i8o A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 



to be no epoch in his Hfe that is unaccounted for, during which 

 time he could have been in England.^ No exact year has ever 

 been assigned for Le Notre's stay in England, though some have 

 thought that the " French Gardeners " who were " supervised " 

 in 1661 included him. In various works on London or on gar- 

 dening published more than a hundred years later, it is simply 

 recorded that Le Notre laid out St. James's Park and the other 

 places which are attributed to him, but none of them give 

 any contemporary authority for the statement. One writer 

 even makes it appear that he paid two visits, one in the reign 

 of Charles II., the other while WiUiam III. was on the throne. 

 There is a colossal MS. Biography in the British Museum 

 by Joseph Gulston, who died in 1786, of " Foreigners who 

 have visited England,"^ and it gives a short notice of the life 

 of Le Notre, in which it states " he was in England in the 

 reign of King Wilham. The gardens at Cashiobury, in Hert- 

 fordshire, the seat of the Earl of Essex, were planted and laid 

 out by Le Notre in the reign of Charles II. . . . He planted 

 St. James and Greenwich Park, no great monuments of his 

 invention." 



With regard to Cassiobury, it is known that Lord Essex's 

 gardener was Rose, who was sent by him to study at Versailles, 

 and that he was succeeded by Moses Cook, who is said, 

 together with the Earl, to have laid out the grounds.^ That 

 he was in England in the time of William III. is most unlikely, 

 as appears from MSS. letters which will be quoted, dated 

 1698. Le Notre was born in 1613, and died in September, 

 1700, and was buried in Paris, and that he should have under- 

 taken a fatiguing journey at such an advanced age is most 

 improbable. If the visit ever took place, therefore, it was 

 in all probabihty in the reign of Charles II. If he was actually 

 directing the works in St. James's Park, it must have been early 



^ I am assured this is the case by M. Edouard Andre. He writes : 

 " Je suis de plus en plus persuade que le Notre ne se rendit pas en 

 Angleterrc aucun document n'ayant pu me permettre de fixer I'^poque 

 a laquelle cc voyage aurait pu avoir lieu." 



* MS. Biographical Dictionary of Foreigners who have Resided in 

 or Visited England from the Earliest Times down to the Year 1777, by 

 Joseph Gulston {oh. 1786). 



3 See p. 165. 



