PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
297 
(3) G'foster. My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn, 
I saw good Strawberries in your garden there ; 
I do beseech you send for some of them. 
Ely. Marry and will, my Lord, with all my heart. 
* » ® ® * * 
Where is my lord Protector ? I have sent 
For these Strawberries .—King Richard III, iii. 4, 32. 
The Bishop of Ely’s garden in Holborn must have been 
one of the chief gardens of England in the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries, for this is 
the third time it has been 
brought under our notice. It 
was celebrated for its Roses 
(see Rose) ; it was so celebrated 
for its Saffron Crocuses that 
part of it acquired the name 
which it still keeps, Saffron 
Hill; and now we hear of its 
“good Strawberries ;” while the 
remembrance of “the ample 
garden,” and of the handsome 
Lord Chancellor to whom it 
was given when taken from the 
bishopric, is still kept alive in 
its name of Hatton Garden. How very good our forefathers’ 
Strawberries were, we have a strong proof in old Izaak Walton’s 
happy words: “ Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of 
angling as Dr. Boteler said of Strawberries : 1 Doubtless God 
could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did; ’ 
and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, 
quiet, innocent recreation than angling.” I doubt whether, 
with our present experience of good Strawberries, we should 
join in this high praise of the Strawberries of Shakespeare’s or 
Izaak Walton’s day, for their varieties of Strawberry must have 
been very limited in comparison to ours. Their chief Straw¬ 
berry was the Wild Strawberry brought straight from the woods, 
and no doubt much improved_in time by cultivation. Yet we 
SmAW' 
