REFERENCE BOOKS ON ENGLISH GARDENING LITERATURE. 113 



press of Christopher Plantin, or Plantain-Moretus, at Antwerp, 

 an establishment still existent as a museum and of wonderful 

 interest as a sixteenth-century palace and workship combined. 

 These w r ood blocks were used sometimes correctly, but often 

 wrongly, and so the borrowed w 7 ork of Dodoens was Lobelised, 

 and illustrated by 1,800 or so of borrowed engravings, and thus 

 Gerarde's "magnum opus " first saw the light in 1597. Johnson's 

 edition of 1633 is a far better book. 



Gerarde was born at Nantwich, Cheshire, in 1515, and settled 

 in London prior to 1577, as he speaks in the " Herball " (preface) 

 of having superintended the gardens of Lord Burleigh in the 

 Strand, and also at Theobald's in Hertfordshire, for twenty years. 

 The climate of this date, 1596, was unpropitious, a series of wet, 

 cold summers having spoiled the crops, and wheat was five 

 guineas the quarter, and this at a date when money went five or 

 six times as far as it does now. Lord Burleigh spent ten pounds 

 per w r eek in giving the poor employment in his gardens under 

 Gerarde's management, and he prides himself on giving wages and 

 liveries to all the servants or gardeners employed. At an early 

 age he travelled northwards, probably to the Baltic, as a ship's 

 surgeon, since he speaks of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, 

 Poland and Russia (Livonia) as places in which he had been. 

 In 1595 he w T as elected a member of the Court of Assistants of 

 the Barber Surgeons Company, of w T hich he eventually became 

 Master, and he had a house and a garden in Holborn. The 

 Barber Surgeons held a charter from King Henry VIII., an 

 event recorded by Holbein in his great picture now in the Guild- 

 hall Gallery. 



Gerarde's great work, patched up and defective though it was, 

 undoubtedly exerted a great influence on the garden practice of 

 its time, and it will always be interesting as one of the books 

 possibly seen by Shakespeare and other authors of the Eliza- 

 bethan era. One can easily imagine the effect it would have in 

 country houses everywhere. Never before had such a richly 

 illustrated and instructive book on vegetable life been seen. It 

 was a great book that appeared at a great and propitious time, 

 a living fountain in a suniry place, and even to-day it is a work 

 that must have its niche in all good garden libraries. 



1633. Thomas Johnson, M.D. Oxon, is credited by Wood as 

 being the best herbalist of his time, and he initiated those 



