Notes And Queries Number 79 May 3 1851 A Medium Of Inter Commun

Chapter 3

Chapter 33,466 wordsPublic domain

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, {354} 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 Linnaeus 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."

Ashmole, in his _Diary_ (first published by Charles Burman in 1717), has three significant entries relating to the subject of our notice, which I transcribe _verbatim_:

"Decem. 12, 1659. Mr. Tredescant and his wife told me they had been long considering upon whom to bestow their closet of curiosities when they died, and at last had resolved to give it unto me.

"April 22, 1662. Mr. John Tredescant died.

"May 30, 1662. This Easter term I preferred a bill in Chancery against Mrs. Tredescant, for the rarities her husband had settled on me."

The success of Ashmole's suit is well known; but the whole transaction reflects anything but honour upon his name. The loss of her husband's treasures probably preyed upon the mind of Mrs. Tradescant; for in the _Diary_ before quoted, under April 4, 1678, Ashmole says:

"My wife told me that Mrs. Tradescant was found drowned in her pond. She was drowned the day before at noon, as appears by some circumstance."

This was the same Hesther Tradescant who erected the Tradescant monument in Lambeth churchyard. She was buried in the vault where her husband and his son John (who "died in his spring") had been formerly laid.

The table monument to the memory of the Tradescants was erected in 1662. The sculptures on the four sides are as follows, viz. on the _north_, a crocodile, shells, &c., and a view of some Egyptian buildings; on the _south_, broken columns, Corinthian capitals, &c., supposed to be ruins in Greece, or some Eastern country; on the _east_, Tradescant's arms, on a bend three fleurs-de-lys, impaling a lion passant; on the _west_, a hydra, and under it a skull; various figures of trees, &c., in relievo, adorn the four corners of the tomb; over it is placed a handsome tablet of black marble. The monument, by the contribution of some friends to their memory, was in the year 1773 repaired, and (according to Sir John Hawkins) the following lines, "_formerly_ intended for an epitaph, inserted thereon." Other authorities say that they were merely _restored_.

"Know, stranger, ere thou pass beneath this stone, Lye John Tradescant, grandsire, father, son; The last dy'd in his spring; the other two Liv'd till they had travell'd Art and Nature through, As by their choice collections may appear, Of what is rare, in land, in sea, in air; Whilst they (as Homer's _Iliad_ in a nut) A world of wonders in one closet shut; These famous antiquarians that had been _Both Gardeners to the Rose and Lily Queen_, Transplanted now themselves, sleep here; and when Angels shall with their trumpets waken men, And fire shall purge the world, these hence shall rise, And change this garden for a Paradise."

A number of important errors concerning this once celebrated family have been made by different writers. Sir John Hawkins, in a note to his edition of Walton's _Angler_ (edit. 1792, p. 24.), says:

"There were, it seems, three of the Tradescants, grandfather, father, and son: the son is the person here meant: the two former were gardeners to Queen Elizabeth, and the latter to King Charles I."

The epitaph above quoted satisfactorily proves, I think, that the Tradescants were never gardeners to the maiden Queen. "The rose and lily queen" was certainly Henrietta Maria, the queen of Charles the First. I have now before me (from the cabinet of a friend) a small silver medal struck to commemorate the marriage of Charles the First. It has on the obverse the busts of Charles and Henrietta, the sun shining from the clouds above {355} them: the inscription is CH: MAG: ET: HEN: MA: BRIT: REX: ET: REG. The reverse contains in the field, Cupid mixing _lilies with roses_; the legend being FVNDIT: AMOR: LILIA: MIXTA: ROSIS. In the exergue is the date 1625. The Tradescant mentioned by Walton in 1653 was the _second_ of that name, not the son, as stated by Sir John Hawkins.

The editor of the last edition of Evelyn's _Diary_ (vol. ii. p. 414.) says, speaking of the Tradescants:

"They were all eminent gardeners, travellers, and collectors of curiosities. The two first came into this country in the reign of James I., and the second and third were employed in the Royal Gardens by Charles I."

