14 JOHN GOODYER 



Sir Thomas Bilson, whose father, the bishop, had recently 

 been buried in Westminster Abbey, he might well have 

 gone up to London on his master's business. A paper 

 that throws much lieht on this visit to London is one on 

 which he wrote out a list, dated the 24th and 25th 

 of March, of the more remarkable plants in the garden of 

 Mr. Coys of Stubbers, a place a few miles east of London 

 in Essex. On the same sheet of paper are a list of drugs 

 and two London addresses, ' de Laune in ye black friers ', 

 and ' Mr. Cole y* married Mr. Lobel's daughter in Lyne 

 Street'. This last is a most interesting note, because it 

 gives the correct spelling of a name which from the time 

 of Pulteney onwards has generally appeared in literature 

 as ' Coel '. James Cole was a London merchant, mentioned 

 by Johnson as exceedingly well experienced in the know- 

 ledge of simples. 



The fact of Goodyer's visiting James Cole at this time 

 would have a special significance. The eminent botanist 

 Mathias de L'Obel, Cole's distinguished father-in-law, who 

 had been living with him, had just died, leaving his 

 botanical writings to his son-in-law. Lobel, as he wrote 

 his name in this country, was the youngest of the triumvirate 

 of great Flemish botanists, Dodoens, Clusius, L'Obel. 

 He had brought to this country the learning of his master 

 Rondelet of Montpelier and the botanical illustrations of 

 that prince of printers, patron of botanists, Christof Plantin 

 of Antwerp ; he had made a special study of English 

 plants and during his last years had been engaged on 

 a new botanical work, the Illustrationes Stirpium. To 

 Goodyer the name of Lobel, like that of Gerard, was 

 probably a household word : he was known as the only 

 botanist in Britain on whose scientific accuracy a student 

 could rely. There is nothing more probable than that 

 Goodyer, learning of his death on 3rd March, would lose 

 no time in visiting Cole, and so get to hear of the 

 manuscripts, which later, after the death of their editor How, 

 did eventually come into his charge and were bequeathed 



