Here is a simple calculation of the population in 1564. There was a great plague in that year. The total number of deaths in the City for the year is stated to have been 23,660, of whom 20,136 died of plague. This leaves 3524 deaths from ordinary causes. Now, if the average mortality of the City was twenty in the thousand, we should have a population of 176,200. If, which is more likely, the average mortality was twenty-five in the thousand the population was 140,960. In the time of King James, but after much devastation by the plague, the population of London was estimated at 130,000.
TOTTENHAM COURT
By the courtesy of the late Marquis of Salisbury.
For further particulars regarding this plan see [Appendix XI.]
It has been said that there is no street in London in which one cannot find a church and a tree. It is indeed remarkable to observe the large number of trees still existing and flourishing in the City of London, especially since the City churchyards have been converted into gardens. Of the old private gardens there are now left but few: one in St. Helen’s Place; one behind the Rectory of St. Andrew’s by the Wardrobe; the Drapers’ Gardens, much curtailed; and the churchyards above mentioned, which have been converted into gardens. In the sixteenth century, however, London was still full of gardens, in the north part of the City much more than in the south. Every house had its garden behind; for the most part narrow, yet carefully cultivated and full of trees and flowers. If you take the part of London that has been least meddled with, the north-west corner of the City, for instance—that part bounded by London Wall on the North; by Monkwell and Noble Streets on the West; by Gresham Street on the South; and by Moorgate on the East—you will find that the blocks between the older streets are intersected everywhere by courts, alleys, narrow lanes and buildings. These were all, including the ancient churches, taken out of the gardens. Formerly, for instance, between Basinghall Street and Coleman Street there were very long gardens behind the houses; these have been used for lanes of connection, and for workmen’s houses, such as Lilypot Lane and Oat Lane. Hidden away behind the houses is Sadler’s Hall; here also, hidden away behind houses, is Haberdashers’ Hall; here were the courtyards of inns, which formed among the gardens convenient ground for their great open courts and their stables. In this way the gardens of London gradually disappeared. In the sixteenth century, however, there were a great many still left: London presented an appearance of greenery and waving branches wherever one turned off the main roads. The chief authority on the gardens of the time is Harrison, who tells us what herbs, fruits, and roots were then grown, as well as the medicinal plants then so much cultivated.
Harrison[6] says, speaking of the flower gardens:—
“If you look into our gardens annexed to our houses, how wonderfullie is their beauty increased, not onelie with floures which Colmella calleth Terrena sydera, saying, ‘Pingit et in varios terrestria sydera flores,’ and varietie of curious and costlie workmanship, but also with rare and medicinable hearbes sought up in the land within these fortie yeares; so that in comparison of this present, the ancient gardens were but dunghills and laistowes to such as did possess them.
And even as it fareth with our gardens so dooth it with our orchards, which were never furnished with so good fruit, nor with such varietie as at this present. For beside that we have most delicate apples, plummes, peares, walnuts, filberds, etc., and those of sundrie sorts, planted within fortie yeares passed, in comparison of which most of the old trees are nothing woorth; so have we no less store of strange fruit, as abricotes, almonds, peaches, figges, corne-trees in noblemen’s orchards. I have seen capers, orenges, and lemmons, and heard of wild olives growing here, beside other strange trees, brought from far, whose names I know not. So that England for these commodities was never better furnished, neither anie nation under their clime more plentifullie indued with these and other blessings from the most high God, who grant us grace withall to use the same to His honour and glorie! and not as instruments and provocations unto further excesse and vanitie, wherewith His displeasure may be kindled, least these His benefits doo turne unto thornes and briers unto us for our annoiance and punishment which He hath bestowed upon us for our consolation and comfort.”
The London garden was not only a place of recreation in the summer; it also furnished flowers for the pretty custom of decorating the rooms and strewing the floors; the gardens furnished pot herbs for the kitchen and sweet herbs for the walls and floors; branches also of fragrant woods, such as fir and pine, were hung up on the walls. I know not if this is a common custom still maintained in America; but in Hawthorne’s house at Concord the rooms are still decorated and made fragrant with branches of pine such as the writer used in his lifetime. The floor of the great hall was strewn with rushes, brought chiefly from the upper reaches and low-lying grounds of the river. These rushes were of various kinds: some of them were grasses, such as that called mat-weed, of which beds were made as well as floors strewn.
The chief authorities on the London garden are Bacon in his Essays, and Gerard in his Herbal. Francis Bacon wrote his essays in Gray’s Inn, whose garden he laid out and planted by request of the Benchers. His essay on the garden was written, as he says himself, for the climate of London.
“And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air. Roses, damask and red, are fast flowers of their smells, so that you may walk by a whole row of them, and find nothing of their sweetness, yea, though it be in a morning’s dew. Bays likewise yield no smell as they grow, rosemary little, nor sweet marjoram. That which above all others yields the sweetest smell in the air is the violet, especially the white double violet, which comes twice a year, about the middle of April and about Bartholomew-tide. Next to that is the musk-rose; then the strawberry leaves dying, which yield a most excellent cordial smell. Then the flower of the vines; it is a little dust like the dust of a bent, which grows upon the cluster in the first coming forth. Then sweetbriar, then wall-flowers, which are very delightful to be set under a parlour or lower chamber window. Then pinks and gilliflowers, especially the matted pink and clove gilliflowers. Then the flowers of the lime-tree. Then the honeysuckles, so they be somewhat afar off; of bean-flowers I speak not, because they are field-flowers. But those which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three—that is, burnet, wild thyme, and water-mints. Therefore you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread.”
In Ordish’s Shakespeare’s London will be found an excellent analysis of Gerard’s Herbal as it deals with the gardens of the City and its suburbs. In it also is an enumeration of the principal gardens of the time, especially those of the Inns of Court. To these may be added the gardens belonging to those of the City Companies whose Halls were in the north part of the City, and those not yet built over which had once formed part of the monastic precincts, not to speak of the private gardens which were in many cases—such as the house of Sir Thomas Gresham in Broad Street—large and spacious. (See [Appendix VII.])