ON CROCUSES 127 



thousands of cultivators of Crocuses who have lost sight 

 of the association of the flower with the saffron of com- 

 merce. It is desirable to recall the fact, because it adds 

 greatly to the interest of the plant, and brings us, 

 through it, into touch with the old writers. How many 

 people are aware that Saffron Walden, in Essex, takes 

 its name from the introduction of the Crocus there ? It 

 is the fact, however. Sir Thomas Smith (1514-1577), 

 Secretary of State to Edward VI., and author of De 

 Republica Anglorum, was a native of that place ; and 

 he is credited with having introduced the plant with the 

 object of founding a new industry for the poor. (The 

 reader may safely ignore published statements that 

 Smith introduced saffron into Essex during the reign 

 of Edward III., as that was some two hundred years 

 before his time.) 



Sir Thomas Smith may have been the first to start 

 the cultivation of Crocuses for saffron - making in 

 Essex, but it is hardly likely that he was the first to 

 do so in Great Britain. The reader who is interested in 

 the matter may read Hakluyt's references to saffron in 

 the "English Voiages," vol.ii., written only five years after 

 Sir Thomas Smith's death. He says : u Saffron groweth 

 fifty miles from Tripoli, in Syria, on a high hyll, called 

 in those parts gasian, so as there you may learn at that 

 part of Tripoli the value of the ground and the good- 

 nesse of it, and the places of the vent. But it is said 

 that from that hyll there passeth yerely of that commodity 

 fifteen moiles laden ... If a vent might be found, 

 men would in Essex (about Saffron Walden) and in 

 Cambridgeshire, revive the trade for the benefit of the 

 setting of the poore on worke. So would they do in 

 Herefordshire by Wales, where the best of all England 

 is, in which the soile yields the wild Saffron commonly, 



