Strange Blooms

The Curious Lives and Adventures of the John Tradescants

Jennifer Potter

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2008
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781782395461
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

Now in paperback, this beautifully written and gorgeously produced book describes the remarkable lives and times of the John Tradescants, father and son. In 17th-century Britain, a new breed of "curious" gardeners was pushing at the frontiers of knowledge and new plants were stealing into Europe from East and West. John Tradescant and his son were at the vanguard of this change—as gardeners, as collectors, and above all as exemplars of an age that began in wonder and ended with the dawning of science. Meticulously researched and vividly evoking the drama of their lives, this book takes readers to the edge of an expanding universe, and is a magnificent pleasure for gardeners and non-gardeners alike.

Contents

	List of Illustrations
	Acknowledgements
	Note on Sources, Transliteration and Dates
	Introduction: Of Marvels and Monsters
1.	Education of a Gardener
2.	My Lord Treasurer’s Gardener
3.	To the Low Countries
4.	French Exotics
5.	Waterworks and Vines
6.	Muck and Mystery
7.	Death of a Lord
8.	Canterbury Belles
9.	A Virginian Adventure
10.	A Muscovy Rose
11.	Pirates of the Mediterranean
12.	Trunks and Treasures
13.	A Passion for Strangeness
14.	To the Aid of the Huguenots
15.	Lambeth Walks
16.	Queen’s Silk
17.	Tradescant’s Orchard
18.	The Lambeth Ark
19.	Family Matters
20.	A Physick for the Dying
21.	Sweet Virginia
22.	Of Cabbages and Kings
23.	The Useful Gardener
24.	A Snake in Eden
25.	A Death by Drowning
26.	The Ark Comes to Rest
	Notes
	Selected Bibliography
	Index

List of Illustrations

Integrated Illustrations

p. xxii. Tradescant’s dodo. H. E. Strickland and A. G. Melville, The Dodo and its Kindred (London, 1848).

p. 6. Spades. Walter Blith, The English Improver Improved or The Survey of Husbandry Surveyed (London, 1653).

pp. 16–17. The south prospect of Hatfield House. By Thomas Sadler.

p. 29. Dutch horticulture. Jacob Cats, Collected Works (Amsterdam, 1655).

p. 45. ‘Iris Susiana’. Pierre Vallet, Le Jardin du Roy Tres Chrestien Henry IV (Paris, 1608).

p. 55. Salomon de Caus’s plan for the water parterre at Hatfield House. Sketch in a letter from Thomas Wilson to Robert Cecil (1611).

p. 66. The frontispiece to William Lawson’s A New Orchard and Garden (London, 1638).

p. 73. The Scythian ‘lamb’. Claude Duret, Histoire Admirable des Plantes (1605).

pp. 76–7. Salisbury House and its Thames-side neighbours. Engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar (c. 1630). William Brenchley Rye, England as Seen By Foreigners in the Days of Elizabeth and James the First (author’s illustrated copy, 4 vols, London, 1865), vol. 3.

p. 89. A fenced melon ground. John Evelyn (trans.), The French Gardiner (London, 1672).

p. 106. Portrait of Pocahontas. Engraving by Simon van de Passe (1617).

p. 127. The briar rose. John Gerard, The Herball, enlarged and amended by Thomas Johnson (London, 1633).

p. 136. The prickly Indian fig tree. John Gerard, The Herball (London, 1633).

p. 150. George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. William Brenchley Rye, England as Seen By Foreigners (London, 1865), vol. 3.

p. 168. Strange fishes. Compiled by John Green, but known as the Astley Collection, A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels (4 vols, London, 1745-47), vol. 2.

pp. 182–3. La Rochelle (1628).

p. 186. Creeping sea wormwood. John Gerard, The Herball (London, 1633).

p. 198. Three tulips. John Gerard, The Herball (London, 1633).

p. 207. Oatlands Palace from the south. Sketch by Anthonis van den Wyngaerde (1559).

p. 228. Frontispiece to Ralph Austen’s A Treatise of Fruit-Trees (Oxford, 1653).

pp. 234–5. Inside the Museum Wormianum. Ole Worm, Museum Wormianum (1655).

p. 244. The schoolboy signature of John Tradescant the younger.

p. 250. Great dragons and small dragons. John Gerard, The Herball (London, 1633).

