PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
269 
fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants 
that do best perfume the air. That which above all others 
yields the sweetest smell in the air is the Violet, next to that is 
the Musk Rose.”— Essay of Gardens. 
The Roses mentioned in Nos. 34, 51, and 52 as a mixture 
of red and white must have been the mottled or variegated 
Roses, commonly called the York and Lancaster Roses; 1 
these are old Roses, and very probably quite as old as the 
sixteenth century. There are two varieties : in one each petal 
is blotched with white or pink or both; this is the E. 
versicolor of Parkinson, and is a variety of R. Damascena ; in 
the other the petals are all red and splashed with white; this is 
the Rosa mundi or Gloria mundi , and is a variety of R. 
Gallica. 
These, with the addition of the Eglantine or Sweet Brier ( see 
Eglantine), are the only Roses that Shakespeare directly 
names, and they were the chief sorts grown in his time, but not 
the only sorts ; and to what extent Roses were cultivated in 
Shakespeare’s time we have a curious proof in the account of 
the grant of Ely Place, in Holborn, the property of the Bishops 
of Ely. “ The tenant was Sir Christopher Hatton (Queen 
Elizabeth’s handsome Lord Chancellor), to whom the greater 
portion of the house was let in 1576 for the term of twenty-one 
years. The rent was a Red Rose, ten loads of hay, and ten 
pounds per annum; Bishop Cox, on whom this hard bargain 
was forced by the Queen, reserving to himself and his suc¬ 
cessors the right of walking in the gardens, and gathering twenty 
bushels of Roses yearly.” —Cunningham. We have records 
also of the garden cultivation of the Rose in London long 
before Shakespeare’s time. “ In the Earl of Lincoln’s garden 
1 The York and Lancaster Roses were a frequent subject for the epigram 
writers ; and gave occasion for one of the happiest of English epigrams. 
On presenting a White Rose to a Lancastrian lady— 
“ If this fair Rose offend thy sight, 
It in thy bosom wear : 
Twill blush to find itself less white, 
And turn Lancastrian there.” 
