[89] Both John Tradescant and his son were gardeners to Charles I. and Henrietta Maria. John Tradescant the elder is said by Anthony à Wood to have been a Fleming or a Dutchman, but this is doubtful. The name is neither Flemish nor Dutch but probably English, and in the inscription on his tomb in Lambeth Churchyard he and his son are described as “both gardeners to the rose and lily queen.” This was Henrietta Maria. Parkinson in his Paradisus speaks of him as “that painfull industrious searcher and lover of all nature’s varieties.” Tradescant accompanied Sir Dudley Digges on his voyage round the North Cape to Archangel, and on his return wrote an account of the plants he had found in Russia—the earliest extant record of plants in that part. It is interesting to note that in this he compares the soil of Russia to that of Norfolk. In 1620 Tradescant joined an expedition against the Algerine corsairs as a gentleman volunteer, and he also accompanied the Duke of Buckingham (George Villiers), to whom he had formerly been gardener, on the ill-fated expedition to La Rochelle. On Buckingham’s death he entered the royal service, and probably at this time established his well-known physic garden and museum at Lambeth. The house was called Tradescant’s ark. There are three unsigned and undated portraits of the elder Tradescant in the Ashmolean Collection at Oxford.
[90] It also figures on the title-page of Parkinson’s Theatrum Botanicum.
[91] “Now schalle I seye you semyingly of Countries and Yles that bea beyonde the Countries that I have spoken of. Wherefore I seye you in pessynge be [by] the Lord of Cathaye toward the high Ynde and towards Bacharye, men passen be a Kyngdom that men clepen Caldhille, that is a fair contree. And there growethe a maner of Fruyt, as though it weren Gowrdes, and when thei ben rype men kutten hem ato, and men fynden with inne a lytylle Best, in Flesche, in Bon and Blode, as though it were a lytylle Lamb withouten wolle. And men eten both the Frut and the Best, and that is a great Marveylle. Of that Frute I have eaten, alle thoghe it were wonderfulle but that I knowe wel that God is marveyllous in his Werkes.”
[92] See Herodotus (lib. iii. cap. 106); Ctesias (Indica); Strabo (lib. xv. cap. 21); Theophrastus De Historia Plantarum (lib. iv. cap. 4); Pliny, Naturalis Historia.
[93] “Master Tuggie,” who lived in Westminster, was a famous grower of gilliflowers. See p. [116].
[94] White lavender was a favourite with Queen Henrietta Maria.
[95] This he tells us at the end of the preface to the Paradisus. “Thus have I shewed you both the occasion and scope of this Worke, and herein have spent my time, paines, and charge, which if well accepted, I shall thinke well employed, and may the sooner hasten the fourth Part, A Garden of Simples; which will be quiet no longer at home, then that it can bring his Master newes of faire weather for the iourney.”
[96] Theatrum Botanicum, p. 601.
[97] Ibid., p. 43.
[98] Ibid., p. 1405.