EARLY TUDOR GARDENS 77 



Dissolution there were over seven hundred religious houses 

 scattered all over the kingdom. We cannot say that each of 

 these possessed a garden, as some were in towns, in spaces too 

 confined, and some Orders did not devote any of their attention 

 to agriculture. The Benedictines and Cistercians predominated 

 in numbers, and they were, for the most part, large landowners, 

 farmers of their own land, and skilled in horticulture. But 

 of the gardens which surrounded Fountains, Jervaulx, or 

 Netley, Glastonbury, St. Albans, or Whitby, and many another 

 fine abbey and stately priory, nothing remains. In some 

 instances mention is made of the gardens by the officers of the 

 Crown, who carried out the visitations and appropriated 

 everything of value. At Oxford, they regretted that the Austin 

 Friars had felled all their trees, but the Franciscans had 

 " good lands, woods, and a pretty garden." The Cistercians 

 of Waverley were very poor at the time, and the Abbot was 

 granted leave " to survey his husbandry whereupon consisteth 

 the wealth of his monastery." Few traces of old monastery 

 gardens are left. At Westminster there was a fine garden, 

 celebrated for its damson trees, and a garden by the Infirmary 

 where the sick monks could take the air. Part of this remains 

 in the garden belonging to the College, but some portion of it 

 was built over at the beginning of the last century, when the 

 new College buildings were erected. When Elizabeth came 

 to the throne, she sent for Abbot Feckenham, who had been 

 reinstated in the Abbey of Westminster during Mary's reign. 

 He was planting elms in his garden in the part now known as 

 Dean's Yard, when he received the summons, and finished his 

 work before he would attend on the Queen. The Abbot ended 

 his days in captivity, and his abbey was soon after transformed 

 into a College, but some of his elm trees, or their successors, 

 remain to this day. 



That which has most often survived destruction, to find a 

 place in a modern garden, on the site of some old cloister, is 

 the fish-pond, although, strictly speaking, it did not always 

 form part of a monastery garden. But it was found useful, 

 and has frequently been spared even by the landscape gardener, 

 who would rather alter than destroy it. At Cirencester, the 

 present parish church is a fine building, but the abbey church 



