

ESSEX AND EARLY BOTANISTS 123 



seems doubtful ; but the plant flourishes in several 

 localities in the county, and may be seen in some 

 abundance in a small spinney not far from the village 

 of Roxwell, once the residence of the poet Quarles, 

 and where he prepared his Emblems for publication. 



Some thirty years after the death of Dr. Turner 

 Gerarde's famous Herbal appeared. The first edition, 

 dedicated to his " singular good Lord and Master" 

 Sir William Cecil, Lord High Treasurer of England, 

 was published in 1597, and it is to this quaint and 

 curious book that the botanist must go in order to 

 discover with the few exceptions already mentioned 

 the earliest localities of Essex plants. This en- 

 gaging work, which is "the parent of all succeeding 

 books which bear the name of herbal," will ever be 

 of peculiar interest to the botanist. Though in the 

 main a translation of Dodonaeus's Pemptades, it yet 

 contains a large amount of original matter, such as the 

 localities of rare plants, and many quaint allusions to 

 places and persons now of considerable antiquarian 

 interest. Gerarde, who occupied the position of 

 " herbarist " to James I., had a large physic-garden at 

 Holborn, one of the first of its kind in England, where 

 he cultivated, we are told, " near eleven hundred sorts 

 of plants " ; he also appears to have made frequent 

 expeditions into various parts of the country, on what 

 were then termed " simpling-voyages," with a view of 

 enlarging his knowledge of British plants, and of 

 marking the localities of the rarer species. 



Now Essex being nigh unto Holborn, this good 

 " Master in Chirurgerie," in company with other 

 friends " skillful in herbary," made many excursions 

 into the county. From the entries scattered up and 

 down the sixteen hundred folio pages of his Herbal 



