21 August—One-hundred-sixty-seven years ago today (that’s 21 August 1856, if your fingers are where they shouldn’t be), Connecticut’s venerable Charter Oak was done in by a nasty storm. The enormous white oak that had survived six or seven centuries of climate change, noble Indians (sorry, Native Americans or indigenous people), and evil Europeans, was blown down by a strong wind that, like property developers and woke culture cancellers, had no respect for historic monuments.

The great tree had been growing happily on what was then called Wyllys Hyll, not far from the city center. Wyllys Street is styll there. Tradition has it that Connecticut’s Royal Charter of 1662, in which King Charles II had granted the colony a degree of autonomy, was hidden in the tree’s hollow to preclude its confiscation by Sir Edmund Andros in 1687.

Charles, the libertine and liberal Merry Monarch, was too busy screwing around and begetting bastards to worry about the colonies. When he died in 1685, he was succeeded by his Roman Catholic younger, less libertine and liberal brother, James II. And James appointed Andros, a civil servant drudge in the colonies, to be governor of the consolidated Dominion of New England. Andros was determined to take firmer control of his new domain, so he went to each colony to personally confiscate the charters, presumably for the PR value of personal appearances.

Long story short, whatever may have been done with the Merry Monarch’s charter in the Connecticut colony, it formally surrendered its seals and ceased operation in October 1687. And on 29 December 1687, the dominion council formally and fully extended its laws over Connecticut, thus completing the assimilation of the New England colonies.

Here are some pictures of the Charter Oak, standing and otherwise, as well as the rather brief article in The Hartford Courant about the prostrate tree. Bet you didn’t know that oak trees had prostrates. Only maples . . .