THE ELIZABETHAN FLOWER GARDEN 103 



probably a good sample of the more simple mounts of this date, 

 although it cannot be so early as Elizabethan times. It was 

 most likely made when the house was built, about 1620, and it 

 was in its present state when Charles II. hid in the oak-tree 

 hard by. The Battle of Worcester was fought on Wednesday, 

 September 3rd, 1651. The Saturday following Charles spent 

 in hiding in the " Royal Oak," at Boscobel, and the next day 

 " His Majesty, finding himself now in a hopefull security, spent 

 some part of this Lord's-day in a pretty arbor in Boscobel 

 garden, which grew upon a mount, and wherein there was a 

 stone table and seats about it. In this place he pass'd away 

 some time in reading, and commended the place for its 

 retiredness." 1 Bacon planted and improved the garden of 

 Gray's Inn, and the summer-house which he made there in 

 memory of his friend Jeremiah Bettenham in 1609 must 

 have been very similar. It is thus described in 1761 soon after 

 it had been destroyed and the ground levelled : " Till lately 

 there was a summer-house erected by the great Sir Francis 

 Bacon upon a small mount : it was open on all sides, and the 

 roof supported by slender pillars." 2 This was placed so as to 

 command a " prospect over the neighbouring fields as far as 

 the hills of Highgate." 



The mount was not always a circular lump standing out in 

 the garden ; it appears that it was still sometimes banked up 

 against the outside wall. Bacon describes this kind also : " At 

 the end of both the side grounds," he writes, " I would have 

 a mount of some pretty height, leaving the wall of the enclosure 

 breast-high, to look abroad into the fields." The erections 

 placed on the top of mounts did not do away with the use of 

 other arbours in less exposed places in the garden. Some 

 " arbour o'ergrown with woodbines," 3 or " pleached bower 

 where honey-suckles ripen' d by the sun, forbid the sun to 

 enter," 4 were sure to be found in a secluded spot. " You 



1 Boscobel, or the History of His Sacred Majesties most miraculous 

 Preservation after the Battle of Worcester, 3 Sept., 1651, by Thomas 

 Blount, 1660; reprint, 1822. The illustration is taken from this 

 work. 



2 Quoted in Gray's Inn, Douthwaite, 1886. 



3 Fletcher, Faithful Shepherdess. 



* Much Ado About Nothing, Act III., Scene 1. 



