EARLY rUDOR GARDENS. 89 



throughout the land. Now we have reached the years of the 

 Reformation, and so far as this great movement affected 

 gardens, we must glance at its progress. The work of the 

 visitation and then the suppression of the monasteries was 

 begun in 1534. The greater ones were first attacked, and the 

 lesser ones followed. The work was carried on rapidly ; in the 

 northern district in 1536, eighty-eight monasteries were reported 

 on in a fortnight ;'^ 202 were suppressed or surrendered between 

 1538-40. At the time of the Dissolution there were over seven 

 hundred religious houses scattered all over the kingdom. We 

 cannot say that each of these possessed a garden, as some were 

 in towns, in spaces too confined, and some Orders did not devote 

 any of their attention to agriculture. The Benedictines and 

 Cistercians predominated in numbers, and they were, for the 

 most part, large landowners, farmers of their own land, and 

 skilled in horticulture. But of the gardens which surrounded 

 Fountains, Jervaulx, or Netley, Glastonbury, St. Albans, or 

 Whitby, and many another fine abbey and stately priory, nothing 

 remains. In some instances mention is made of the gardens 

 by the officers of the Crown, who carried out the visitations 

 and appropriated everything of value. At Oxford, they regretted 

 that the Austin Friars had felled all their trees, but the 

 Franciscans had " good lands, woods, and a pretty garden." 

 The Cistercians of Waverley were very poor at the time, and 

 the Abbot was granted leave "to survey his husbandry where- 

 upon consisteth the wealth of his monastery." Few traces of 

 old monastery gardens are left. At Westminster there was 

 a fine garden, celebrated for its damson trees, and a garden 

 by the Infirmary, where the sick monks could take the air. 

 Part of this remains in the garden belonging to the College, but 

 some portion of it was built over at the beginning of the last 

 century, when the new College buildings were erected. When 

 Elizabeth came to the throne, she sent for Abbot Feckenham, who 

 had been reinstated in the Abbey of Westminster during Mary's 

 reign. He was planting elms in his garden when he received the 

 summons, and finished his work before he would attend on the 



* Gasquet, Henry VIII. and Eng. Mon. 



