So sang Edward Coxe, the poet of the Heath, and friend and neighbour of Erskine, who, because they impeded his view, had had a mind to have them cut down, but spared them for the sake of their associations. ‘So late as the spring of 1872 these trees were standing. In April or May of that year the writer of a letter to the Board of Works, which appeared in the _Hampstead Express_, called their attention to a bit of unappropriated land near the Nine Elms on the Spaniards Road, and suggested that, as the Board had got possession of Judges’ Walk, the Wildwood Avenue, the triangular piece of ground at the end of Holford Road, and the piece of ground where the band used to play, the Vestry should endeavour to get hold of this also.’ But soon after it was stated that the ground had been granted to Lord Mansfield, and the first thing that had been done was to cut down these trees, with which the name of his famous kinsman had been so charmingly connected. In my time the elms guarded the old seat, scarred with forgotten names and the initials of the unknown, around which they stood, ‘green sentinels,’ whispering in every breeze to those who knew the story of their youth gentle reminiscences of the men for whose sake the inhabitants of Hampstead and the conservators of the Heath would have given, we believe, ten times their value as timber to have had them retained.[141] The small bit of land on which they grew having been granted to Lord Mansfield, it is natural to suppose that, for the sake of their associations, he would have spared the trees had he known how sacred they were in the literary annals of Hampstead. [Illustration: _Fanny Burney._]