or shot a stag under it; Charles II climbed in it; Wesley preached under it; it is the boundary of the parish; it was the boundary of the Abbeyland eight hundred years ago. But was it always, then, the greatest tree for miles round? Eight hundred years ago, may there not have stood another tree near where it stands to-day, as large or even larger? Surely the traditions of one great tree pass, when the tree falls, to its nearest great neighbour; but they pass so seldom, and so slowly, that the villagers hardly note the change. Three generations are born and die, and no villager living has seen the older greater oak; the younger, slighter tree succeeds to its glories. Tilford's oak to-day is called by all Tilford the King's Oak. On the old estate maps it is Novel's Oak; Novel, perhaps, was a yeoman farmer.
Cobbett made a curious mistake about the Tilford Oak. He and his son were riding through Tilford to Farnham on an autumn day in 1822:—
"We veered a little to the left after we came to Tilford, at which place on the Green we stopped to look at an oak tree, which, when I was a little boy, was but a very little tree, comparatively, and which is now, take it altogether, by far the finest tree that I ever saw in my life. The stem or shaft is short; that is to say, it is short before you come to the first limbs; but it is full thirty feet round, at about eight or ten feet from the ground. Out of the stem there come not less than fifteen or sixteen limbs, many of which are from five to ten feet round, and each of which would, in fact, be considered a decent stick of timber. I am not judge enough of timber to say anything about the quantity in the whole tree, but my son stepped the ground, and, as nearly as we could judge, the diameter of the extent of the branches was upwards of ninety feet, which would make a circumference of about three hundred feet. The tree is in full growth at this moment. There is a little hole in one of the limbs; but with that exception, there appears not the smallest sign of decay."
Visitors to Tilford can amuse themselves with trying over Cobbett's measurements. I could not reach to measure it ten feet from the ground; but at five feet I made its girth, in July, 1907, twenty-four feet nine inches. Probably it was not much less when Cobbett was a little boy. That independent, combative mind would not accept another's measurements, and if he remembered the tree as a little tree, then a little tree he was right in remembering. Since his day the signs of decay have set in; the oak is still superb, but a Jubilee sapling has been planted as a neighbour. Centuries hence the sapling, perhaps, will be the King's Oak again.
Tilford has another memory of green old age. William Beldham—"Silver Billy," because of his straw-coloured hair—lived most of his life in the village, where he kept an inn, and died in a cottage close under the oak. He was born at Wrecclesham on February 5, 1766, and died February 20, 1862, aged 96, having played thirty-five years' unbroken "great" cricket, as Lillywhite calls it—a finer name than first-class. Let John Nyren, most discerning of biographers, describe him:—
"William Beldham was a close-set, active man, standing about five feet eight inches and a-half. He had light-coloured hair, a fair complexion, and handsome as well as intelligent features. We used to call him 'Silver Billy.' No one within my recollection could stop a ball better, or make more brilliant hits all over the ground. Wherever the ball was bowled, there she was hit away, and in the most severe, venomous style. Besides this, he was so remarkably safe a player; he was safer than the Bank, for no mortal ever thought of doubting Beldham's stability. He received his instructions from a gingerbread baker at Farnham, of the name of Harry Hall. …
"He would get in at the balls, and hit them away in a gallant style; yet, in this single feat, I think I have seen him excelled; but when he could cut them at the point of the bat he was in his glory; and upon my life, their speed was as the speed of thought."
When were the great days of Surrey cricket? When Surrey could lend All England William Beldham, and still win—which they did twice—a Tilford man might answer. At all events, they were days in which cricketers lived to heroic ages. Abarrow, who lies at Hambledon over the Hampshire border, lived to be 88; James Aylward, "rather a bulky man for a cricketer," was buried close to Lord's ground, aged 86; Barber, who kept the Bat and Ball on Broad Halfpenny Down, was 71; William Fennex, at the age of 75, walked ninety miles in three days, carrying an umbrella, clothes, and three cricket bats (but he died soon after); William Lambert, almost the greatest of Surrey hitters, and the first player who ever made two centuries in the same match, died at 72; Lumpy Stevens, who won £100 for Lord Tankerville by hitting a feather once in four balls, and lies in Walton churchyard, was 84; John Small, who saved his life by playing his violin to a ferocious bull, to the "admiration and perfect satisfaction of the mischievous beast," lived to be 89; Tom Sueter—"I have never seen a handsomer man than Tom Sueter," wrote Nyren—lived to be 77; "Shock" White, with his bat as broad as his stumps, "a short and rather stoutly-made man," was buried at Reigate, aged 91; Yalden of Chertsey—he jumped over a fence and then on his back caught the ball—was 84; and John Wells, buried at Farnham, died at the age of 76. John Wells shared with "Silver Billy" a curious distinction. He was Beldham's brother-in-law, and an admiring publican at Wrecclesham put up a sign to draw thirsty wayfarers to Wrecclesham's best beer. It was "The Rendezvous of the Celebrated Cricketers, Beldham and Wells." If it were still standing, it would attract a pilgrimage.
CHAPTER IV
WAVERLEY ABBEY AND MOOR PARK
Jonathan Swift, Secretary.—A new Tale of a Tub.—Sir William Temple, Essayist.—Swift's "Stella."—A heart under a sundial.—Dorothy Osborne.—Mother Ludlam's Cave—Waverley Abbey.—Two tons of wine.—Comfort from Cromwell.—A Surrey Landmark.
Hardly two miles from Farnham, and reached by a road overarched by fine oaks, Moor Park stands on the banks of the Wey. A turn in the lane throws open a view of rich hayfields and pasture, with the river winding in and out under a ridge of oakwoods; much the same view, perhaps, as Swift first had of the fields and the Wey when he came to Moor Park from Ireland to copy out Sir William Temple's essays and to meet the dark-eyed waiting-maid who was to inspire one of the great passions of literary history.
Moor Park was Sir William Temple's new name for an old manor. The name under which he bought the house and land was Compton Hall, and he renamed it after a property in Hertfordshire. "The perfectest figure of a garden I ever saw, either at home or abroad, was that of Moor Park in Hertfordshire, when I knew it about thirty years ago," he wrote in his Essay on the Gardens of Epicures: and he laid out his own garden in the Dutch style which he admired. The garden has changed with the changing tastes of later owners; the house has fared a little better, though it was once metamorphosed into a Hydropathic Sanatorium—a new and dismal Tale of a Tub.
Moor Park, when Sir William Temple had it, saw the writing of many books. Sir William Temple himself, deeply hurt with his sovereign, James II, for striking his name off the Privy Council, had vowed to give up diplomacy and turn to gardening and writing for the rest of his life. His gardening may have been as good as his writing, and his essay on Gardening is, of all his writings, perhaps the best. But it was in his seclusion at Moor Park that he wrote, also, one of the most ridiculous papers that ever brought the fame of an essayist to a retired politician. His Essay Upon the Ancient and Modern Learning remains one of the most astonishing examples of the admirable writing down of trash