According to this authority, the first Baron of Beaurepaire had pitched his tent under a fair oak-tree that stood prope rivum, near a brook.

His grandson built a square tower hard by, and dug a moat that enclosed both tree and tower, and received the waters of the brook aforesaid.
At this time the tree seems only to have been remarked for its height.
But, a century and a half before the monk wrote, it had become famous in all the district for its girth, and in the monk's own day had ceased to grow; but not begun to decay.

The mutilated arm I have mentioned was once a long sturdy bough, worn smooth as velvet in one part from a curious cause: it ran about as high above the ground as a full-sized horse, and the knights and squires used to be forever vaulting upon it, the former in armor; the monk, when a boy, had seen them do it a thousand times.

This bough broke in two, A.D.

1617: but the mutilated limb was still called the knights' bough, nobody knew why.