A certain eloquent Scotch essayist, who endeavors to apologize for the conduct of Algernon Sidney, and other worthies of his party, in accepting the bribes of France by impugning the integrity of the English character, and goes so far as to express a doubt whether there were an honest man to be met with at that epoch, save Andrew Marvel, appears to have forgotten the glorious instances of stainless honesty and virtue afforded by the Penderel brothers, and other noble men of all degrees, who proved themselves superior to all temptations that could be offered. When England had, by general acclamation, called home her banished king, the five Shropshire brothers were summoned to attend him at Whitehall, on Wednesday, the 13th of June, 1661, when his majesty was pleased to acknowledge their faithful services, and signified his intention of notifying his gratitude by a suitable reward, inquiring if they had any particular favor to ask. They only asked an exemption from the penal laws, with liberty for themselves and their descendants to enjoy the free exercise of their religion, being members of the Romish church. This request was granted, and their names, together with those of their kinswoman Mrs. Yates, Mr. Huddleston, and Mr. Whitgreave, were especially exempted in the statute from the pains and penalties of recusancy. King Charles granted a moderate pension to them and their descendants for ever. "The Oak," says a contemporary, whose pleasant little chronicle of Boscobel was published in 1660, the year of the restoration, "is now properly called 'The Royal Oake of Boscobel,' nor will it lose that name while it continues a tree: and since his majesty's happy restoration that those mysteries have been revealed, hundreds of people for many miles round, have flocked to see the famous Boscobel, which, as you have heard, had once the honor to be the palace of his sacred majesty, but chiefly to behold the Royal Oake, which has been deprived of all its young boughs by the visitors of it, who keep them in memory of his majesty's happy preservation." Charles himself subsequently made a pilgrimage to the scene of his past troubles: when he visited the Royal Oak, he was observed to gather a handful of the acorns. Some of these he planted with his own hand in Saint James's Park. A promising young tree, which sprang from one of these acorns, which Charles had planted in the queen's pleasure garden, within sight of his bed-chamber, in Saint James's Palace, and was accustomed to water and tend with great pleasure, was called the King's Royal Oak, and had become an object of interest to the people as a relic of that popular sovereign; but was destroyed by Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, as soon as her husband obtained the grant of the ground on which it stood, for the site of Marlborough House. This was regarded as an outrage on popular feeling.