Here is a _positive_ statement that the elder Tradescant and his son came into England in the reign of _James I._ But there is no _proof_ of this given. It is merely the writer's assertion. At the end of the same note, speaking of Tradescant's Ark, the editor observes:

"It formed the foundation of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and a catalogue of its contents was printed by the youngest John Tradescant in 1656, with the title of _Museum Tradescantianum_. He died in 1652."

It was not the _youngest_ John Tradescant that died in 1652, but the _oldest_, the _grandfather_--the first of that name that settled in England.

The following is a list of the portraits of the Tradescant family now in the Ashmolean Museum; both father and son are in these portraits called _Sir_ John, though it does not appear that either of them was ever knighted. Mr. Black, in his excellent catalogue of the Ashmolean Library, also calls the elder Tradescant _Sir_ John. (See p. 1266.)

1. Sir John Tradescant, sen., three-quarter size, ornamented with fruit, flowers, and garden roots.

2. The same, after his decease.

3. The same, a small three-quarter piece, in water colours.

4. A large painting of his wife, son, and daughter, quarter-length.

5. Sir John Tradescant, junior, in his garden, with a spade in his hand, half-length.

6. The same with his wife, half-length.

7. The same, with his friend Zythepsa of Lambeth, a collection of shells, &c. upon a table before them.

8. A large quarter piece inscribed Sir John Tradescant's second wife and son.

Granger says he saw a picture at a gentleman's house in Wiltshire, which was not unlike that of the deceased Tradescant, and the inscription was applicable to it:

"Mortuus haud alio quam quo pater ore quiesti, Quam facili frueris nunc quoque nocte doces."

I may add, in conclusion, that several beautiful drawings of the Tradescant monument in Lambeth churchyard are preserved in the Pepysian library. These drawings were engraved for the _Philosophical Transactions_, vol. lxiii. p. 88.; and are printed from the same plates in the _Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica_, vol. ii.

EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.

* * * * *

MEANING OF VENVILLE.

(Vol. iii., pp. 152. 310.)

I observe, in p. 310. of the present volume, that two correspondents, P. and K., have contributed conjectures as to the meaning and origin of the term _venville_, noticed and explained _ante_, p. 152. The _origin_ of the word is of course to some extent open to conjecture; but they may rest assured that the _meaning_ of it is not, nor ever has been, within the domain of mere conjecture with those who have had any opportunities of inquiry in the proper quarter. The term has not the slightest reference to the ceremony of delivering possession, which P. has evidently witnessed in the case of his father, and which lawyers call livery of seisin; nor is there on Dartmoor any such word as _ven_ signifying peat, or as _fail_, signifying turf. No doubt a fen on the moor would probably contain "black earth or peat," like most other mountain bogs; and if (as K. says) _fail_ means a "turf or flat clod" in Scotland, I think it probable that a Scotchman on Dartmoor might now and then so far forget himself as to call peat or turf by a name which would certainly not be understood by an aboriginal Devonian. The local name of the peat or other turf cut for fuel is _vaggs_, and this has perhaps been confounded in the recollection of K.'s informant with _ven_. At all events, I can assure both P. and K. (who, I presume, are not familiar with the district) that the tenants of venville lands have no functions to perform, as such, in any degree connected with either turf-cutting, or "fenging fields," and that they do not necessarily, or generally, occupy peat districts, or rejoice in

