Another form of recreation in the City life was the garden. The poetry of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is full of the garden. In Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale Emelie goes into the garden to make a chaplet:—
“And in the garden at the sonne uppriste
Sche walketh up and doun, and as hir liste,
Sche gadereth floures, party white and redde,
To make a sotil gerland for here hedde,
And as an angel hevenly sche song.”
Every house of importance in London had its garden. Of these gardens some traces yet remain. The Drapers’ Garden until recently covered a large area, and there is still a little left; other Companies retain some portion of their old gardens; apart from the churchyards, now converted into gardens, there are still even in some crowded parts of the City one or two private gardens left. The garden afforded a safe and pleasant place of recreation for the ladies of the house. It seems as if, with the noise, the dirt, the crowds, the violence, there was no place for ladies in the streets of Mediæval London; they were escorted to and from church, and for the rest of the day there was the house or the garden “ful of leves and of floures.”
“And craft of mannes hand so curiously
Arrayed had the gardeyn of such pris,
As if it were the verray paradise.”