ITS HISTORY. 19 



bright-red rose grown in Surrey for the London 

 druggists, and still cultivated extensively in the 

 environs of Provins, to make their celebrated 

 conserve of roses, is, according to a French 

 author,* the red rose, the ancient badge of the 

 House of Lancaster. ' Somewhere about the year 

 1277, a son of the King of England, Count 

 Egmond, who had taken the title of Comte de 

 Champagne, was sent by the King of France to 

 Provins, with troops, to avenge the murder of the 

 mayor of the city, who had been assassinated in 

 some tumult. He remained at Provins for a 

 considerable period ; and on his return to England 

 he took for his device the red rose of Provins, 

 which Thibaut, Comte de Brie, had brought from 

 Syria, on his return from a crusade some years 

 before.' The white rose of the House of York 

 was probably our very old semi-double variety of 

 Rosa alba. 



Our Provins rose is associated with recollec- 

 tions of the unfortunate House of Bourbon ; for 

 when Marie- Antoinette came to France in 1770 

 to espouse Louis XVI. , she passed through Nancy, 

 a city about 160 miles to the south-east of 

 Provins, the inhabitants of which presented her 

 with a bed strewed with leaves of the Provins 

 rose. Alas ! her bed was twenty years afterwards 

 more abundantly strewed with thorns by the 



* L' Ancien Proyins, par Opoix. 

 c 2 



