INTRODUCTORY 3 



And all without were walks and alleys dight 

 With divers trees enrang'd in even ranks ; 

 And here and there were pleasant arbours pight, 

 And shadie seats, and sundry flowring bankes ; 

 To sit and rest the walkers wearie shanks : 

 And therein thousand payres of lovers walkt, 

 Praising their God, and yeilding him great thankes.' 



Royal gardens are among the oldest in the land. They 

 have been the scene of innumerable conversations and inter- 

 views, some of which might easily have affected the whole 

 future course of history. It was in a garden that Queen 

 Elizabeth consented to receive the Earl of Arran, a scion of 

 the Royal House of Scotland, who was proposed to her as a 

 suitable consort. Arran had only just escaped from a French 

 prison, and was brought to England by shrewd and politic 

 Cecil with the idea that a marriage would bring about a 

 union of the English and Scottish Crowns. Not to offend 

 the King of France, Elizabeth's several interviews had to be 

 kept profoundly secret. At least one of them took place in the 

 Queen's private garden at Hampton Court. The Scottish 

 earl failed to please the young Queen, and nothing came of 

 this attempt, strongly urged upon her by Cecil and her 

 Council as it was, to induce her to take a husband. Imagi- 

 nation soon fails in trying to realise the stupendous changes 

 in the destiny of England which would have followed, had 

 this interview in a royal garden had a different result. An- 

 other conference, almost as full of vast possibilities, occurred 

 — according to Thackeray in his magnificent novel Esmojid 

 — in the " Cedar Walk behind the New Banqueting-House," 

 in Kensington Palace Gardens, when the son of James II. 

 was presented to the moribund Queen Anne by the famous 

 Duchess of Marlborough. And again ; who can fail to 

 recollect the thronging crowd of romantic episodes, many 

 of them so terribly tragic, in Mary Queen of Scots' time at 

 Holyrood ? 



Besides being wonderfully rich in pictorial and literary 

 ideas, royal gardens call for special regard by reason of their 

 horticultural pre-eminence. English sovereigns for centuries 



