And in England Parkinson writes, “The cones or apples are used of divers Vintners in this city, being painted to express a bunch of grapes, whereunto they are very like and are hung up on their bushes, as also to fasten keyes unto them, as is seene in many places. The kernels with the hard shels, while they are fresh, or newly taken out, are used by Apothecaries, Comfitmakers, and Cookes. Of them are made Comfits, Marchpanes and such like, and with them a cunning cook can make divers kech-choses for his master’s table.” Barberries were used as a garnish to salads and other dishes and sometimes as an ingredient. Evelyn mentions them as an item in “Sallet All-sorts,” and Gervase Markham describes the making of “Paste of Genoa,” a confection of Quince, and adds, “In this sort you now make paste of Peares, Apples, Wardens, Plummes of all kindes, Cherries, Barberries or whatever fruit you please.” He adds this fruit to the ingredients required in making aromatic vinegar, and also directs that a good quantity of whole Barberries, both branches and others, be served with Pike “or any fresh fish whatsoever.” Parkinson says, “The leaves are sometimes used in the stead of Sorrell to make sauce for meate, and by reason of their sournesse are of the same quality.” The “delicious confitures d’épine vinette, for which Rouen is famous,” are prepared from them, says Dr Fernie, and there is no doubt that they make an excellent jelly. Formerly they were so much prized that, as Miss Amherst quotes from Le Strange’s “Household Accounts,” in 1618, 3s. was paid for one pound of them.

Strawberry leaves were used as a garnish and for their flavour. Parkinson tells us that they were “alwayes used among other herbes in cooling drinks,” and Markham mentions both them and Violet leaves in his directions to “Smoar a Mallard,” and “to make an excellent Olepotrige, which is the only principall dish of boyled meate, which is esteemed in all Spaine. “For dessert”: The berries are often brought to the table as a rare service, whereunto Cleret wine, creame or milke is added with sugar. The water distilled of the berries is good for the passions of the heart, caused by the perturbation of the spirits being eyther drunk alone or in wine, and maketh the heart mery.” Such a pleasant and easy remedy against the evils arising from “perturbation of spirits” is worth remembering! Gerarde and Parkinson both speak of the prickly strawberry; a plant which is “of no use for meate” but which has “a small head of greene leaves, many set thick together like unto a double ruffe, and is fit for a gentlewoman to wear on her arme, etc. as a raritie instead of a flower.” Gerarde has a curious little note on its discovery. “Mr John Tradescant hath told me that he was the first that took notice of this Strawberry and that in a woman’s garden at Plimouth, whose daughter had gathered and set the roots in her garden, instead of the common Strawberry, but she finding the fruit not answer her expectation, intended to throw it away, which labour he spared her, in taking it and bestowing it among the lovers of such vanities.” The custom of transplanting wild strawberries was very general.

Miss Amherst says that in the Hampton Court Accounts there are “several entries of money paid for strawberry roots, brought from the wood to the King’s garden.” The fact that this is no longer the custom, may explain the disappointment that some have experienced, who, in the hope of enjoying “the most excellent cordial smell” described by Sir Francis Bacon, have haunted their kitchen gardens when the strawberry leaves are dying, and without reward. The strawberries grown there at present are not, as in his day, natives, subjected to civilisation, but are chiefly of American or Asiatic origin (the first foreign strawberry cultivated in England was Fragaria virginiana, and was introduced from North America in 1629; four years after the Essay on Gardens was first published), and if their leaves have any fragrance, it must be of the faintest possible description. Anyone, however, who passes through a wood, towards evening, especially if it is a mild and slightly damp day in October, may speedily realise how true and admirable was this counsel given by the Great Lord Chancellor.

CHAPTER III
OF HERBS USED IN DECORATIONS, IN HERALDRY, AND FOR ORNAMENT AND PERFUMES

It is, perhaps, surprising in studying the history of common English herbs to find how many were the uses to which they were put by our forefathers. One reason of their eminence was that no doubt in pre-hygienic days they were more to be desired, but, besides this, something “delightful to smell to” seems to have been a luxury generally appreciated for its own sake. In his poem of the “Baron’s Wars,” Michael Drayton, by a casual reference, shows how much agreeable scents were valued, and the pains taken to procure them. He is speaking of Queen Isabella’s room.

