KITCHEN GARDENING UNDER ELIZABETH AND JAMES I. 155 



the other names are such as "the claret wine grape," "the 

 Rhenish wine grape." Platt gives several recipes for keeping 

 grapes in pots covered with sand, the bunch hung up with the 

 end of the stalk stuck in an apple ; or he says they can be 

 preserved on the vine by covering the bunches with oiled paper. 

 He constantly refers to the vineyard, and how to "order" and 

 plant it. The way he classes the orchard and vineyard together 

 shows the latter was by no means uncommon : " Master Pointer 

 keepeth conies in his orchard, onely to keepe downe the grasse 

 low ; . . . also in vineyards the use is to turne up the ground 

 with a shallow plough, as often as any grasse offereth to spring, 

 but I think the prevention of grass in orchard and vineyard is 

 much better, if it were not too costly." He maintains that there 

 is no reason why English wine should not be as good as that on 

 the Continent. He attributes the ill-success in England to the 

 bad way the vines were pruned, and he accuses " the extreme 

 negligence and blockish ignorance of our people, who do most 

 unjustly lay their wrongful accusations upon the soil, whereas the 

 greatest, if not the whole fault, justly may be removed upon 

 themselves." 



The vineyards attached to the royal gardens at Windsor 

 and Westminster were still flourishing. In 1618 fish-ponds 

 were made in the "vine garden " at Westminster, "for the king's 

 cormorants, ospreys and otters."* At Oatlands, in Surrey, 

 there also appears to have been a vineyard, as payments occur in 

 1619 for "planting of new and rare fruits, flowers, herbs and 

 trees," in the King's garden there, and " for dressing and keeping 

 the vines." t The first Earl of Salisbury planted a vineyard at 

 Hatfield, on the north bank of the River Lea, on a piece of 

 ground sloping to the south, hedged in with privet and sweet 

 briar. Hatfield had been given to Cecil by James I., in 1607, in 

 exchange for Theobalds, to which the King took a great fancy. 

 This was the second time that Hatfield had changed hands in this 

 way. The manor belonged to the Abbey of Ely before the 

 Conquest, and after Ely became a bishopric, the bishops made 

 their residence at Hatfield, until Henry the Eighth's time. This 



* Issue Rolls of the Exchequer, James I. By Devon, 1836. 

 f Ibid., July 23, 1619. 



