“When the green tree, cut asunder in the midst and severed by the space of three furlongs, shall be grafted in again and shall bring forth flowers and fruit,--then at last may England hope to see the end of her sorrows.”[1] So closed the prophecy in which the dying king Eadward the Confessor foretold the destiny in store for his country after his departure. His words, mocked at by one of the listeners, incomprehensible to all, found an easy interpretation a hundred years later. The green tree of the West-Saxon monarchy had fallen beneath Duke William’s battle-axe; three alien reigns had parted its surviving branch from the stem; the marriage of Henry I. with a princess of the old English bl…
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