8 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



Garden is still one of the charms of London, but only 

 the old gateway of the Priory of St. John in Clerken- 

 well remains, and the garden, with all its historical 

 associations, has long since vanished. It was in a small 

 upper room, " next the garden in the Hospital of St. 

 John of Jerusalem in England, without the bars of 

 West Smythfield," that Henry VII., in the first year 

 of his reign, gave the Great Seal to John Morton, 

 Bishop of Ely, and appointed him Chancellor, and he 

 " carried the seal with him " to his house, Ely Place, 

 hard by.^ These small references show the picturesque 

 side of such events, the gardens constantly being the 

 background of the scenes. 



It is only one more of the regrettable results of the 

 barbarous way in which the Reformation was carried out 

 in England, that the gardens shared the fate of the 

 stately buildings round whose sheltering walls they 

 flourished. It is not easy to picture the desolation of 

 those days : the unkept, uncared-for garden, trodden 

 under foot, makes the forlorn aspect of the despoiled 

 monasteries more pathetic. 



London was a city of palaces in Plantagenet times, 

 and the great nobles had their gardens near or surround- 

 ing their castles. Bayard's Castle, facing the river for 

 centuries, had its gardens, and there were spacious 

 gardens within the precincts of the Tower when it was 

 the chief royal residence in London, and outside the 

 walls of the City fine dwellings and large gardens were 

 clustered together. Among the most famous in the 

 thirteenth century was the Earl of Lincoln's, purchased 

 from the Dominicans, when they outgrew their demesne 

 in Holborn, and migrated to the riverside, where their 

 1 Close Roll, Henry VII. 