And in describing the bewilderment of a “young, tender maid,” led through the magnificent court of some prince, he says she was:—

In a discourse, intended to prove that the magic number five is perpetually appearing in all forms of nature, and that network is an equally ubiquitous design, Sir Thomas Browne mentions en passant, the “nosegay nets” of the ancients—that is, nets holding flowers, that were suspended from the head, to provide continuously a pleasant odour for the wearer. It is very nice to find a survival of the belief that scents affect the spirits and may be beneficial to the health, and in “Days and Hours in a Garden,” E. V. B. declares herself to be of that opinion. “Sweet Smells... have a certain virtue for different conditions of health,” she says. “Wild Thyme will renew spirits and vital energy in long walks under an August sun. The pure, almost pungent scent of Tea Rose, Maréchal Neil is sometimes invigorating in any lowness of... Sweet Briar promotes cheerfulness... Hawthorn is very doubtful and Lime-blossom is dreamy.... Apple-blossom must be added to my pharmacopœia of sweet smells. To inhale a cluster of Blenheim orange gives back youth for just half a minute after... it is a real, absolute elixir.”

The sacristan’s garden, devoted to growing flowers and herbs for the service of the church, has been already mentioned, and Henry VI. actually left in his will a garden to be kept for this purpose to the church of Eton College (Nichol’s “Wills of the Kings and Queens of England”). After the Reformation the practice of laying fresh green things about the churches was apparently not abandoned, for in 1618, James I. set forth a declaration permitting “Lawfull recreations after divine service, and allowed that women should have leave to carry rushes to the church for the decoring of it according to old custome.”[54] Rushes are still strewed on Whitsunday at the church of St Mary Radcliffe, in Bristol, and the day is often called “Rush-Sunday” there in consequence.

In the accounts of St Margaret’s, Westminster, there is a payment made for “herbs strewn in the church on a day of thanksgiving” in 1650. Coles (1656) says: “It is not very long since the custome of setting up Garlands in Churches, hath been left off with us, and in some places setting up of Holly, Ivy, Rosemary, Dayes, Yew, etc., in Churches at Christmas, is still in use.”[55] Later, the custom seems almost entirely to have dropped, and in an article in the Quarterly (1842), the writer is torn between pious aspirations and loyalty to the church views of the day: “We cannot but admire the practice of the Church of Rome, which calls in the aid of floral decorations on her festivals. If we did not feel convinced that it was the most bounden duty of the Church of England at the present moment to give no unnecessary offence by restorations in indifferent matters, we should be inclined to advocate, notwithstanding the denunciation of some of the early Fathers, some slight exceptions in the case of our own favourites.”

The decorations of English houses were much admired by Dr Levinus Lemmius in 1560, when he visited us. “And beside this, the neate cleanliness, the exquisite finenesse, the pleasaunt and delightfull furniture in every poynt for household, wonderfully rejoiced me; their chambers and parlours strawed over with sweet herbes refreshed me.”[56] Further on, he praises “the sundry sortes of fragraunte floures” about the rooms. Parkinson mentions wall-flowers and “the greater-flag” being used “in nosegayes and to deck up a house,” and Newton says they took branches of willow to trim up their parlours and dining roomes in summer, and did “sticke fresh greene leaves thereof about their beds for coolnesse.”[57] Sir Hugh Platt (1653) advised that “for summer-time your chimney may be trimmed with a fine bank of mosse... or with orpin, or the white flower called everlasting.... And at either end one of your flower or Rosemary pots.... You may also hang in the roof and about the sides of the room small pompions or cowcumbers pricked full of barley, and these will be overgrowne with greene spires, so as the pompion or cowcumber will not appear.... You may also plant vines without the walls, which being let in at quarrels, may run about the sides of your windows, and all over the sealing of your rooms.”[58] Herbs in image were sometimes hung round the room. Harrison mentions “arras worke, or painted cloths, wherein either diverse histories, or hearbes, beasts, knots, and such like are stained.” Of flowers thought specially suitable indoors Tusser (1577) gives a list: “Herbes, branches, and flowers for windows and pots,” and Bachelor’s Buttons, Sweet Briar, and “bottles, blue, red, and tawney” are among the forty he mentions. A separate list is set forth of twenty-one “Strewing Herbs,” and this includes Basil, Balm, Marjoram, Tansy, Germander, and Hyssop. The practice of strewing the floors with herbs and rushes, however, started long before his time. “At the Court of King Stephen, which exceeded in magnificence that of his predecessors ... and in houses of inferior rank upon occasions of feasting, the floor was strewed with flowers.... Becket, in the next reign, according to a contemporary author (Fitz-Stephen) ordered his hall to be strewed every day, in the winter with fresh straw or hay, and in summer with rushes or green leaves, fresh gathered; and this reason is given for it, that such knights as the benches could not contain, might sit on the floor without dirtying their cloaths.”[59] The contrast between the pomp of so large a following, and the simplicity of their accommodation affords an odd picture of the mingled stateliness and bareness in the great man’s household.

