XIV. 



INTRODUCTION. 



lined the former, while vine and ivy sheltered 

 the latter. But though churchmen were the first 

 writers on garden craft and its greatest exponents, 

 yet palace and castle had their gardens within, 

 and their orchards without, the fortified area. 

 \Ve even get hints that, in the twelfth century, 

 suburban Londoners had gardens around their houses 

 " pleasing to the sight," and that the citizens of such 

 towns as Carlisle carried on horticulture beyond the 

 walls. And if our scanty information is almost 

 limited to Royal gardens, that is no proof that the 

 sovereign greatly excelled his wealthy subjects, but 

 arises from the fact that the Crown's mediaeval 

 accounts have largely survived, whereas those of 

 subjects have very rarely done so. Thus we have 



sprinkled meads, such as the tapestry-makers of the 

 day used so constantly for their foregrounds, are his 

 joy, gaily powdered as they are with his favourite 

 daisy, " emperice and floure of floures alle," type 

 of womanly truth and purity, as the lily is of 

 her fairness and beauty. His eye is alive to every 

 beautiful garden scene, such as a goldfinch hopping 

 about on a blossoming medlar tree. But he is a 

 practical gardener also ; knows the uses of herbs 

 and the modes of apple storing, and sees the 

 advantage of a double over a single rose, since it lasts 

 longer in bloom. He gives us no detailed description 

 of garden arrangement, but speaks of his little arbour 

 with fresh turf benches, where he devised to make 

 his couch and watch the opening of the flowers to the 



1 1 (7 1/ /I (!/</ ( (.1 /r/l t\i/<-/' 



t . ... .-,.._ - -" :'..-;- 



- nigggfeisr. . 



^a^att^as^^B-. 



"tf, ^-.J j . -- - , * J. *-,,. . t *! 



Henry III.'s orders for the development of the 

 Woodstock garden, where his grandfather had 

 lowered Rosamond in the midst of a labyrinth ; 

 we know what it cost him for the levelling and 

 rolling of the garden area at Westminster; and 

 we hear of walls, good and high, and berberies, 

 becoming and honourable, being constructed. That 

 gardens in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were 

 frequent and the love of them widespread and deeply 

 felt, we know from our poets. Even Longland, the 

 gloomy man of the people, could sing of orchards 

 and herbers ; while the breath of spring, the scent of 

 flowers, the song of birds fill with " revel and 

 solaas " the heart of Geoffrey Chaucer, the gay 

 gentleman and bon vivant, the soldier and courtier, 

 the traveller and Member of Parliament. Flower- 



rising sun. This was his favourite time, and he 

 chooses it as the apt moment, and a garden as the 

 apt place, for a lover's first vision of his lady. 



Kmclic, that fairer was to scene 

 Than is the lilie on hire stalke tfrcne, 



rises early one May morning, for who would be a 

 sluggard in May ! 



And in the garden at the sonnc upristc 

 She walketh up and down, and a* hire lisle 

 Sclic yadcrelh floures, party whyte and reedi-, 

 To make a sotil gerland for hire heede. 



The garden nestles at the foot of the great 

 tower, which is the chief dungeon of the castle where 

 the knight Palamon is in durance, and as he looks 

 out of his window, he gets glimpses, through the 

 green boughs of which the garden is full, of the girl 



