28 A HISTORY OF GARDEXIXG IX EXGLAXD. 



days when the place was a monastery, are on the same Hnes, 

 and have been kept as g:ardens ever since the days when the 

 monks enjoyed the soHtude of the cloister. The times we have 

 been considering were periods of constant strife, when the cloister 

 was the onh- place in which quiet and retirement could be found, 

 and to those who sought refuge within its walls, how dear must 

 those peaceful hours in their gardens have been. Perhaps some 

 inmate of Sopwell (a cell of St. Albans) was too fond of early 

 morning or late evening strolls in the garden, for Abbot Michael 

 (about 1338) made the rule that in winter "the garden-door be 

 not opened (for walking) before the hour of prime, or first hour 

 of devotion : — and in summer that the garden and the parlour 

 doors be not opened until the hour of none (? nine) in the 

 morning : — and to be always shut when the corfue rings." "^ 



Even the warlike Hospitaller Orders, the Templars and 

 Knights of St. John, contributed something towards the 

 improvement of Horticulture. In their wanderings in the East 

 during the Crusades, they may have remembered some garden 

 in England, and brought back plants for it, as, for example, 

 the splendid Oriental plane at Ribston, the planting of which 

 tradition attributes to the Templars. The surveys of the manors 

 all over the kingdom belonging to these Orders show the large 

 number of gardens of which they were possessed. At the 

 Chancery of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem in England, in 

 Clerkenwell, there was a garden in the time of Prior Philip 

 de Thame (in 1338) which was still existing in the reign of 

 Henr}- ^TI.,t and the Hospitallers had also a house with gardens 

 attached at Hampton, on the site of the present gardens of 

 Hampton Court. J In many ways through those troublous times 

 the monastic orders kept alive the science of Horticulture, and 

 spread the knowledge of it to those around them. Thus by 

 practising, as well as by preaching, they showed by their useful 

 lives that " to labour was to pray." 



* Rev. Peter Newcome, History of St. Alba)is, p. 468. 



t Close Roll, Henry VII., a.d. i486. 



X The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem and the Templars, also the 

 Cistercians, were exempted from payment of the litlie of the gardens. — Fuller, 

 C/ii/rcIi History. 



