[59] Then “Marie Valence Hall.” (Founded in 1347 by Marie widow of Aylmer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke.)
[60] It has been suggested that Turner was imprisoned for his refusal to subscribe to the Six Articles and that he recanted to save his life. But, as Dr. B. D. Jackson has pointed out, Turner was made of sterner stuff and his whole life and writings are a standing contradiction to any such supposition.
[61] One of the earliest botanic gardens in Europe was at Bologna. It was founded by Luca Ghini. It is interesting to see how frequently Turner in his herbal quotes Ghini, and cites his authority against other commentators. Luca Ghini was the first who erected a separate professorial chair at Bologna for Botanical Science. He himself lectured on Dioscorides for twenty-eight years. He was the preceptor of Caesalpinus and Anquillara, two of the soundest critics on botanical writings of that age.
The most famous public botanical gardens in Europe during the sixteenth, seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were the following. I give them in the order in which they were made:—
1533—Padua.
1544—Florence.
1547—Bologna.
1570—Paris.
1598—Montpellier.
1628—Jena.
1632—Oxford.
1637—Upsala.
1673—Chelsea.
1675—Edinburgh.
1677—Leyden.
1682—Amsterdam.
1725—Utrecht.
The first botanic garden in America was founded in Philadelphia by John Bartram, the great American botanist, in the middle of the eighteenth century.
[62] Gesner had a high opinion of Turner, of whom he wrote:—
“Ante annos 15, aut circiter cum Anglicus ex Italia rediens me salutaret (Turnerus) is fuerit vir excellentis tum in re medica tum aliis plerisque disciplinis doctrinae aut alius quisquam vix satis memini.”—De Herbis Lunariis, 1555.
[63] The Duke of Somerset was himself keenly interested in botanical investigations, and Turner frequently refers to the Duke’s garden. It was during this time that Turner had his own garden at Kew. That he sat in the House of Commons is generally supposed from a passage in his Spiritual Physik, and this view is sustained by the character of the Hunter in his Romish Wolfe.
[64] It has been asserted in some accounts of Turner that he was a Canon of Windsor, but this is a mistake. The Canon of Windsor was Richard Turner, also a Protestant, and, like the herbalist, exiled during Mary’s reign.