CHAPTER II 



THE GARDEN IX ENGLAND 



In his Essay on Gardening Horace Walpole 

 says that we are '' apt to think that Sir VVilHam 

 Temple and King William introduced the 

 formal style, but by the description of Lord 

 Burleigh's gardens at Theobalds, and of those 

 at Nonsuch, we find that the magnificent, 

 though false taste was known here as early as 

 the reigns of Henry VIII. and his daughter." 

 This is of a piece with Walpole's generalisations 

 on Gothic architecture. He seems to have 

 supposed that it was possible to import an 

 exotic style wholesale into the midst of a people 

 with a strong indigenous tradition. As a 

 matter of fact, the advance in garden design 

 in the sixteenth century was, like English 

 architecture of the time, the result of the graft- 

 ing of ideas brought back from Italy on the 

 vigorous stock of mediaeval art, and the fully- 

 developed formal garden of the seventeenth 



