. had granted a large portion of his paternal acres to Lord Grey of Rhuthin, that treacherous nobleman who had long sought to prejudice the king against him. Owen Glendour closed the book that lay before him; he declared that a descendant of the Princes of Powys was not to be so treated; and having drawn his sword from out the scabbard, he sheathed it not again while life remained. A fierce battle, on the banks of the Evyrnwy, made Lord Grey his prisoner, and the payment of a thousand marks, with the marriage of his daughter to that nobleman, alone obtained for him his liberty.

It was noted that disasters of various kinds attended the expeditions of King Henry into Wales. The natives of the country attributed them to the magic powers of Owen Glendour, whom they believed able to control the elements, and who, when his men grew faint and weary, and he himself wished for a short respite from the toils of war, could pour upon the bands of Henry the fury of the northern storm. It was said that he could loose the secret springs of the wild cataract, and cause it to send forth such a flood of water, that the moors and valleys, through which the invader had to pass, would seem like an inland sea. Some believed that he could even summon the loud thunders from their secret cell, and cause the forked lightning to strike terror into the stoutest heart; that in one moment he could not only bring to his assistance a wild storm from off the hills, but that, when the beautiful glens and woods appeared in all their loveliness and repose, and every hill was lighted up with a glorious sunbeam, he could suddenly obscure them with the darkest shades of night. Thus men thought; they saw not, in the strange and terrible calamities which continually opposed the progress of King Henry, a continuation of events which had attended him since the death of Richard. Richard had been the friend and benefactor of Glendour; he had fought for him while living, and now that he was gone, he sought not only to revenge his death, but to preserve his native land from the usurpations of a foreign yoke. He performed, in consequence, such feats of valour, bore up beneath the pressure of such heavy trials, and devised such masterly schemes to circumvent the devices of the enemy, as his countrymen believed could neither be planned nor achieved by mortal mind or arm. They knew not the strength and the enthusiasm which injury and oppression will produce in either. Excited, therefore, to the highest pitch of feeling, Owen inspired his men with much of his own energy: aided by them, he foiled the power of the wary and martial Henry, and drove him ignominiously from the field. At the head of his choicest armies, the English king had often to retreat before a handful of men, whose chief had been unused to a military life; and though Glendour and his adherents were reduced at times to take shelter in caves and fastnesses, known only to themselves, they emerged again, and fell with terrible fury on the English, in moments, too, when they thought themselves most secure from their aggressions.

Had Glendour lived in peaceful times, he would have been a poet of no ordinary rank. The bard Rhys Coch, was his cotemporary and chosen associate in his days of woes and wanderings. A stone still remains near Bethgellert, where the bard used to sit and pour forth the melody of his harp to his own inspiring lays. There, tradition says, Glendour would sit beside him in that beloved retreat, where around them was all the stern majesty of nature, in her darkest, her loneliest, her loveliest moods. The rapid Gwinan prattled near them over her rocky bed, laving on one side green meadows, filled with cowslips and cuckoo-flowers, where cattle feed, and skirted with groves of oak, and ash, and birch; on the other, its bright waters race beside a wild and heathy tract of moorland, which slopes upward to the very base of Snowdon, that king of mountains, whose awful brow is often hidden in the clouds.

The bard, too, had suffered much, and had fled from cave to cave, and from hill to hill, pursued by the English forces, who sought to still those bold and pathetic strains—those deep laments, which aroused his countrymen to fresh deeds of valour against their oppressors. His enemies were not permitted to accomplish their designs. He continually eluded their pursuit, and died at length in peace, amid his beloved haunts of Bethgellert.

Here then stands the ancient tree, though reft of its former greatness. More than four hundred years have elapsed since Owen Glendour climbed its lofty trunk, and surveyed the battle-field of Tewksbury; since his bannered hosts were stationed round, and he heard the shout which told him that his friend had fallen.From this tree, also, might be heard, in ancient times, the sound of the workman’s hammer, for King Henry appointed that a chapel should be built, and two priests placed within it, to pray both morning and evening for the souls of those who had been slain. Rapidly the chapel rose, for men thought that they did good service to their Maker when they wrought in such holy work; and the chapel, being enlarged in after years, became a handsome parish church. The condition of the time-worn tree, and of the church are somewhat similar. The tree is grown so hollow that it seems to stand on little more than a circle of bark, yet life still lingers, green leaves appear in the spring season, and acorns are gathered from its branches in the autumn. Great part of the once stately building has likewise fallen to decay; ivy grows luxuriantly over the broken walls, and sparrows build their nests among the matted branches; but Divine worship is to this day still carried on in the part that remains entire. The country people and neighbouring gentry meet there; they bear the name of Englishmen, though blending in themselves varied and dissimilar races—the ancient Briton and the Roman, the Dane, the Saxon, and the Norman. But how widely different in their habits and their manners from those who assisted in building the ancient chapel, and those who assembled within its walls when the chapel was completed!

Yew-Trees of Skelldale.