[78] Gerard endeavoured to induce the Barber-Surgeons’ Company to establish a garden for the cultivation and study of medicinal plants, but nothing came of the scheme.
[79] Formerly it was generally supposed that Gerard’s garden was on the northern side of Holborn, but this is unlikely, for during the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign the part which is now known as Ely Place and Hatton Garden was an estate of forty acres belonging to the Bishopric of Ely. Holborn was almost a village then, and Gerard tells us in his Herball that in Gray’s Inn Lane he gathered mallow, shepherd’s purse, sweet woodruff, bugle and Paul’s betony, and in the meadows near red-flowered clary, white saxifrage, the sad-coloured rocket, yarrow, lesser hawkweed and the curious strawberry-headed trefoil. Wallflower and golden stonecrop grew on the houses.
[80] Conrad Gesner drew up a codified list of choice plants cultivated in the gardens of about twenty of his friends, with short lists of rarities in certain gardens. Johann Franke published his Hortus Lusatiæ in forty-eight pages—a very scarce work—which is a catalogue of all the plants growing near Launitz in Bohemia. The list contains both wild and cultivated plants, and the latter are distinguished by the addition of the letter H.
[81] This must have been Jean Robin, who in 1597 was appointed Keeper of the King’s gardens in Paris. We know that Gerard was on intimate terms with him, and Robin sent him numerous plants, which he gratefully acknowledges in his Herbal. Gerard frequently speaks of him as “my loving friend John Robin.”
[82] MSS. Record Office, James I. (Domestic), Vol. IX. fol. 113.
[83] W. Coles, The Art of Simpling.
[84] Cosmographia Universalis, 1572, p. 49.
[85] Shakespeare and Gerard were near neighbours during the time when the former was writing many of his finest plays, for Shakespeare lived in the house of a Huguenot refugee (Mountjoy by name) 1598-1604. This house was at the corner of Mugwell Street (now Monkswell Street) and Silver Street, very near the site of the ancient palace of King Athelstan in Saxon days. Almost opposite Mountjoy’s house was the Barber-Surgeons’ Hall. Aggers’ Map (circ. 1560) with pictures of the houses, gives an excellent idea of the neighbourhood in those days. See also Leak’s Map (1666).