The History of the Rose. 19 



Margottin, Leveque, Nabonnand and there are many others is sufficient to estab- 

 lish this. We have recently received many new Roses from Germany and America, 

 some of high quality, but the majority have, as yet, hardly realised English 

 expectations. 



But let us trace the history of the Rose in our own land. It is again matter of 

 surprise to me that the Rose should not have been more extensively cultivated in 

 England at an earlier date, when it is considered that it must have been brought pro- 

 minently before the eyes of our forefathers in the wars of the Houses of York and 

 Lancaster, or, as they are often termed, the Wars of the Roses. But perhaps this was 

 the very cause of its unpopularity. It might have been the remembrance of those 

 sanguinary struggles which, casting a halo around this emblem of innocence and 

 purity, made our forefathers shrink instinctively from cherishing a flower that recalled 

 to mind scenes or tales of carnage and of woe whose leaves were once saturated with 

 the blood of England's bravest sons. 



It may not be considered out of place to give an account here of the origin of the 

 Red Rose in the arms of the House of Lancaster. About 1277, Guillaume Pentecote, 

 Mayor of Provins, was assassinated in a tumult ; and the King of France sent Count 

 Egmond, son of the King of England, who had assumed the title of Comte de 

 Champagne, to that city to avenge his death. After staying some time there, he 

 returned to England, and took for his device the Red Rose, which Thibaut, Comte de 

 Brie, and de Champagne had brought from Syria some years before on his return 

 from the Crusades. This Count Egmond was the head of the House of Lancaster, 

 which preserved this flower in their arms. (L'Ancien Provins, par Opoix). 



The Damask Rose being the wild kind of Syria, it would hence appear that it was 

 this gave rise to the Red Rose of the Lancastrians, and not the French Rose, as 

 asserted by some. The White Rose was probably assumed by the Yorkists in contra- 

 distinction to the other. 



Our old English manuscripts on Gardening are principally transcripts of the Greek 

 and Roman authors, sometimes embellished by tradition and superstition. About the 

 middle of the fifteenth century the learning of Greece and Rome became more 

 generally accessible by the invention of printing, and the writings of Theophrastus, 

 Dioscorides, Pliny, and others, were placed within the reach of a larger number of 

 students who worked for the instruction and amusement of their fellow men. 



Dr William Turner, the earliest reliable English writer on our subject, remarks in 

 the second part of his " Herbal" (1568), "The Rose is so well known that it nedeth 

 no description ; Dioscorides maketh mention but of one kinde of Rose, but Mesue 

 maketh two kindes, that is, of the whyte and rede ; but since Mesue's tyme there 

 are found divers other kinds, as Damaske Roses, Incarnation Roses, Muske Roses, 

 with certain other kindes, whereof is no mention in any olde writer." Then follow 

 extracts from Dioscorides and Mesue, which are medical rather than horticultural. 



