104 JOURNAL OF THE EOYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



perusal. Neckham, of Cirencester, and Grossheade, of Lincoln, 

 both wrote on gardening prior to 1250, and Felton mentions 

 Alfred the Philosopher, " an Englishman much respected at 

 Borne," as being one of our earliest authors on gardening. 

 Alfred is said to have died in 1270, and left amongst other MS. 

 one on vegetables, which now appears to be unknown. Perhaps 

 one of the very first works on the cultivation of our native soil 

 after Grossheade's was written in the reign of Edward III. [i.e. 

 before 1377), by Walter de Henly, entitled, 11 Yconomia sive 

 Housbrandia." This work is mentioned in Pulteney's " Sketches 

 of Botany," and Bishop Tanner, who had seen the manuscript, 

 thought the subject well treated after the manner of the time. 

 Again in 1379, or thereabouts, Henry Daniell, a Dominican, 

 left a manuscript on herbs and fruit trees. Pulteney* gives a 

 list of several manuscripts as existent in the Bodleian Library 

 and elsewhere, and states that he could easily have extended the 

 list, only that it would have out-swelled the article he was then 

 writing. Some of these MSS. may prove to be mere transla- 

 tions from the Latin, but others may be original and well worth 

 bringing to light ; and I hope some one with leisure will under- 

 take a search amongst the buried treasures in our best and 

 richest libraries, and do for the really English MS. literature of 

 gardening what has already been done by several authors here- 

 after to be named for its printed books. 



But apart from MS. gardening books that reached us from 

 Europe either in Latin or as translations into English, we had a 

 native spring — a spring that has never run dry. One of the 

 best known MS. works on gardening in English is a complete 

 manuscript of five pages (12| in. x 4| in.) in the library of 

 Trinity College, Cambridge. It is entitled, " Mayster Jon 

 Gardener." The actual identity of the author or dictator, as the 

 case may be, is not known, but he was undoubtedly a sound, 

 practical gardener, and one who for the period was singularly 

 free from superstitious beliefs in astrology, and other fancies 

 current at that date. 



The early poetic work alluded to commences thus : — 



Ho so wyl a gardener be 

 Here he may both hyre and se 



* " Historical and Biographical Sketches of the Progress of Botany." 

 London, 1790. 



