Willcox 332 Windmill Farm 106 Wintour, Rev. G. 249 Witches 121 Wolfe’s Barn 45 Wolfe, Family of 53 Wood, William 33 Wootton 194 Wrekin 67 Wyley 107 Yate 268 Yate, Joseph 32 York, Thos. 132 APPENDIX. KING CHARLES’S OAK. It is still a matter of dispute whether the oak tree still standing is the original tree which gave shelter to the king, or one grown from an acorn planted where the old tree stood. An old work says:— “King Charles II. took refuge in the Boscobel Oak in September, 1651. The tidings of his majesty’s restoration, and of his entry into London on the 29th of May, 1660, reached this county early in June. ‘Hundreds of people’ now flocked to see the oak; and such was the destruction of ‘its young boughs’ during the summer that within six months after the mischief commenced the proprietor, Mr. Fitzherbert, judiciously pruned it ‘for its preservation’, and fenced it with a ‘high’ paling. (Blount’s ‘Boscobel’, printed in 1660.) Thirty years afterwards it is recorded by the Rev. G. Plaxton, rector of Donington, that the paling had been superseded—he does not say in what year—by a handsome brick wall, built also at the charge of Mr. Fitzherbert (Basil and Jane), which brings us to the year 1690. Twenty-one years later, in 1711, Dr. Stukeley visited the oak; and again, thirteen years afterwards, Dr. Stukeley says—‘The tree is now inclosed with a brick wall,’ bringing the safe custody of the tree down to 1724. Sixty-three years later we learn from the old inscription that Basil and Eliza Fitzherbert rebuilt the old wall of their ancestors, recording that ‘Felicissimam Arborem Muro cinctam posteris commendarunt Basilins et Jana Fitzherbert,’ bringing us to the year 1787. This wall was eight or nine feet high, and injuriously close to the tree; and after thirty years, that is in the year 1817, the present palisades were erected, freely admitting light and air to the hole, and affording a clear view of the whole tree, with the holes in it carefully covered to keep out the wet.”