58 HOUSE, GARDEN, AND FIELD 



particulars likely to be interesting to unlearned persons 

 who are fond of gardens. I should like to show as well as 

 I can in a small space how English gardens before 1485, 

 which in many ways marks the advent of a new age, 

 differed from the gardens of our own time. 



We know very little of English gardens before the 

 thirteenth century, but the names which have been handed 

 down to us from that remote time tell us this at least, 

 that a number of useful plants of foreign origin had been 

 already introduced, and were popularly known by their 

 Latin names, altered more or less to suit the taste of 

 people who understood no Latin. The following are 

 specimens of a much longer list given by Earle. Febri- 

 fuga becomes Febrifuge, and finally Feverfew ; Lactuca, 

 Lactuce and Lettuce ; Napus, Naep and [Tur-]nip ; Petro- 

 selinum, Petersilie and Parsley. It seems fair to con- 

 clude that they who preserved the Latin names of many 

 useful plants knew Latin themselves, and had much to do 

 with gardens. Many of them were, no doubt, monks, who 

 during the dark ages were not only the gardeners, but the 

 physicians, architects, scribes and schoolmasters of the 

 time. 



Here and there a plan of some old abbey-grounds has 

 come down to us, on which is marked a herbary in the 

 midst of the cloister, an orchard or a vineyard. Herbary 

 has been driven out by the vernacular yard, which also 

 takes the form of gard and garth, and survives in garden, 

 orchard (wort-yard), vineyard, &c. 



Account-books of the fourteenth century and later tell 

 us some little, for instance of the use of pease in pottage, 

 or of beans and butter, of the grafting of hawthorn- 

 hedges, of the threshing-out of mustard-seed, of garlands 

 of roses and woodruff, of spades, rakes, hoes and garden- 

 rollers. 



Illuminated manuscripts now and then depict a walled 

 garden, divided into rectangular beds by narrow gravel 

 walks ; in them holy men are meditating, or children 



