GARDENING UNDER WILLIAM AND MARY 207 



Leeds, though then but a village in comparison with the 

 Leeds of to-day, is thus described by Celia Fiennes : " A large 

 town, severall large streetes, cleane and well pitch'd, and good 

 houses all built of stone. Some have good gardens and steps 

 up to their houses, and walls before them." Of Bedford she 

 writes :" It is an old building washed by the river Ouse ... its 

 stored with very good fhsh, and those which have gardens on its 

 brinke keepes sort of , . . Baskets which keeps the ffish by 

 chaines to the sides of the Banks in each man's garden. It 

 (the river) runs by a ground which is made into a fine bowling 

 green . . . well kept with seates and summer houses in it." At 

 Newcastle she finds — " This country all about is full of this 

 Coale ; y* sulphur of it taints y^ aire and it smells strongly to 

 strangers ... its a noble town . . . and most resembles London 

 of any place in England. . . . There is a pleasant bowling- 

 green, a Little walk out of the town w'*' a Large gravel walk 

 round it, w'^ two Rows of trees on each side. . . . There is a 

 pretty Garden, by y^ side a shady walk, its a sort of spring 

 garden where the Gentlemen and Ladyes walke in the evening ; 

 — there is a green house in the garden." 



Spring Gardens, which she here refers to, were chosen as 

 the favourite resort of fashion in London. They had been in 

 existence since the first quarter of the century, and originally 

 were part of the royal park of St. James, as appears from 

 entries in the Exchequer Rolls : 



1 61 7. " digging planting etc: of roses in the Spring garden in (St. 

 James') Park . . . Gardeners, women weeders : in the spring garden . . . 

 Pheasants and wild fowl in the spring garden." 



By the middle of the century, however, it was a pubhc garden, 

 of which the street now bearing its name marks the site. 



In London many old gardens were already disappearing, and 

 Celia Fiennes writes thus in her diary : " There was formerly 

 in y^ Citty severall houses of y^ Noblemens w'^ Large gardens 

 and out houses and great attendances, but of Late are pulled 

 down, and built into streetes and squares and called by y^ 

 names of y^ noblemen ; — and this practise by almost all even 

 just to y^ Court, excepting one or two. Northumberland and 

 Bedford House, Lord Montagues, . . . and Whitehall with its 



