The Tradescants, father and son, were among the first eminent gardeners, and were the very first collectors of natural history in this kingdom. John Tradescant the elder was, according to Anthony Wood, a Fleming, or a Dutchman. We are informed by Parkinson, that he had travelled into most parts of Europe, and into Barbary, and from some emblems remaining upon his monument in Lambeth church-yard, it appears that he had visited Greece, Egypt, and other Eastern countries.

In his travels, he is supposed to have collected not only plants and seeds, but most of those curiosities of every sort which formed his collection, which afterwards became celebrated, and is now the Ashmolean museum, at Oxford.

When he first settled in this kingdom, cannot at this distance of time, be ascertained; perhaps it was towards the latter end of the reign of queen Elizabeth, or the beginning of that of king James the first. His portrait, engraven by Hollar, before the year 1656, represents him as a person very far advanced in years, and seems to countenance this opinion.

He lived in a large house at South Lambeth, where, there is reason to think, his museum was frequently visited by persons of rank, who became benefactors thereto; among these were king Charles the first, to whom he was gardener, Henrietta Maria, his queen, Archbishop Laud, George, Duke of Buckingham, Robert and William Cecil, Earls of Salisbury, and many other persons of distinction.

John Tradescant may, therefore, justly be considered as the earliest collector in this kingdom,[[53]] of every thing that was curious in natural history, namely, minerals, birds, fishes, insects, &c. &c. He had also a good collection of coins and medals, besides a great variety of extraordinary rarities. Some of the plants which grew in his garden are, if not totally extinct in this country, at least become very uncommon.

This able man, by his great industry, made it manifest, in the very infancy of botany, as a science, that there is scarcely any plant existing in the known world, that will not, with proper care, thrive in this kingdom. The time of his death cannot be ascertained, no mention being made of it in the register of Lambeth church.

John Tradescant the son, and his wife, joined in a deed of gift, by which their friend Elias Ashmole was entitled to this collection after the decease of the former. On that event taking place, in 1662, it was accordingly claimed by him, but the widow Tradescant refusing to deliver it, was compelled so to do by a decree of the court of Chancery. She was, a few years after, found drowned, in a pond, in her own garden.

His house at South Lambeth, then called Tradescant’s Ark,[[54]] thus coming into the possession of Ashmole, he came to reside there in 1674, and added a noble room to it, adorning the chimney with his arms, impaling those of Sir William Dugdale, whose daughter was his third wife. Ashmole was much respected by his contemporaries, and was frequently visited at South Lambeth by persons of very exalted rank, particularly by the ambassadors of foreign princes, to whom he had presented his book on the Order of the Garter.

It is well known that Tradescant’s collection was given by Ashmole to the University of Oxford, where it forms the principal part of the museum that goes by his name, the house, in which it is contained, having been built for its reception.[[55]]

A monument was erected in the south east part of Lambeth church-yard, in 1662, by Hester, the relict of John Tradescant, the son, to the memory of her husband, and the other members of his family.