INTRODUCTION. 



wandering about the alleys. Chaucer evidently placed 

 his imaginary characters in a well-known spot, and 

 some castle he knew well was in his mind when he 

 wrote; for these lines, however little they may apply, 

 as they were intended, to Athens in Theseus's time, 

 quite describe Windsor in Chaucer's own day. Five 

 years after Chaucer's death in 1400, the first James 

 who became King of Scotland was captured by the 

 English off Flamborough Head, and for long years 

 the "great tower that was so thick and strong" was 

 his prison. Thence, even as Palamon did, he could 

 look down on the garden below, and as there were no 

 fair Emelies to distract his attention, he had leisure 

 to notice the garden itself in greater detail, and 

 describe it in a well-known poem. Here, as in 

 Chaucer, " fast by the Tower's wall " was a fair 



led. Lying within the defensive area, they were 

 high walled for practical safety, rather than for 

 aesthetic seclusion. Their size, too, was circum- 

 scribed, and their formality imperfect, for they had 

 to follow the irregular outline of the castle walls and 

 the varying levels of the castle site. As the fifteenth 

 century closed, however, the undefended manor 

 house developed in both quality and quantity. Even 

 the great and wealthy began to abandon the strate- 

 gically placed and strongly fortified castle, with its 

 restrained area and gloomy rooms, in favour of the 

 spacious amplitude and cheerful outlook of the wide- 

 spreading, many-windowed mansion, set in the 

 fertile and sheltered, timbered and watered plain ; 

 and they surrounded their new homes with low-walled 

 courts and gardens, wherein large size and complete 



LOOKING DOWN THE T CANAL AT WESTBURY COURT. 



garden so fully furnished with trees and pleached 

 hawthorn hedges that you could wander in its alleys 

 unseen, while its corners were furnished with 

 arbours, trellised and set with junipers. Add 

 fountains and water conduits, and it is much the 

 same garden as is pictured in a Flemish fifteenth 

 century copy of the " Romaunt of the Rose " among 

 the Harleian manuscripts. 



It is with his fairest heroine that Chaucer 

 connects his chief garden scene, and there is no doubt 

 that the pinnacle on which chivalry and mariolatry 

 had placed woman at least in theory and in song 

 during the later Middle Ages, had helped to create and 

 beautify these castle gardens, forming, as they did, 

 one of the few pleasant outlets to the somewhat dull 

 and cooped up life which ladies then generally 



formality could prevail. For, together with quieter 

 times (giving a sense that the King's peace was a 

 dangerous thing to break, and that subjects, however 

 powerful, could not with impunity take the law into 

 their own hands) came also a greater knowledge of and 

 esteem for the arts of civilisation, and a fuller national 

 purse for their realisation. The England of the 

 Tudors was wealthier and more secure than that of the 

 Plantagenets, and it was also more informed, more in 

 touch with that new learning which had seized upon 

 the whole mass of classic attainment as a foundation 

 whereon to establish further discovery and progress. 

 In such development, gardening had its share. 

 Leading Englishmen knew what classic gardens 

 had been and what Italian and French gardens 

 were becoming, and they became copyists. If 



