HISTORY OF ESSEX BOTANY. 6l 



1 hough we now generally look on the apple orchards of the 

 western counties as the main home of the misseltoe, there is still 

 plenty in Essex, growing on a variety of trees, including, 

 according to Mr. Gibson and his correspondents, the apple, elm, 

 lime, sloe, willow and thorn ; but, so far as 1 know, no longer 

 on the oak in this county. Yet in 1771 Warner records it,'5 not 

 only on apple, pear, ash, lime, willow and elm, but 



" On an oak, between Woodford Row and The Bald Faced Stag, near the 

 the Ten Mile Stone : and on several trees, many of them oaks, between 

 Lougbton and Mr. Conyers's, Copped Hall." 



This suggests ideas connecting the Forest not only with the 

 Romano - British period of Ambresbury Banks — but with the 

 pre-Christian days of Druidism. 



Having returned to England at the accession of Elizabeth in 

 1558, Turner was reinstated in his Deanery, but in 1564 was 

 suspended for nonconformity, in declining to adopt the prescribed 

 ecclesiastical vestments. He then took up his residence in 

 London, where he died in 1568, and was buried in St. Olave's, 

 Hart Street. 



In accordance with my intention of restricting this history to 

 the workers in Essex Botany, I need do no more than mention 

 Thomas Newton, a native of Presbury, Cheshire, who, after 

 practising as a surgeon, became a schoolmaster at Little Ilford, 

 and, in 1583, Rector of that parish. In 1587 he published An 

 Herball to the Bible, translated from the Latin of the Dutch 

 physician, Levinus Lemnius. Newton died at Little Ilford in 

 May, 1607, and was buried in Ilford Church. (Pulteney, 

 Sketches of the Progress of Botany, i., 108; Britten and Boulger, 

 Biographical Index, 127.) 



Essex Botany, however, owes far more than to Turner to 

 the better known Elizabethan worthy, John Gerard. Here 

 again Mr. B. D. Jackson's labours, in the work already quoted, 

 render any detailed biography from me superfluous. John 

 Gerard was born at Nantwich, in Cheshire, in 1545, was educated 

 in a neighbouring school, was drawn at an early age to the study 

 of medicine, and travelled, possibly as surgeon on a merchant 

 vessel, in Demark, Sweden, Poland, and Russia. In 1577 he 

 had charge of the gardens of Lord Burleigh, in the Strand, and 

 at Theobalds in Hertfordshire, and either at this time cr 

 subsequently he seems to have practised as a Barber-Surgeon. 



15 Plantce Woodfordienses. London, Printed for the Author. 1771. 8vo. 



