272 Ashmolean Museum, 



beth ; and, in the reign of Charles the First, in 1629, bore the title of the 

 king's gardener. He was a man of extraordinary curiosity, and was the 

 first who in this country made any considerable collection of the subjects 

 of natural history. His son, of the same name, went to Virginia, and 

 imported many new plants from thence. His museum, called Tradescant's 

 Ark, attracted the curiosity of the age, and was much frequented by the 

 great, by whose means it was also considerably enlarged, as appears by the 

 list of his benefactors, printed at the end of his Museum Tradescantianum ; 

 amongst whom, after the names of the king and queen, are found those of 

 many of the first nobility, the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, Arch- 

 bishop Laud, the Earls of Salsbury and Carlisle. 



" In what year the elder Tradescant died is uncertain, though it appears 

 most probably to have happened in 1638. 



" The son inherited his collection, and bequeathed it, by a deed of gift, to 

 Elias Ashmole, who lodged in Tradescant's house. It afterwards becoming 

 a part of the Ashmolean Museum, the name of Tradescant was sunk. John 

 Tradescant, the son, died in 1662. His widow erected a monument to the 

 family in Lambeth churchyard, which, having been much injured by time, 

 was repaired by a public subscription in 1773. The quaint epitaph in- 

 scribed on it is as follows (the date is 1662) : — 



' Know, stranger, ere thou pass, beneath this stone 

 Lie John Tradescant, grandsire, father, son ; 

 The last died in his spring ; the other two 

 Liv'd till they had travell'd art and nature thro', 

 As by their choice collections may appear, 

 Of what is rare in land, in sea, in air ; 

 Whilst they (as Homer's Iliad in a nut) 

 A world of wonders in one closet shut : 

 These famous antiquarians, that had been 

 Both gardeners to the rose and lily queen, 

 Transplanted now themselves, sleep here ; and when 

 Angels shall with their trumpets waken men, 

 And fire shall purge the world, these hence shall rise, 

 And change their garden for a Paradise.' 



" Ashmole, amongst his various pursuits, had at one time studied botany, 

 which first, probably, led him to form an intimacy with the Tradescants, 

 at whose house he is said to have lodged ; and to this circumstance he 

 was probably indebted for the gift of their collection. 



" He was the son of a saddler in Litchfield, and was born, as he states 

 with his accustomed punctuality, at near half an hour after three o'clock 

 in the morning, on the 23d of May, 1617. He was successively a solicitor 

 in chancery, an attorney in the Common Pleas, a gentleman in the ord- 

 nance, when Oxford was garrisoned by the royal army*, an exciseman, a 

 comptroller of the ordnance, a freemason, astrologer, botanist, chemist, 

 anatomist, physician, and, though last not least, a very learned herald. 



" Heraldry seems to have been his fort, and astrology his foible. It is 

 difficult to reconcile the acquision of so much dry business-like knowledge 

 with the taste for so much visionary nonsense. 



" Ashmole enriched the Tradescant collection (which consisted chiefly 

 of the skins and bones of animals) with a collection of medals, coins, and 

 gold chains, which had been presented to him by the Elector of Branden- 

 burg and others ; and with manuscripts and printed books on heraldry 



* At this time he also officiated as a clergyman, having, as he states, 

 christened Mr. Fox's son. 



