8 LONDON PARKS © GARDENS 
Garden is still one of the charms of London, but only 
the old gateway of the Priory of St. John in Clerken- 
well remains, and the garden, with all its historical 
associations, has long since vanished. It was in a small 
upper room, “ next the garden in the Hospital of St. 
John of Jerusalem in England, without the bars of 
West Smythfield,” that Henry VII., in the first year 
of his reign, gave the Great Seal to John Morton, 
Bishop of Ely, and appointed him Chancellor, and he 
“carried the seal with him” to his house, Ely Place, 
hard by. 1 These small references show the picturesque 
side of such events, the gardens constantly being the 
background of the scenes. 
It is only one more of the regrettable results of the 
barbarous way in which the Reformation was carried out 
in England, that the gardens shared the fate of the 
stately buildings round whose sheltering walls they 
flourished. It is not easy to picture the desolation of 
those days: the unkept, uncared-for garden, trodden 
under foot, makes the forlorn aspect of the despoiled 
monasteries more pathetic. 
London was a city of palaces in Plantagenet times, 
and the great nobles had their gardens near or surround¬ 
ing their castles. Bayard’s Castle, facing the river for 
centuries, had its gardens, and there were spacious 
gardens within the precincts of the Tower when it was 
the chief royal residence in London, and outside the 
walls of the City fine dwellings and large gardens were 
clustered together. Among the most famous in the 
thirteenth century was the Earl of Lincoln’s, purchased 
from the Dominicans, when they outgrew their demesne 
in Holborn, and migrated to the riverside, where their 
1 Close Roll, Henry VII. 
