LOBEL AND COLE 247 



Herball the plants were arranged in alphabetical order. In Lobel 

 we find the first striving after a natural classification, and for the 

 first time the straight-veined plants, now called Monocotyledons, 

 were partly separated from those with net-veined leaves (Dicoty- 

 ledons). 



Five years later we find him back in his native country and in 

 close alliance with Plantin, printing his Stirphim or Plantartnn 

 Historia illustrated with 1,486 wood blocks, to which the De Suc- 

 cedaneis of Rondelet was added. And six years later he moved 

 to Delft to superintend a Dutch translation of his work, the Krtiyd- 

 boeck printed there in 1581. 



At the age of fifty-four he was again in England, superintending 

 a Botanical Garden which had been established by Lord Zouch 

 at Hackney. In this he was probably in friendly rivalry with 

 Gerard, who, seven years his junior, was cultivating eleven hundred 

 kinds of plants in his garden in Holborn. Lobel in fact prefaced 

 the 1596 catalogue of Gerard's garden with a printed letter of 

 eulogy, but a note in his own hand in the copy in the British 

 Museum (N.H.), ' haec esse falsissima M. Lobel,' is distinctly 

 unkind. Dr. Daydon Jackson tells me that this is the only 

 specimen of Lobel's handwriting that was known to him before he 

 saw the Goodyer manuscripts. 



About 1606 Lobel was honoured by being appointed King's 

 Botanist to James I, but feeling the weight of his sixty-eight years, 

 retired, it is believed, to live with his son-in-law James Cole at 

 Highgate. The will of James Cole,^ a document of great interest, 

 presents a graphic picture of the wealth of Lobel's son-in-law, who 

 evidently maintained intimate relations with the Low Countries to 

 his dying day. He was engaged probably in the spinning, and 

 certainly in the importation of silk into this country. He left his 

 house at Highgate to his wife Louisa, then to Abraham Bush, his 

 sister's son. His house in Lyme St., held on lease from the 

 Carpenters' Company, he left to his nephews Henry and Peter Cole, 

 and Henry was also to have a ' gilte cuppard with the arms of 

 Antwerpe graven therein ' and his chain of gold. To Abr. Bush 



^ Will (P. C. C. Barrington 42) written on six leaves of paper, dated 31 Dec. 

 1627, with a codicil witnessed by Eliz. van de Bossche and Louise Cool, proved 

 May 1628. It is to be hoped that one day a more complete account of Lobel's 

 relations will be forthcoming. In addition to James Cole, he mentions another 

 son-in-law Ludovic Myres, an authority on pharmacy, Abraham Hoguebat, 

 pharmacist, son of his second wife, and Michael de Lannoy ' affinis meus '. His 

 second wife may have been related to the Hugobert mentioned by Goodyer, 

 cf. p. 59. Was de Lannoy synonymous with de Laune? 



