Oswestry is stated to have been the site of a castle built in 1149 by Magod, one of the princes of Powys. It then passed, by marriage, into the hands of a Norman lord of Cher; and it was here that in 1164 Henry II. assembled the army with which he marched to Chirk, in his vain attempt to subjugate the principality. In 1277 Edward I. surrounded the town by a wall which was a mile in circumference, had four gates, and was further defended by a moat. In the thirteenth century both castle and town were destroyed by fire. Many scenes of our martial history pass before the mind's eye of the visitor to Oswestry. In 1403, Owen Glyndyr (or Glendower) marched from thence towards Shrewsbury at the head of twelve thousand men, intending there to unite his forces to those of the Earl of Northumberland and his son. Tradition, however, alleges that by the time he reached Shelton, two miles from Shrewsbury, he found the royal forces were engaged in battle with their enemy. The story of that eventful day is one out of which to make a mental picture as one contemplates the approach to Shrewsbury. Hotspur and his father had encamped on the previous night at a place called Berwick, nearly opposite Shelton, and they calculated on being joined there by Glendyr. They sorely needed his aid; the rebel army numbered only fourteen thousand men, while that of the king numbered twenty-six thousand. In vain they waited; in vain a few unsuccessful attempts were made at a compromise, and then at a place still known as Battlefield, and in a field yet called 'the King's Croft,' the battle was joined. Before, however, the first blow was struck, Harry Hotspur called for his sword, and was informed by his attendant that he had left it at Berwick. The iron warrior, who was about cheerfully to encounter a force greatly outnumbering his own, turned pale. 'I perceive,' he said, 'that my plough is drawing its last furrow, for a wizard told me that I should perish at Berwick, which I vainly interpreted of that town in the north.' The Welsh chieftain climbed into the tree and beheld the conflict; at what period of the engagement is not told; but as he concluded the king would be victorious, he quietly came down again, and leaving Percy to defeat and death, marched back to his mountains. The old oak yet remains; but for the forty years during which we have known it, it has been in a failing condition. One by one its great boughs have yielded to the storm, or broken beneath their own weight; and it is now propped up with crutches and bound together with iron hoops. Probably in another half-century the place which has known it for at least six centuries will know it no more.