"All the infections that the sun sucks up From bogs, fens, flats," &c.;

but, on the contrary, they are the owners of some of the most valuable, salubrious, and picturesque purlieus of the forest. With regard to the name "fengfield," although I am pretty familiar with the records of the forest extant for the last five hundred years past, I do not remember that it is ever so named or spelt in the muniments of the manor or forest. It is so written by Risdon, and in some few other documents entitled to little weight, and from which no safe inference can be drawn. Whatever be the etymological origin of the term, it should be assumed as indisputable by any one who may hereafter exercise his ingenuity or his fancy upon it, that the four most prominent {356} incidents to the tenure are--1. payment of fines; 2. situation in an ancient vill; 3. attendance on the lord's court; 4. enjoyment of certain rights of common. It may be that neither the _fine_ nor the _vill_ forms a component part of the name; but K. need have no scruple in believing that an abbreviated Latin or "legal term" (invented, of course, by the stewards or bailiffs of the lord) may have become naturalised among those of the inhabitants of the Moor whom it concerns. The tenants or retainers of a manor have no alternative but to submit to any generic name by which the steward may please to distinguish them. Thus the "priors" and "censors" of Dartmoor forest are content to be called by those names, because they were designated as "prehurdarii" and "censarii" in the court rolls some hundred years ago. The tenants of a certain lordship in Cornwall know and convey their tenements by the name of _landams_ to this day, merely because the stewards two hundred years ago, when the court rolls were in Latin, well knowing that _landa_ was the Latin for _land_, and that transitive verbs in that language require an accusative case, recorded each tenant as having taken of the lord "unam landam, vocatam Tregollup," &c. Indeed so easily does a clipt exotic take root and become acclimated among the peasantry of the Moor, whose powers of appropriation are so much disparaged by the sceptical doubts of K., that since the establishment of local courts the terms _fifa_ and _casa_ have become familiar to them as household words and the name and uses of that article of abbreviated Latinity called a '_bus_ are, as I am credibly informed, not unknown to them.

E. SMIRKE.

* * * * *

Replies to Minor Queries.

_Newburgh Hamilton_ (Vol. iii, p. 117).--In Thomas Whincop's _List of Dramatic Authors_, &c., the following notice of Hamilton occurs:--

"Mr. Newburgh Hamilton.

A Gentleman, who I think was related to, at least lived in the family of Duke _Hamilton_; he wrote two Plays, called

I. _The Doating Lovers_, or _The Libertine Tam'd_; a Comedy acted at the Theatre in _Lincoln's Inn_-_Fields_, in the year 1715, with no success: but supported to the third night, for the Author's Benefit; when the Boxes and Pit were laid together at the unusual Price of six Shillings each Ticket.

II. _The Petticoat Plotter_; a Comedy of two Acts, performed at the Theatre Royal in _Drury-Lane_."

T. C. T.

_Pedigree of Owen Glendower_ (Vol. iii., p. 222.).--A contributor who is not a Cambrian, sends the following pedigree of Owen Glyndowr, with the authority from whence he has obtained it, viz. Harl. MS. 807., Robert Glover's Book of Pedigrees and Arms, drawn up in part about 1574.

H. E.

JOHANNIS SCUDAMORE, miles, duxit filiam et haeredam Oweni Glendoure proditoris Regis H. 4.

{357}

_Mind your P's and Q's_ (Vol. iii., p. 328.)--This expression arose from the ancient custom of hanging a slate behind the alehouse door, on which was written P. or Q. (i. e. _Pint_ or _Quart_) against the name of each customer, according to the quantity which he had drunk, and which was not expected to be paid for till the Saturday evening, when the wages were settled.

The expression so familiar to schoolboys of "_going tick_," may perhaps be traced to this, a _tick_ or mark being put for every glass of ale.

C. DE LA PRYME.

_The Sempecta at Croyland_ (Vol. iii., p. 328.).--He was not there, however; and I am sorry to say, I do not remember where he was personally, or exactly where the account of him is to be found. I have no doubt of its being in one or other of the fourteen volumes of Martene's _Thesaurus et Amplissima Collectio_. I do not now possess those books, and have not access to them; but I think your correspondent will find what he wants without much difficulty if (as I suspect) it is with some other pieces in rhyme, and therefore likely to catch the eye in turning over a volume chiefly in prose. Perhaps the name "Francis" may be in the index. If he does not, I shall be happy to seek for information.

S. R. MAITLAND.

Gloucester.

_Solid-hoofed Pigs_ (Vol. iii., p. 263.).--I saw a pig of this kind a few years ago, in possession of Sir William Homan, Bart., of Dromroe, near Cappoquin, in the county of Waterford.

