The Old Oak
By W. M. NEWMAN NE can grope back into the past by many routes, and those are safest which keep one's feet most firmly on the ground. Reasoning from the book may be right if the book itself is, and that one cannot know. The errors of past chroniclers are repeated, and gather size like snowballs as they roll on through the centuries. Only the firm foot and clear eye can keep one safe amid the avalanche of accumulated error.
On the edge of my uncle's farm grew in my young days a magnificent oak. It was hollow,' but happy, like a politician, and it reared its great branches to heaven- like a quadruple Laocoon, praying. Gay parties. tried to span its girth, and lively picnics laughed below. France's Oak they called it, and the cottages where the labourers lived were called France. I could never see why, till it transpired that when that eager gallant, young Edward III, sent round for his first subsidy, which I rather believe was scandalously misspent, the adjacent landowner was one Francis. It was called Francis' Oak, so presently the cottages came to be called France When I grew up, and began to have one-inch ordnance maps, and to study Victoria County Histories in London libraries, it became evident that the oak was no common tree. For the boundaries of three parishes ran to it. Two hundreds ended at it, and indeed two different kingdoms, East Saxony and East Anglia, Londonland and Norwichland. Elsewhere the boundaries of Essex and Suffolk ran along the marshes of the Stour ; here alone they left the river-bed and met at a point, a growing point, under a shower of acorns. It was a kingdom-0*, apparently the only one between London and Cromer. Obviously it WAS here that the Druid gave judgement, though I don't suppose that it was here that Boadicea came to consult him. I have aliiays put her home somewhat further north. r•- Presently I learned that in one of the parishes that ran to the oak there had hien found equipment, dating from the later Bronze and early Iron Ages, supposed to be time-balls, though I believe their purpose is disputed. At any rate the Druid had left some of his tackle behind him. There was also a large burial-mound never yet opened. Thus the last boundary of Old St. Paul's ended at a sacred grove, and one of Dean Inge's predecessors had discoursed thereunder, no doubt with an anticipatory touch of Plotinus. This, however, is merely a beginning. For the farm was called Copse Hall, and.it wasn't a hall, only a farm. But there was an enclosure with water in it at what seemed to be the western corner of the sacred grove. Here there probably was a hall of some early king or thane. Here we begin to wake up. For when is a grove a copse ? When it is cut down, and sprouts again.
Now in 653 Essex was converted to Christianity, and began to abandon its old British shrines, and set up churches, at first small and few, and only near the royal homes. But in 665 pestilence fell. South Essex, including London, kept the new faith, because its king did, while the king of North Essex returned to the old creed and its high places. But the overlord, Wulfere of Mercia, rebuked him, perhaps with some hint of dethronement, and sent Bishop Jaruman to re-baptise the erring monarch, and induce him to re-open the churches and forsake or destroy the old shrines. Perhaps we may guess that the destruction only occurred at the outset, when penitence burned most fiercely, and that later, as Jaruman advanced further into the country, abandonments and promises sufficed. For it seems clear that most of the sacred groves in Essex were not destroyed. Within two miles of the oak there is one. The reason this grove went was probably that, being a king- dom boundary and a kingdom shrine, it was specially notable, and since Jaruman approached from the north it was the first one he came to. Hewing it down must have been a royal feat, for, unless I am much mistaken, it covered ten acres. No wonder the lesser thanes begged to be excused.
But the vanished grove lays its power on the wayfarer today. Willy-nilly you must bow to it, or at least pull your driving wheel round for a full ninety degrees. The London bus, bowling home at twilight, has to make a right-angle still for the grove that is no longer there. The highway, coming up from the south-east, past a village famed in comedy, could have run straight to the little town at which it is aiming. Instead, it veers left towards the sacred grove, and then, having reached it, turns sharply through a right- angle. I used to think that vehicular routes did not go through sacred groves, nor do they often, but I have found that cart-tracks sometimes. do.
The road makes its right-angle just on the hill-top. Before Council houses came, and hedges were cut down, it commanded an excellent view, one more proof of our ancestors' sanity. Here must have been the playstow, and even now the highway broadens out con- siderably, embracing a grass verge, rare in this part of the country. In these days of The Golden Bough and ethnological psycho- analysis we know all about ritual, or like to think so, and it teased me to find out what these folk of two or three thousand years ago did under the eastern lee of their grove. Obviously a sacrifice. You can see where the altar stood to this day, and there beside it is the remnant of the sacred pool, and the Hebrew ritual of Tabernacles can easily be carried Out. But when did they do all this ? At first midsummer seemed likely. Then it occurred to me to look at the footpaths, and especially the extraordinary county'boundary leading to the playstow. Sure enough, they point to the setting and rising sun of early May.
Obviously they spent the night up there. I suppose a lamb, or perhaps a ram with torches on As horns, was led in at sunset from the point where, the sun had fallen, killed and sacrificed, and that at dawn a yoke of kine, escorted by chariots, came in along the route from the old burial-mound, where lay the first and earliest of the priests, the bringer of the faith. So was explained the queer name of the adjacent. field, France Building Common ; France Beltane Common.
But the fire is long since b ack, and the old kingdom oak has been chopped down and sold timber, and nothing remains save the bole-base flush with the gro nd. When these things go, we lose our own roots. ..r
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