DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49977#0088
66
A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND.
Grammatical* This includes most of the simple herbs then
known, with the Latin equivalents. The Latin is not always
correctly translated, the name of some common native flower,
being sometimes substituted for a plant which was unknown
to the writer.
The earliest writers on this subject in England, were church-
men; Alexander Necham, Abbot of Cirencester, and Bishop
Grosseteste, of Lincoln. They both studied at the University
of Paris, and thus had an opportunity of seeing for them-
selves the state of horticulture abroad. Their writings only
touch incidentally on gardening. Grossetestef (b. cir. 1175,
d. 1253) wrote on many subjects ; he was skilled in medicine,
and had a knowledge of the virtues and properties of plants.
The works attributed to him are so numerous, that it is scarcely
possible that all can have come from his pen, but everything
which bore his name continued to be read, and referred to,
for more than two centuries after his death. Therefore his
works on husbandry must have had considerable influence on
horticulture. Palladius’s work, De Re Rustica, written at some
early date, probably in the fifth century, was the foundation of
nearly all English writings on husbandry, for several centuries,
and most of them, that of Grosseteste included, were merely
translations, or adaptations, of this work. De Re Rustica is
in fourteen books. The first is introductory, the following
twelve are devoted in turn to each month of the year, the
fourteenth to grafting. Various recipes, such as growing apples
without cores or cherries without stones, were thus passed on by
men who took no trouble to investigate the truth of their
assertions, and in the fifteenth century were as much believed in
as they had been in the thirteenth, although gardening having
been practised all this time, something much more accurate
could have been written. A translation of Walter de Henley’s
Husbandry is attributed, probably erroneously, to Grosseteste.7
* Vocabularies in a Library of National Antiquities. Wright, 1857. MS.
Brit. Mus. Cotton Julius A ii.
f See Sam Pegge, Life of Robert Grosseteste. 1793, p. 308.
J Sloane MS. 686. “ The tretyseoff housbandry that Mayster Groshe [de]
made that whiche was Bishope of Lycoll he translate this booke out off frensche
in to English.”
A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND.
Grammatical* This includes most of the simple herbs then
known, with the Latin equivalents. The Latin is not always
correctly translated, the name of some common native flower,
being sometimes substituted for a plant which was unknown
to the writer.
The earliest writers on this subject in England, were church-
men; Alexander Necham, Abbot of Cirencester, and Bishop
Grosseteste, of Lincoln. They both studied at the University
of Paris, and thus had an opportunity of seeing for them-
selves the state of horticulture abroad. Their writings only
touch incidentally on gardening. Grossetestef (b. cir. 1175,
d. 1253) wrote on many subjects ; he was skilled in medicine,
and had a knowledge of the virtues and properties of plants.
The works attributed to him are so numerous, that it is scarcely
possible that all can have come from his pen, but everything
which bore his name continued to be read, and referred to,
for more than two centuries after his death. Therefore his
works on husbandry must have had considerable influence on
horticulture. Palladius’s work, De Re Rustica, written at some
early date, probably in the fifth century, was the foundation of
nearly all English writings on husbandry, for several centuries,
and most of them, that of Grosseteste included, were merely
translations, or adaptations, of this work. De Re Rustica is
in fourteen books. The first is introductory, the following
twelve are devoted in turn to each month of the year, the
fourteenth to grafting. Various recipes, such as growing apples
without cores or cherries without stones, were thus passed on by
men who took no trouble to investigate the truth of their
assertions, and in the fifteenth century were as much believed in
as they had been in the thirteenth, although gardening having
been practised all this time, something much more accurate
could have been written. A translation of Walter de Henley’s
Husbandry is attributed, probably erroneously, to Grosseteste.7
* Vocabularies in a Library of National Antiquities. Wright, 1857. MS.
Brit. Mus. Cotton Julius A ii.
f See Sam Pegge, Life of Robert Grosseteste. 1793, p. 308.
J Sloane MS. 686. “ The tretyseoff housbandry that Mayster Groshe [de]
made that whiche was Bishope of Lycoll he translate this booke out off frensche
in to English.”