I do not know whether he has any of that breed at present; but have little doubt that a note, addressed to Sir William on the subject, would receive a courteous reply.

H. C.

Thurles, April 9. 1851.

_Porci solide-pedes_ (Vol. iii., p. 263.).--A correspondent of "NOTES AND QUERIES" inquires about the breed of solid-hoofed pigs. Some years, perhaps twenty years, ago there were several pigs of that sort in the possession of Robert Ramsden, Esq., of Coulton Hall, Notts, of which he was good enough to give some to my father. I believe they were considered of Chinese origins, but how remotely I do not know. They were very easily fattened, but always of small size; and I think, unless my memory much deceives me, on removing the horny portion of the hoof, the rudiments of a cloven hoof, like that of the ordinary swine, were to be seen.

E. G. SELWYN.

Blackheath, April 17. 1851.

_Sir Henry Slingsby's Diary_ (Vol. iii., p. 323.).--The council of "THE CAMDEN SOCIETY" will no doubt be pleased to find that your correspondents are good enough to keep in view the welfare of that Society, and to suggest works suitable for their publication.

If Sir Henry Slingsby's _Diary_ had never been published, it would indeed have been an excellent book for the Camden Society; but be kind enough to inform your correspondent P. B. that, besides some quotations printed in Seward's _Anecdotes_, and large extracts published at Edinburgh, in an octavo volume, in 1806, the whole _Diary_, with a great deal of illustrative matter relating to the Slingsby family, was published in one volume, 8vo., London, 1836, under the very competent editorship of the Rev. Daniel Parsons, of Oriel College, Oxford.

It appears from the preface to that publication, that the original MS. is not now known to be in existence. Mr. Parsons printed from a copy of the original, made by Sir Savile Slingsby, in 1714-5, which then remained at Scriven.

ETTIE.

_Criston, Somerset_ (Vol. iii., p. 278.).--Perhaps PRISTON is the place inquired for. This is a village near Keynshem, where a Mr. _Vaughan_ Jenkins has some property. _Criston_, as a place in Somerset, is unknown to

Bath, April 18.

_Criston_ (Vol. iii., p. 278.).--There is a small village in Somersetshire called Christon, about five miles N.W. of Axbridge.

C. I. R.

_Tradesmen's Signs_ (Vol. iii., p. 224.).--In the delightful little volume on Chaucer, in Knight's shilling series, entitled _Pictures of English Life_, the author has the following on the Tabard, at p. 19.:--

"The sign and its supports were removed in 1776, when all such characteristic features of the streets of London in the olden time, disappeared _in obedience to a parliamentary edict_ for their destruction."

It would appear, however, by the subsequent quotation from Brand's _Antiquities_, vol. ii. p. 359., that the edict above referred to was not carried into execution against all signs; or that, if so, it was soon repealed:--

"Lord Thurlow, in his speech for postponing the further reading of the Surgeons' Incorporation Bill, July 17th, 1797, stated 'that by a statute still in force, the barbers and surgeons were each to use a pole.'"

R. W. E.

Cor. Chr. Coll., Cambridge.

_Emendation of a Passage in Virgil_ (Vol. iii., p. 237.).--The emendation of SCRIBLERUS is certainly objectionable, and by no means satisfactory, for these reasons:--1st. "Ac sunt in spatio" is by no means elegant Latin, which "addunt se in spatia" is; for the word "addunt" is constantly used in the same way elsewhere.

2nd. The word "spatium" is seldom used to signify a chariot course.

"Spatia," the plural, was the proper expression, and is only so deviated from in poetry in a single instance. (Juv. _Sat._ vi. 582.) It is used in {358} the plural in Virg. _AEn_. v. 316. 325. 327.; Statius, _Theb._ vi. 594.; Horace, _Epist._ 1. xiv. 9.

_Vide_ Smith's _Dictionary of Antiquities_, under art. Circus, p. 232.