Darwin, who by his doctrine of evolution and heterodox reading of accepted phenomena caused many flutterings of episcopal skirts, uprooted much placid belief, and gave many a simple soul anxious times, was born in that great house, the Mount, on Frankwell hill-top, so long ago as 1809. The house stands in its own grounds, surrounded by high walls, just the same now as then; only the toll-gate, spoken of in Telford’s reports as “Dr. Darwin’s”—although Dr. Darwin had nothing to do with it and probably wished it at the devil, with the shouts of “Gate!” all night long—is gone. Here the old houses begin to thin out, and beyond, to Shelton, one mile and three-quarters from the town, suburban villas line the way. [Illustration: SHELTON OAK.] At Shelton Gate, where the road branches to Welshpool, still stands that battered and riven monarch, Shelton Oak, just within the garden-wall of one of these modern villas, but readily to be inspected. “Glyndwr’s Oak” it is often named, from the persistent legend that Owain Glyndwr from its branches watched his ally, Harry Hotspur, being defeated at the Battle of Shrewsbury, on that fatal day, July 21st, 1403. But, unfortunately for the credibility of that legend, the battle was fought three miles away, at a spot not visible from here, and Glyndwr was very far distant on that particular day. This has been proved again and again, and it saves something of Glyndwr’s reputation to accord him a decent _alibi_; but the myth is immortal. It has brought no good to the old oak, for, what with the relic-hunters who have hacked pieces away, and their fellow-sinners who have carved their own names on its giant trunk, it is in sorry case. Age, of course, is responsible for its hollow body and dead limbs, but the kindly ivy wraps it fondly round and hides many a scar. The trunk has a girth of 45 feet, a measurement that goes far to prove an age going a hundred years or more back beyond Shrewsbury Fight, and that _if_ Glyndwr had been here he could have, indeed, climbed its branches. Had he desired to see the battle, he should have taken his courage in his hands and gone down the road to Shrewsbury, beyond, to get a good view. But there were those at Shrewsbury who could have desired nothing better, and Glyndwr, _if_ again he had been here, would perhaps have remembered too keenly what they did down there to the rebel Prince Dafydd when they caught him, more than a hundred years before. What they did was to draw him on a hurdle, hang and quarter him, and divide the pieces among the clamorous towns. Greedy London got his head, and, crowning it with a tinsel crown, spiked it upon Temple Bar, or London Bridge, or some similarly prominent place. Passing the outlying houses of Bicton village, the road comes to Montford Bridge, where we take our last look at the Severn from Telford’s sturdy red sandstone bridge.