22 ENGLISH BOTANY. 



Though the Rush has become a proverbial type of worthlessness, some of the plants 

 wc know are far from being as useless as popular sayings would infer. In ages long 

 before the luxury of carpets was known in England, the floors of houses were covered 

 with a much moi-e homely material. When William the Conqueror invested his 

 favourites with some of the Aylesbury lands, it was under the tenure of providing 

 " straw for his bedchamber ; three eels for his use in winter, and in summer straw 

 rushes ; and two gi-een geese thrice every year." In the household roll of Edward II. 

 we find an entry of money paid to John de Carleford for going from York to Newcastle 

 to procure straw for the King's chamber. Froissart, relating the death of Gaston 

 Count de Foi.x, says that the Count went to his chamber, which he found strewed 

 with rushes and gi'een leaves, and the walls were hung with bouglis newly cut for 

 perfume and coolness, as the weather was marvellously hot. Adam Davie Marshall, 

 of Stratford-le-Bow, who wrote about the year 1312, in his poem of the " Life of 

 Alexander," describing the marriage of Cleopatra, says : — 



" There was many a blithe grome 

 Of olive and of ruge flowers, 

 Wcrein y strewed halls and bowres, 

 With samytes and bandekyns, 

 Werein curtayned the gardjTis." 



This custom of strewing the " haUe and bowres " was continued to a much later 

 period. Hentzner in his " Itinerary," says of Queen Elizabeth's presence-chamber at 

 Greenwich, "The floor, after the English fashion, was strewed with hay," meaning 

 rushes. If, however, we may ti-ust to an epistle, wherein the learned Erasmus gives 

 an account of this practice to his friend Dr. Francis, physician to Cardinal Wolsey, 

 it would appear that from the rushes being seldom thoroughly changed, and fl-om 

 the habits of those days, which were not very cleanly, the smell soon became any- 

 thing but pleasant. He speaks of the lowest layer of rushes (the top only being 

 renewed) as remaining unchanged for twenty years, a receptacle for beer, grease, 

 fragments of victuals, and other organic matters. To this filthiness he ascribes the 

 frequent pestilences with which at that period the people were afilicted ; and Erasmus 

 recommends the entire banishment of rushes, and the adoption of better means of 

 ventilation, the sanitary importance of which was thus, we see, perceived more than 

 two centuries ago. 



When Henry III., King of France, demanded of Monsieur Dundelot what especial 

 things he had noticed in England during the time of his negotiation there, he 

 answered, that he had seen but three things remarkable, which were, " that the 

 people did drinke in bootes, eate rawe fish, and strewed all their best rooms with 

 liay ;" meaning, black-jacks, oysters, and rushes. 



The EngUsh stage was strewed with mshes in Shakespeare's time, and the Globe 

 Theatre was roofed with rushes ; and it was tlirough these rushes taking fire that 

 the theatre was burnt dovra. To the rushes for a stage covering succeeded matting; 

 then for tragedy came black hangings ; after which the green cloth stiU used, as 

 Goldsmith humorously observes, "spread for bloody work." The strewing of rushes 

 in the way by which processions were to pass, is attributed by our poets to almost all 

 times and countries. Thus, at the coronation of Henry V., when the procession 

 is coming, grooms ciy, " More rushes, more rushes I" {Henry W. Part II. Act V. 

 Scene 5.) 



