(Vol. ii., pp. 119. 286.)
The family of the Tradescants is involved in considerable obscurity, and the period of the arrival of the first of that name in England is not, for a certainty, known. There were, it seems, three of the Tradescants at one time in this country—grandfather, father, and son. John Tradescant (or Tradeskin, as he was generally called by his contemporaries) the elder was, according to Anthony Wood, a Fleming or a Dutchman. He probably came to England about the latter end of the reign of Elizabeth, or in the beginning of that of James the First. He is reported to have been a great traveller, and to have previously visited Barbary, Greece, Egypt, and other Eastern countries. Upon his first arrival here he is said to have been successively gardener to the Lord Treasurer Salisbury, Lord Weston, the Duke of Buckingham, and other noblemen of distinction. In these situations he remained until the office of royal gardener was bestowed upon him in 1629.
To John Tradescant the elder, posterity is mainly indebted for the introduction of botany in this kingdom. "He, by great industry, made it manifest that there is scarcely any plant existing in the known world, that will not, with proper care, thrive in our climate." In a visit made by Sir W. Watson and Dr. Mitchell to Tradescant's garden in 1749, an account of which is inserted in the Philosophical Transactions, vol. xlvi. p. 160., it appears that it had been many years totally neglected, and the house belonging to it empty and ruined; but though the garden was quite covered with weeds, there remained among them manifest footsteps of its founder. They found there the Borago latifolia sempervivens of Caspar Bauhine; Polygonatum vulgare latifolium, C.B.; Aristolochia clematitis recta, C.B.; and the Dracontium of Dodoens. There were then remaining two trees of the Arbutus, which from their being so long used to our winters, did not suffer from the severe cold of 1739-40, when most of their kind were killed in England. In the orchard there was a tree of the Rhamnus catharticus, about twenty feet high, and nearly a foot in diameter. There are at present no traces of this garden remaining.
In the Ashmolean Library is preserved (No. 1461.) a folio manuscript (probably in the handwriting of the elder Tradescant) which purports to be "The Tradescants' Orchard, illustrated in sixty-five coloured drawings of fruits, exhibiting various kinds of the apple, cherry, damson, date,
gooseberry, peares, peaches, plums, nectarines, grape, Hasell-nutt, quince, strawberry, with the times of their ripening."
Old John Tradescant died in the year 1652, at which period he was probably far advanced in years, leaving behind him a son (also of the same name) who seems to have inherited his father's talents and enthusiasm. There is a tradition that John Tradescant the younger entered himself on board a privateer going against the Algerines, that he might have an opportunity of bringing apricot-trees from that country. He is known to have taken a voyage to Virginia, whence he returned with many new plants. The two Tradescants were the means of introducing a variety of curious species into this kingdom, several of which bore their name. Tradescants' Spiderwort and Aster are well known to this day, and Linnæus has immortalised them among the botanists by making a new genus under their names of the Spiderwort, which had been before called Ephemeron.
When the elder Tradescant first settled in England, he formed a curious collection of natural history, coins, medals, and a great variety of "uncommon rarities." A catalogue of them was published in 12mo. in the year 1656, by his son, under the name of Museum Tradescantianum; to which are prefixed portraits, both of the father and son, by Hollar. This Museum or "Ark," as it was termed, was frequently visited by persons of rank, who became benefactors thereto; among these were Charles the First, Henrietta Maria (his queen), Archbishop Laud, George Duke of Buckingham, Robert and William Cecil, Earls of Salisbury, and many other persons of distinction: among them also appears the philosophic John Evelyn, who in his Diary has the following notice:
"Sept. 17, 1657, I went to see Sir Robert Needham, at Lambeth, a relation of mine, and thence to John Tradescant's museum."
"Thus John Tradeskin starves our wondering eyes
By boxing up his new-found rarities."