p. 268. The ‘hollow leafed strange plant’. John Parkinson, Paradisi in Sole, Paradisus Terrestris (London, 1629).

p. 272. ‘Powhatan’s mantle’.

pp. 292–3. The fort at Vauxhall (1643). Facsimiles of Capt Eyre’s Views and Plans of Fortifications of London (1853).

p. 309. Peas and beans. John Parkinson, Paradisi in Sole, Paradisus Terrestris (London, 1629).

p. 317. Elias Ashmole. Engraving by William Faithorne. William Brenchley Rye, England as Seen By Foreigners (London, 1865), vol. 1.

p. 339. Hester Tradescant.

p. 362. Map of the environs of London. Engraved by Remigius Parr from a drawing by John Rocque (1746).

p. 371 Tradescant’s Virginian spiderwort. John Gerard, The Herball (London, 1633).

First picture section

1.	John Tradescant the elder. Portrait by W. Hollar. Musaeum Tradescantianum (1656).
2.	Leiden’s hortus botanicus. Engraved by I. C. Visscher from a drawing by I. C. Woudanus (1610).
3.	Robert Cecil. William Brenchley Rye, England as seen by Foreigners (London, 1865), vol. 1.
4.	John Parkinson. John Parkinson, Paradisi in Sole, Paradisus Terrestris (London, 1629).
5.	John Tradescant’s great rose daffodil. John Parkinson, Paradisi in Sole, Paradisus Terrestris (London, 1629).
6.	Captain Samuel Argall. Theodor de Bry, Americae pars Decima (1619).
7.	The port of Algiers. ‘La Ville d’Alger’ (Amsterdam, c.1620).
8.	Queen Henrietta Maria. William Brenchley Rye, England as seen by Foreigners (London, 1865), vol. 4.
9.	An early orangerie. Jan van der Groen, Le Jardinier du Pays-Bas (Brussels,1672).
Second picture section
10.	John Tradescant the elder. Attributed to Emanuel de Critz.
11.	John Tradescant the younger. Attributed to Thomas de Critz.
12.	Hester Tradescant and her stepchildren. Unknown artist (c.1644).
13.	The tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) and wild red columbine (Aquilegia canadensis). William Curtis, The Botanical Magazine (London, 1794 and 1793 respectively).
14.	The gardens of St Augustine’s Abbey. Detail from map of Canterbury (c.1640).
15.	Turret House, Lambeth. Watercolour by John Crowther (c.1880).
16.	The Tradescant cherry. From ‘Tradescant’s Orchard’.
Third picture section
17.	John Tradescant the younger. Portrait by W. Hollar. Musaeum Tradescantianum (1656).
18.	The Lambeth Ark. Engraved by J. Caulfield from a drawing by John Thomas Smith (1798).
19.	Anemones. Crispin de Passe, Hortus Floridus (1614).
20.	The Tradescants’ South Lambeth home. Detail from Thomas Hill’s map of ‘Faux Hall Manour’ (1681).
21.	A Russian ‘Sammoyet’. Peter Mundy, The Travels of Peter Mundy, ed. Lieut. Col. Sir Richard Carnac Temple (London, Hakluyt Society, 1925), 2nd series, no. 55, vol. 4.
22.	Bird of paradise. Compiled by John Green, but known as the Astley Collection, A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels (4 vols, London, 1745–47), vol. 2.
23.	The ‘towne of Secota’. Engraved by Theodor de Bry from a watercolour by John White (1590).
24.	Will seals and signatures of John Tradescant the elder and John Tradescant the younger (8 January 1638 and 4 April 1661 respectively).
25.	The Tradescants’ tomb.

The author and publishers are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce illustrations: pages xxii, 6, 168, plates 21, 22, London Library; pages 16–17, the Marquess of Salisbury; pages 29, 76–7, 87, 150, 182–3, 292–3, 317, plates 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 19, British Library; pages 45, 228, Royal Horticultural Society, Lindley Library; page 55, plate 24, National Archives; pages 66, 73, 127, 136, 186, 198, 234–5, 250, 339, 371, plates 1, 13, 17, 25, Museum of Garden History; page 106, Virginia Historical Society; pages 207, 272, plates 10, 11, 12, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; page 244, plates 14, 20, Canterbury Cathedral Archives; page 362, plates 15, 18, Guildhall Library, City of London; plate 2, Leiden University Library; plates 16, 23, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

Acknowledgements

This book would not have hap...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Contents