58 THE OLD ENGLISH HERBALS 



in the woodcuts and the colophon. The title is " A boke of 

 the | propreties of Herbes called an her- | ball, whereunto is 

 added the tyme y* | herbes, floures and Sedes shold | be gathered 

 to be kept the whole, ye- | re, with the vertue of ye Herbes whe | 

 they are stylled. Al- 1 so a generall rule of all ma- 1 ner of Herbes 

 drawen | out of an auncyent | booke of Phisyck | by W. C." 

 The woodcut in the first edition is three " Tudor " roses in a 

 double circle with a crown over one of the roses and across the 

 riband " Kyge of floures." In the second edition the woodcut 

 is a quaint little representation of a lady seated in a garden. 

 One man standing behind her is holding her and another is 

 walking towards her. The three figures are near a wall, on 

 the other side of which several men are apparently conversing. 

 Who W. C. was is uncertain. In the Dictionary of National 

 Biography William Copland is said to be both the author and 

 the printer of the book, but in many catalogues (notably in 

 that of the British Museum) Walter Gary figures as the author. 

 In a lengthy account of the Carys in Notes and Queries (March 29, 

 1913) Mr. A. L. Humphreys disposes conclusively of the sup- 

 position that W. C. can stand for Walter Gary. 



" A Boke of the Properties of Herbes bears on the title-page 

 the initials W. C., which may stand either for Copland or Cary. 

 This was one of several editions of Banckess Herbal, then very 

 popular, and although it may have been edited or promoted 

 in some way by a Walter Cary, it could not have been by the 

 one who wrote The Hammer for the Stone. The ' Herball ' 

 was issued somewhere about 1550 and various editions of it 

 exist, but all these appeared when the Walter Cary we are 

 considering was a child. There is, however, a connection 

 between the Carys and herbals, because it is well known that 

 Henry Lyte (1529-1607) of Lytes Cary was the famous translator 

 of Dodoens's Herball (1578), and he had a herbal garden at Lytes 

 Cary." 



Ames in his Typographical Antiquities describes the two 

 editions, which are identical, as though they were two different 



