CHAPTER VI 



JOHN PARKINSON, THE LAST OF THE GREAT ENGLISH HERBALISTS 



" For truly from all sorts of Herbes and Flowers we may draw matter at 

 all times not only to magnifie the Creator that hath given them such diversities 

 of formes sents and colours, that the most cunning Worke man cannot 

 imitate, and such vertues and properties, that although wee know many, 

 yet many more lye hidden and unknowne, but many good instructions also 

 to ourselves. That as many herbes and flowers with their fragrant sweet 

 smels doe comfort, and as it were revive the spirits and perfume a whole 

 house : even so such men as live vertuously, labouring to doe good and profit 

 the Church of God and the Commonwealth by their paines or penne, doe as it 

 were send forth a pleasing savour of sweet instructions, not only to that time 

 wherein they live, and are fresh, but being drye, withered and dead, cease not 

 in all after ages to doe as much or more." — John Parkinson, Paradisus, 1629. 



The last of the great English herbaUsts was John Parkinson, 

 the author of the famous Paradisus and also of the largest herbal 

 in the English language, Theatrum Botanictim, which was published 

 when the author was seventy-three. The latter was intended to 

 be a complete account of medicinal plants and was the author's 

 most important work, yet it is with the Paradisus (strictly not 

 a herbal, but a gardening book), that his name is popularly 

 associated. Of Parkinson himself we can learn very little. We 

 know only that he was born in 1567, probably in Nottinghamshire, 

 and that before 1616 he was practising as an apothecary and had 

 a garden in Long Acre " well stored with rarities."^ He was 

 appointed Apothecary to James I., and after the pubHcation of 

 his Paradisus in 1629 Charles I. bestowed on him the title of 

 Botanicus Regius Primarius. Amongst Parkinson's acquaintances 

 mentioned in his books were the learned Thomas Johnson, who 

 in 1633 emended and brought out a new edition of Gerard's 



^ See Theatrum Botanicum, p. 609. 

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