196 FOTHERGILL'S BOTANIC GARDEN CHAP. 



often in dispute : many thought it injurious to health ; 

 others deemed it a fashionable and costly luxury. Jonas 

 Hanway had inveighed against tea in 1757, chiefly on 

 economic grounds : we should ruin ourselves, he declared, 

 by sending so much silver to China to purchase this 

 " flatulent liquor," instead of infusing our own herbs. 

 Tea was in Fothergill's opinion too largely drunk, although 

 he seems to have persuaded John Wesley to resume it, 

 after the latter had denounced its use for twelve years, 

 drinking hot water and sugar instead. 1 The plant and 

 its virtues were the theme of a classical memoir by 

 Lettsom in 1772. Many efforts had been made to bring 

 a live plant to Europe. An East Indian director, Captain 

 Goff, had two fine trees in his garden at Enfield, one of 

 which bore annually a single white flower ; they were 

 seen by Collinson in 1742, but afterwards died. Linnaeus 

 had a live but not a flowering plant at Upsala in 1762. 

 A tree was raised from seed in England by John Ellis 

 in 1768, after many efforts : he presented it to the Kew 

 garden. Others were grown after this, one of which at 

 Zion House flowered in October 1771. 



It was a cherished desire of Fothergill's to obtain a 

 living tea-plant from China. At length in 1769 some 

 plants arrived for him, and the doctor's good-fortune 

 came to the ears of royalty. The Queen's lady wrote to 

 Dr. W. Hunter : " Mrs Schwellenberg's Compliments to 

 Doctor Hunter and she heard yersterday that Doctr. 

 Forthergyll had got several Tea Trees Come from the 

 Indieas in the Last Ships and the Queen wishes that 

 Doctr. Hunter Could make Interest with Doctr. Forther- 

 gyll to get Her only one of them for Her Majestys Own 

 Garden." z It was long, however, before the plant could 



1 Hfanway], A Journal, and Essay on Tea ; W. H. Fitchett, Wesley and 

 his Century, p. 493 ; Foth., Works, i. 231. In 1775 the consumption, of tea 

 in England was 5,648,000 Ib. annually, or nearly i Ib. per head of the population. 

 The increase was but slow until the duty was reduced in the middle of last 

 century. In 1914 about 6} Ib. per head was consumed, at an average price 

 of about is. 4d. per Ib. 



3 MS. Letter, Sept. n, 1769, Hunter-Baillie MSS. i. 118, Roy. Coll. Surg. 

 London. Mrs. Schwellenberg was one of the two elderly duennas whom 

 Queen Charlotte had been allowed to bring with her from Mecklenburg- 

 Strelitz : a strict and interfering person, unpopular in England and often 

 caricatured. A. D. Greenwood, Lives of the Hanoverian Queens of England. 