In the reign of Edward I., “Willielmus filius Willielmi de Aylesbury tenet tres virgatus terræ... per serjeantiam inveniendi stramen ad lectum Domini Regis et ad straminandum cameram suam et etiam inveniendi Domino Rege cum venerit apud Alesbury in estate stramen ad lectum suam et procter hoc herbam ad juncandam cameram suam.”[60] (William, son of William of Aylesbury, holds three roods of land... by serjeantry, of finding straw for the bed of our Lord the King and to straw his chamber... and also of finding for the King when he should come to Aylesbury in summer straw for his bed, and, moreover, grass or rushes to strew his chamber.) Though grass is the literal translation of herbam, it is quite possible, judging from old customs generally, that hay or sweet herbs, may be intended here. “It may be observed further that there is a relique of this custom still subsisting, for at Coronations the ground is strewed with flowers by a person who is upon the establishment called the Herb-Strewer, with an annual salary.” From this it appears that there were persons regularly appointed to strew herbs for the royal pleasure, but for what length of time the Herb-Strewer was an official actually living at Court, it is very difficult to discover. At the time of the Coronation of James II. and his Queen, Mary Dowle was “Strewer of Herbes in Ordinary to His Majesty,” and among the instructions issued before the ceremony were the following: “Two breadths of Blue Broad-cloth are spread all along the middle of the Passage from the stone steps in the Hall, to the Foot of the Steps in the Choir, ascending the Theatre, by order of the Lord Almoner of the Day, amounting in all 1220 yards; which cloth is strewed with nine Baskets full of sweet herbs and flowers by the Strewer of Herbs in Ordinary to His Majesty, assisted by six women, two to a Basket, each Basket containing two Bushels.” All the details of his Coronation were most carefully considered and finally settled “in solemn conclave in the presence of James II.,” says Roberts in his sketch of the Approaching Coronation of George II., and “little variation has taken place in the Ceremony since.” From a manuscript belonging to Mr Eyston, of East Hundred, Wantage, dated 1702, W. Jones (“Crowns and Coronations”) quotes an: “Order for a gown of scarlet cloth, with a badge of Her Majesty’s Cypher on it, for the Strewer of Herbs to Her Majesty, as was provided at the last Coronation.” This looks as if she played her part in the ceremony of crowning King William and Queen Mary, and was also present at the crowning of Queen Anne, though Roberts, in his “Complete Account of the Coronations of the Kings and Queens of England” does not mention her. In the State Archives is a “Warrant to the Master of the Great Wardrobe for delivering of scarlet cloth to Alice Blizard, herb strewer to Her Majesty,” dated 30th November 1713, showing that whether at that date she was continually at Court, or whether her services were confined to the day of Coronation, she was at anyrate officially recognised in the ordinary course of things, and not only when any very great ceremony was imminent. I cannot be sure if the Herb Strewer appeared at the Coronation of George I., but she certainly did at that of George II., and in the full accounts of the Coronation of George IV., which was celebrated with great magnificence, there are most elaborate descriptions of her dress, badge, mantle, etc., and also portraits of her in full attire. From among many applicants, the King chose Miss Fellowes, sister of the Secretary to the Lord Great Chamberlain, for the coveted distinction. “Miss Fellowes wore a gold badge suspended from her neck by a gold chain, with an inscription indicative of her office on one side, and the King’s arms beautifully chased on the other. Six young ladies assisted her. Their costume was white, but Miss Fellowes wore, in addition, a scarlet mantle trimmed with gold lace. They were very elegantly dressed in “white muslin, with flowered ornaments. Three large ornamented baskets of flowers were brought in and placed near the ladies,”[61] who walked in the front of the Royal Procession. At ten minutes before eleven Miss Fellowes, with her six tributary herb-women heading the grand procession, appeared at the Western Gate of the Abbey.... She and her maids and the serjeant porter came no further, but remained at the entrance within the west door. In a beautiful series of coloured plates depicting all the costumes worn at that Coronation, there is one of Miss Fellowes and her “maids.” She has a small basket in her left hand; from her right hand, raised high, she is letting a shower of blossoms fall. Her hair is dressed in short ringlets. All the ladies wore wreaths of flowers, and the “maids” have, as well, long garlands falling over one shoulder and across their white dresses almost to the hem. In a charming letter written by Hon. Maria Twistleton to her cousin, Mrs Eardley Childers, there is one more detail of these ladies. “Gold Baskets of Grecian shape, filled with choicest sweets were ranged at their feet, and as they passed they presented a magnolia to us.”[62] A claim to this office was put forward, before the last Coronation, but alas! His Majesty decided to dispense with this picturesque adjunct to the ceremony! Though the strewing of rushes and herbs was a part of the preparations for any household festival, they were a special feature of bridal ceremonies.

