18 
ANNUAL ADDRESS. 
the Primrose has given its name to the great League, which will 
for long be associated with the memory and principles of Lord 
Beaconsfield. It is the history of such plants as this that I wish 
to recall to your memory, and it may be of interest to you, if I 
briefly relate how some trivial incident in the past has led to their 
being singled out from the vast variety of flowers, and brought into 
greater prominence than their companions in the floral world. 
The united countries of Great Britain have each their national 
emblem, and with one exception these emblems are chosen from 
well-known flowers of the garden or hedgerow, on account of their 
association with some of the most warlike events in the history 
of the nation. 
The Rose, the queen of the floral world, comes first as the 
national emblem of England. That it was for a long period linked 
by the chain of association with kingly power and sovereignty 
seems certain, but its first connection in history with this country 
dates back to a.d. 1385 when John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, 
"the time-honoured Lancaster" of Shakespeare, assumed a red 
rose as his cognizance, to be worn by himself, and to be given as 
a badge to his immediate personal followers. At the same time 
his brother, Edmund, Duke of York, assumed the white rose for 
similar purposes, and although then the flowers were but harmless 
emblems, they became to their descendants the opposing badges of 
two great rival Houses on many a fateful field of battle. Under 
their banners were fought the terrible Wars of the Roses, when the 
white rose of York was doomed to be dyed with the blood of 
thousands of its sons before the rival red rose of Lancaster gained 
possession of the Crown in the person of Henry VII., who adopted 
that flower as the national emblem. 
It is, as you know, from this connection that the red rose is 
worn at the present day on April 23rd, the festival of St. George, 
the patron saint of England. By one of those strange coincidences 
that are noted in history, Dr. Linacre, physician to Henry VII., 
obtained from France a variety of the French rose, having on the 
same bush blossoms both red and white, with others striped. 
Popular fancy at once regarded it as significant of the union of 
the red and white roses, which had been in reality brought about 
by the marriage of the King with the Princess Elizabeth of York, 
the eldest daughter and heiress of Edward IV. Their son Henry 
VIII. in his dominant way regarded the rose as the true emblem 
of kingly power and adopted the two roses united in one as his 
well-known cognizance. 
In remodelling the ancient Order of the Garter and endowing 
the King with the sole power of election, he added the Collar to 
the other insignia. This he formed of a red rose within a white one, 
alternating with a white one within a red ; and the same com- 
bination of roses, carved in wood or stone is a marked feature in 
the ecclesiastical architecture of that period, and is known to us 
as the Tudor Rose. 
