84 KEW GARDENS 



gospeller, among whose works figure titles like 

 The Spiritual Nosegay, The Hunting of the 

 Romish Wolf, A Preservative or Treacle against 

 the Poison of Pelagius. Under Henry VIII. 

 such a writer found the air of the Continent 

 more wholesome than that of Hampton Court 

 or Smithfield ; and he spent some time in 

 Germany, whence, along with Protestant 

 theology, he brought home a collection of 

 foreign plants. When it was safe for him to 

 be back in England, he doubled the parts 

 of chaplain and physician to the Protector 

 Somerset, who built Syon House on the site 

 of the convent that for him proved unlucky 

 church plunder ; this may account for his 

 chaplain's garden across the river. But Turner 

 did not fall with his patron, rising to be Dean 

 of Wells, though again for a time, under Mary, 

 he had to extend his knowledge of foreign 

 gardens. He is best remembered as author of 

 a herbal which marks the planting in England 

 of scientific botany ; nor would this study seem 

 so far aloof from his theological interests, if we 

 consider a commonplace of our forefathers, thus 

 versified by Cowley 



God the first garden made, and the first city, Cain. 



