74 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 



But we might infer from a passage in an 

 early sixteenth-century poem, the Debate and 

 Strife between Summer and Winter, which is, 

 however, little more than a translation from 

 a French piece with a similar title, that the 

 arbour was coming into use in the modern 

 sense of a summer-house in the time of 

 Henry VIII. For Summer, in this metrical 

 interlocution, says that it is better to be in 

 a green arbour (hsrber\ where one may 

 embrace and kiss one's mistress, than to be 

 at the fire, chafing one's feet. This notice 

 of the thing is fortified by the curious item 

 in the Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VII. 

 under April 8th, 1503 : " For making of an 

 arbour at Baynardes Castell, 55-." which 

 certainly imports the construction of an in- 

 expensive summer-house, rather than the 

 more elaborate contrivance described in the 

 Squire of Low Degree. 



That the arbour had in the commence- 

 ment or first quarter of the sixteenth century 

 acquired its actual character, I find a further 

 proof, if one were needful, in the story 

 which forms No. 64 of A Hundred Merry 



