After the restoration, the king reviewing the place, no doubt, with very different emotions to what he had when he was in it, gathered fome of the acorns, and fet them in St. James's Park, and used to water them himself. If we may judge of the value the king put upon his prefervation, and royal perfon, it was worth 200l. per annum; and one should think a king, if worth any thing, worth that: for fo much he gave to William Pendril (whose family grave and monument is yet remaining at the east-end of the church-yard of St. Giles's in the Fields, in Middlesex) and it now remains in the family. Over the door of the inclofure is a Latin infcription, cut in marble, which is rendered into English thus: "Bafil and Jane Fitzherbert, recommended to pofterity this most fortunate tree, which the all-gracious, and almighty God, by whom kings reign, ordained here to grow, to be the afylum of the moft potent prince, King Charles II. and have begirt it with a wall, as well in perpetual remembrance of fo great an event, as a teftimony of their firm allegiance to kings. "The oak belov'd by Jove." To the WONDERFUL MUSEUM. The following Epitaph which I took ff a Tomb-flone in the Burying-Ground in Spring-Path oppofite Port-Royal in Jamaica, is an Inftance of a miraculous Deliverance. HERE ERE lieth the body of Lewis Galdy, Efq. who died the 22d of September, 1709, aged 80. He was born at Montpellier in France, which place he left for his religion, and fettled in this ifland; where, in the great earthquake in 1692, he was fwallowed up, and by the great providence of God, by a fecond fhock was thrown out into the sea, where he continued fwimming till he was taken up by a boat, and miraculously preferved. He afterwards lived in great repu tation, and univerfally lamented. SAM. |