60 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 



French, but this treatise concerns the farm more than the 

 garden. 1 



Necham, who lived at the same time as Grosseteste, was a 

 more original writer. He was born in 1157, passed the early 

 part of his life at St. Albans, and was made the director of the 

 school belonging to the Abbey at Dunstable ; by 1180 he was 

 a distinguished professor at Paris University ; returned to 

 Dunstable about 1186, but soon after left the Benedictines of 

 St. Albans, and joined the Augustines of Cirencester ; was there 

 elected Abbot in 1213, and died in 1217; Necham's " De 

 laudibus divinae Sapiential," a poem in ten parts, devotes many 

 lines to the praise of various flowers and fruits. The seventh 

 book is on the excellence of such herbs as betony, centaury, 

 plantain, and wormwood ; the eighth is about fruits — cherries, 

 peaches, medlars, and so forth. He does not, however, confine 

 his praises to English productions, but sings of terebinth, 

 cinnamon, and spices, and fruits which he had probably never 

 seen in their natural state. In like manner, his description in 

 his other work, De Naiuris Rerum, of what a " noble garden " 

 should be, is drawn from imagination, as many plants, quite 

 unfit for culture in the open air in this country, or even in 

 Europe, are included in the list of what the garden should con- 

 tain. This is easily accounted for, as Necham, like others of 

 his time, borrowed freely from classical writers. " The 

 garden," 8 he writes, " should be adorned with roses and lilies, 

 turnsole, violets, and mandrake ; there you should have parsley 

 and cost, and fennel, and southernwood, and coriander, sage, 

 savory, hyssop, mint, rue, dittany, smallage, pellitory, lettuce, 

 garden cress, peonies. There should also be planted beds with 

 onions, leeks, garlick, pumpkins, and shalots ; cucumber, poppy, 

 daffodil, and acanthus ought to be in a good garden. There 

 should also be pottage herbs, such as beets, herb mercury, 

 orach, sorrel, and mallows." So far, this is evidently a 

 simple catalogue of what was to be seen in his garden at 

 Cirencester, or any other fair-sized garden of his day. But 



1 Several MSS. exist ; see Dr. Cunningham's Introduction to Walter de 

 Henley's Husbandry, Royal Historical Society, 1890. 



2 The translation of the names of plants is taken from Wright's 

 edition of Necham's works. 