Drayton, too, alludes to this practice in the “Polyolbion.”

And gives a long list of wedding flowers, of which Meadow-sweet (sometimes called bridewort) is one. Gilded Rosemary, or sprigs of Rosemary dipped in sweet waters were used, and Brand gives an account of a wedding where the bride was “led to church between two sweet boys with bride-laces and rosemary tied to their silken sleeves.”[63] Nosegays, too, were gathered for weddings, and Brand quotes a remarkable and cynical passage from “The Plaine Country Bridegroom,” by Stephens: “He shews neere affinitie betwixt marriage and hanging, and to that purpose he provides a great nosegay and shakes hands with everyone he meets, as if he were preparing for a condemned man’s voyage.” Herrick’s lines beginning, “Strip her of spring-time, tender, whimpering maids,” are too well known to repeat, but they tell very prettily which flowers were appropriated to the married and which to the unmarried. Dyer tells us that this custom of strewing them is still kept up in Cheshire, with occasional sad results. Often, the flowers that were strewn were emblematical, and if the bride chanced to be unpopular, she stepped her way to church over flowers whose meanings were the reverse of complimentary!

Drayton’s contemporaries were more amiable.

Herbs have pointed proverbs; for instance: “He who sows hatred, shall gather rue,”—a saying which some have found to be “ower-true”; and, “The Herb-Patience does not grow in every man’s garden,”—a piece of wisdom which may be proved only too often. Both these proverbs turn on a pun, but some herbs are alluded to in a literal sense. The old Herbalists used to count Pinks among herbs, and this flower’s name is very commonly heard in the expression: “The pink of perfection.” Mercutio says in Romeo and Juliet, “I am the very pink of courtesy”; a phrase which is wonderfully expressive. Miss Amherst quotes an old ballad to show that the periwinkle was used as a term of praise, for in this, a noble lady, a type of excellence, is called, “The parwink of prowesse.” The inelasticity of modern opinions (on herbs) forbids that I should here go into the history of this most interesting flower, beloved by Rousseau and endowed by the French with magic power. One of their names for it is, Violette de Sorcier. I will only say that the Italians call it the “Flower of the Dead,” and place it on graves; and to the Germans it is the “Flower of Immortality.” In England it was much used in garlands, and it was with Periwinkle that Simon Fraser was crowned in mockery, when in 1306 (after he had been taken prisoner, fighting for Bruce), he rode, heavily ironed, through London to the place of execution.

Clove gillyflowers were admitted, till lately, into the herb-garden, so I may mention that among several cases of nominal rent, land being held on the payment of certain flowers or other trifles, “three clove gillyflowers to be rendered on the occasion of the King’s Coronation,” was once the condition of holding the “lands and tenements of Ham in Surrey.” Roses were the flowers most often chosen for such a purpose, and roses and gillyflowers together were paid as rent by St Andrew’s Monastery in Northampton at the time of its dissolution under Oliver Cromwell. Blount[64] mentions that Bartholomaus Peyttevyn, of Stony-Aston in Somerset, held his lands on the payment of a “sextary” of Gillyflower wine annually, at Christmastide. A “sextary” contained about a pint and a half, sometimes more. “A still more whimsical tenure was that of a farm at Brookhouse, Penistone, York, for which, yearly, a payment was to be made of a red rose at Christmas and a snowball at mid-summer. Unless the flower of the Viburnum or Guelder-rose, sometimes called Snowball, was meant, the payment bill had been almost impossible in those days when ice-cellars were unknown.”[65]

Clove gillyflowers found their way into Heraldry, and appeared as heraldic emblems, and besides them, Guillim mentions “Rosemary, Sweet Marjoram, Betony, Purslane and Saffron,” being borne in Coat Armour. But, “because such daintiness and affected adornings better befit ladies and gentlemen than knights and men of valour, whose worth must be tried in the field, not under a rose-bed, or in a garden-plot, therefore the ancient Generous made choice rather of such herbs as grew in the fields, as the Cinque-foil, Trefoil,” etc.[66] It is an interesting explanation of the reason that dictated the choice of these two last herbs, often seen in heraldic bearings. One of Guillim’s corrections must specially delight all west country people. The Coat of the Baskerviles of Hereford was: Argent, a cheveron, Gules, between three Hurts. “These (saith Leigh) appear light blue and come of some violent stroke. But, if I mistake not, he is farr wide from the matter... whereas they are indeed a kind of fruit or small round Berry, of colour betwixt black and blue... and in some places called Windberries, and in others Hurts or Hurtleberries.” Guillim knew the popular name of Whortleberries better than did his fellow-author. The idea of choosing three bruises as a “charge” does not seem to have struck Mr Leigh as being at all odd.

