Book I. GARDENING IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 



89 



dtiiing Lath crept out of Holland to Sandwich, Kent, and thence to Surrey, where 

 tlrough they have given £6 an acre and upwards, they have made their rent, lived com- 

 fortable, and set many people to work." (^Worthies, partiii. p. 77.) 



399. During the reign of Henry VIII., rapid steps were made in horticulture. Ac- 

 cording to some authors, apricots, musk-melons, and Corinth grapes from Zante, were in- 

 troduced by that monarch's gardener ; and different kinds of salad, herbs, and esculent roots 

 wei-e, about the same time first brought into the country from Flanders. Salads, how- 

 ever, accoi-ding to Holingshed, are mentioned during Edward IV. 's reign. Henry had 

 a fine garden at his favorite palace of Nonsuch, in the parish of Cheam, in Surrey. 

 Here Kentish cherries were first cultivated in England. The garden wall was fourteen 

 feet high, and there were 212 fruit-trees. Leland, who wrote during this reign, informs 

 us (^Itinerary, &c.), that at Morle in Derbyshire, " there is as much pleasure of orchards 

 of great variety of fruit, as in any place of Lancashire. The castle of Thornbury, in 

 Gloucestershire, had an orchard of four acres, and there were others at Wresehill on 

 the Ouse." 



400. Books on horticulture appeared towards the middle of the sixteenth century. The 

 first treatise of husbandry' was a translation from the French, by Bishop Grosshead, in 

 1500. In 1521, appeared Arnold's Chronicles, in which is a chapter on " The crafte of 

 graffynge, and plantynge, and alterynge of fruits, as well in colours as in taste." The 

 first author who treats expressly on gardening is Tusser, whose Five Hundred Points of 

 good Husbandrie, ^c. with divers approved Lessons on Hojips and Gardening, &c. was 

 first published in 1517. 



Thomas Tusser, {Sir J. Banks in Ilort. Trans, i. 150.) who had received a liberal education at Eton 

 school, and at Trinity-Hall, Cambridge, lived many years as a farmer in Suffolk and Norfolk ; he after- 

 wards removed to London, where he published the first edition of his work, and died in 1580. In his 

 fourth edition, in 1578, he first introduced the subject of gardening, and has given us not only a list of the 

 fruits, but also of all the plants then cultivated in our gardens, either for pleasure or profit, under the fol- 

 lowing heads : — 



Seedes and herbes for the kychen, herbes and rootes for sallets and sawce, herbes and roots to boyle or to 

 butter, strewing herbs of all sorts, herbes, branches, and flowers for windowes and pots, herbs to still in 

 snummer, necessarie herbs to grow in the gardens for physick, not reherst before. — This list consists of 

 more than 150 species. 



Of fruits he enumerates, apple-trees of aU sorts, apricoches, bar-berries, bollese black and white, cherries 

 red and black, chestnuts, cornet plums (probably the Cornelian cherry) ; damisens v/hite and black, 

 filberts red and v/hite, gooseberries, grapes white and red ; grene or grass-plums, burtil-berries {vacciniiim 

 vitis-idcea), medlers or merles, mulberries ; peaches white, red, and yellow fleshed (called also the orange- 

 peach) ; peres of all sorts, peer plums, black and yellow, quince trees ; raspes, reisons (probably currants), 

 small liuts ; strawberries red and white ; service trees, wardens v/hite and red ; v/allnuts, wheat plums. 



Oi'^.er/rMzYs perhaps might have been added, as the fig; that fruit having been introduced previous to 

 1534, by Cardinal Pole. The orange and pomegranate, which Evelyn, in 1700, says, had stood at Bedding, 

 ton 120 years ; and the melon, v/hich, according to Lobel, was introduced before 1570, so that on the v/hole, 

 we had all the fundamental varieties of our present fruits in the middle of the sixteecth century. Hie pine- 

 apple is the only exception, which was not introduced till 16C0. 



401. The fertility of the soil of England was depreciated by some in Tusser's time, 

 probably from seeing the superior productions brought from Holland and France. 

 Dr. Boleyn, a contemporary, defends it, saying, " we had apples, pears, plums, cherries, 

 and hops of our own growth, before the importation of these articles into England by 

 the London and Kentish gardeners, but that the cultivation of them had been greatly 

 neglected. He refers as a proof of the natural fertility of the land to the great crop of 

 sea-pease [Pisum maritimum), which grew on the beach between Orford and Aldbo- 

 rough, and which saved the poor in the dearth of 1555. Oldys soon afterwards, speaking 

 of Gerrard's fine garden and alluding to the alleged depreciation of our soil and cihnato, 

 says " from Avhence It would appear, that our ground could produce other fruits besides 

 hips and haws, acorns and pig-nuts." At this time, observes Dr. Pulteney (Sketches, 

 &c. 118.), "kitchen garden wares were imported from Holland, and fruits from 

 France. " 



402. During the reign of Elizabeth, horticulture appears to have been in a state of 

 progress. Various works on this branch then appeared, by Didymus Mountain, Hyll, 

 Mascal, Scott, Googe, &c. ; these, for the most part, are transia'dons from the Roman 

 and modern continental authors. Mascal is said to have introduced some good varieties 

 of the apple. 



403. Charles I. seems to have patronised gardening. His kitchen-gardener was 

 Tradescant, a Dutchman, and he appointed the celebrated Parkinson his herbalist. In 

 1 G29, appeared the first edition of this man's great work, in folio, entitled, " Paradisi 

 in sole Paradisus terrestris ; or, a Garden of all sortes of pleasant Flowers, with a Kitcnerx 

 Garden of all manner of Herbs and Roots, and an Orchard of all sort of Fruit-bearing 

 Trees, &c." This, as NelU observes (Ed. Encyc. art. Hurt.), may be considered as the 

 first general book of English gardening possessing the character of originality. For the 

 culture of melons, he recommends an open hot^bed on a sloping bank, covering the 

 melons occasionally with straw, — the method practised in the north of France at this 

 day. Cauliflowers, celery, and finochio, were then great rarities. Virginia potatoes 

 (our common sort) were then rare ; but Canada potatoes (our Jerusalem articlioke) were 



