The Genei'al Aspect of the Country. 297 



that we owe to Gerarde a new departure in the annals of 

 English gardening, and an intimacy with Elizabethan plants 

 which neither Peacham's Emblems nor any later writer's works 

 could afford us. He knew everybody, and corresponded with 

 both foreigners and countrymen, benefiting therefrom so as 

 not only to procure fresh exotics, but to foster scarce indige- 

 nous plants in his suburban garden. 



Beautiful though the Elizabethan manor houses and their 

 surroundings undoubtedly were, their interior economy was not 

 so inviting. Indeed, before this period it had been positively 

 disgraceful. Uneducated people never take kindly to sanitary 

 improvements. Even the clever Harrison ^ railed against the 

 introduction of oak timbers and chimneys. He preferred the 

 old willow-built hovels, and alleged that the ancient oaken men 

 had not only become willow, but a great many altogether 

 straw. The smoke, he said, used to harden both the man and 

 his house timbers, preserving the former from the hands of the 

 quack.2 Up to the later Tudor period the yeomanry lived in 

 timbered houses, whose walls were formed of wattled plaster ; 

 they slept on straw pallets, with chaff bolsters, covered with 

 coarse sheeting; their servants slept on straw with no covering 

 at all. They ate their meals from wooden trenchers, and ladled 

 their pottage into their mouths with wooden spoons. The clay 

 floors were strewn with rushes which only served to conceal an 

 ancient collection of beer, grease, bones, and everything nasty. 

 Up to 1526 even the king's scullions, who went naked or in 

 vile garments, and lay about the kitchens night and day on 

 the ground close to the lire, were very offensive. Erasmus 

 ascribes the "sweating sickness" which constantly visited 

 England to the " incommodious houses, the filthiness of the 

 streets, and the sluttishness within doors." There is then no 

 wonder that Wolsey, when he went to Westminster Hall, was 

 wont to conceal a sponge saturated with essences in the skin 

 of an orange, " into the which he smelt to avoid the pestilent 

 odours from the suitors." ^ 



' Harrison, Description of England, i. 212, col. 1 (written about 1560). 

 2 The Babees Book, p. Ixv., edit. F. J. Furnivall, Early Engl. Text Soc, 

 1SG8. =^ Id. Ibid., p. Ixvi. 



