was spared in the war of the American Revolution, when there was distress for firewood, the British officer, Simcoe, having placed a sentinel beneath it for protection.  It was prostrated by the wind on the night of Saturday, March 3, 1810.  It was of gigantic size, and the circles around its heart indicated an age of nearly three centuries.  A piece of it was sent to the Penn mansion at Stoke Poges, in England, where it is properly commemorated.  A marble monument, with suitable inscription was “placed by the Penn Society A.D. 1827 to mark the site of the Great Elm Tree.”

    [1] Mr. Ellis was a Unitarian clergyman, long pastor of a church
    at Charlestown, Mass.

    [2] Kensington is now a part of Philadelphia, being the northeastern
    section.  It lies on the Delaware River, about two miles distant
    from the City Hall, and is a center of the ship-building industry.

THE CHARTER OAK AFFAIR IN CONNECTICUT

(1682)

BY ALEXANDER JOHNSTON[1]

In December, 1686, the Hartford authorities were called upon to measure their strength again with their old antagonist.  Andros had landed at Boston, commissioned as governor of all New England, and bent on abrogating the charters.  Following Dudley’s lead, he wrote to Treat, suggesting that by this time the trial of the writs had certainly gone against the colony; and that the authorities would do much to commend the colony to his majesty’s good pleasure by entering a formal surrender of the charter.  The colony authorities were possibly as well versed in the law of the case as Andros, and they took good care to do nothing of the sort; and, as the event showed, they thus saved the charter.

The assembly met as usual in October, 1687; but their records show that they were in profound doubt and distress.  Andros was with them, accompanied by some sixty regular soldiers, to enforce his demand for the charter.  It is certain that he did not get it, tho the records, as usual, are cautious enough to give no reason why.  Tradition is responsible for the story of the charter oak.  The assembly had met the royal governor in the meeting-house; the demand for the charter had been made; and the assembly had exhausted the resources of language to show to Andros how dear it was to them, and how impossible it was to give it up.  Andros was immovable; he had watched that charter with longing eyes from the banks of the Hudson, and he had no intention of giving up his object now that the king had put him in power on the banks of the Connecticut.

Toward evening the case had become desperate.  The little democracy was at last driven into a corner, where its old policy seemed no longer available; it must resist openly, or make a formal surrender of its charter.  Just as the lights were lighted, the legal authorities yielded so far as to order the precious document to be brought in and laid on the table before the eyes of Andros.  Then came a little more debate.  Suddenly the lights were blown out; Captain Wadsworth, of Hartford, carried off the charter, and hid it in a hollow oak-tree on the estate of the Wyllyses, just across the “riveret;” and when the lights were relighted the colony was no longer able to comply with Andros’s demand for a surrender.