In Saxony Rue has given its name to an Order. A chaplet of Rue borne bendwise on “barrs of the Coat Armour of the Dukedom of Saxony” (till then “Barry of ten, sable and or,”) was granted by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to Duke Bernard of Anhalt (the first of his house to be Duke of Saxony), at his request, “to difference his arms from his Brothers’,” Otho, Marquis of Brandenberg, and Siegfrid, Archbishop of Breme. This took place in the year 1181, but the Order was not founded till more than six centuries had passed, and was then due to Frederick Augustus, first King of Saxony, who created the Order of the Rautenkrone on the 20th July 1807. In the newspapers of October 24th, 1902, it was announced that the King of Saxony had conferred the Order of the Crown of Rue on the Prince of Wales. Sprigs of Rue are now interlaced in the Collar of the Order of the Thistle, but earlier it was composed of thistles and knots. There is extreme uncertainty as to the origin or this Order, and cold suspicion is thrown on assertions that it was, of old, an established “Fraternity,[67] following the lines of other Orders of Knighthood.” The first appearance of a collar is on the gold bonnet pieces struck in 1539, where King James V. is represented with a collar composed alternately of thistle heads and what seem to be knots or links in the form of the figure 8 or of the letter S, and a similar collar is placed round the Royal Arms in another gold piece of the same year. Collars with knots of a slightly different shape appear on Queen Mary’s Great Seal and on that of James VI. Ashmole says:[68] “It was thought fit that the collars of both the Garter and Thistle of King Charles I. should be used in Scotland, 1633”; but after that the Order seems to have lapsed, for Guillim (Ed. 1679) puts the “Order of Knights of The Thistle or of St Andrewe’s” between the Orders of The Knights of the Round Table and the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and speaks of all their rites and ceremonies in the past tense. This seems as if at that period there was an absolute pause in its chequered career. In 1685 it was “revived” by James II. of Great Britain, who created eight knights, but during the Revolution it lapsed again and “lay neglected till Queen Anne in 1703 restored it to the primitive design of twelve Knights of St Andrew” (Every). “By a statute passed in 1827 the Order is to consist of the Sovereign and sixteen Knights” (Burke). Sprigs of Rue do not make their earliest appearance in the collar till about 1629 and then on doubtful authority. “Mirœus, however, states that the Collar was made of Thistles and Sprigs of Rue; and the Royal Achievements of Scotland in Sir George Mackenzie’s ‘Science of Heraldry’ published in 1680, are surrounded by a Collar of Thistles linked with Sprigs of Rue.” Very shortly before this Guillim had described the collar as being “composed of thistles, intermixed with annulets of gold.” So the publication of Sir George Mackenzie’s book must be the approximate date of the introduction of the Rue; the present collar, badge and robe of the Order are the same as those approved by Queen Anne. André Favyn[69] gives the reasons for this choice of plants, though as the Rue made its first appearance in the collar so much later than the date he assigns (which is that of Charlemagne) one cannot help fearing that he drew a little on his imagination. King Achaius took for “his devise the Thistle and the Rewe. And for the Soule therof, Pour ma deffence Because the Thistle is not tractable or easily handled... giving acknowledgment thereby, that hee feared not forraigne Princes his neighbours... as for the Rewe although it be an Herbe and Plant very meane, yet it is (nevertheless full of admirable vertues)... and serveth to expell and drive serpents to flight... and there is not a more soveraigne remedy for such as are poisoned.” Guillim called Hungus, King of the Picts, the founder, and says that he, “the Night before the Battle that was fought betwixt him and Athelstane, King of England, sawe in the skie a bright Cross in fashion of that whereon St Andrew suffered Martyrdom, and the day proving successful unto Hungus in memorial of the said Apparition, which did presage so happy an omen, the Picts and Scots have ever since bore in the Ensigns and Banners the Figure of the said Cross, which is in fashion of a Saltier. And from thence ’tis believed that this Order took its rise, which was about the year of our Lord 810.” Both authors are quite positive as to their facts regarding the origin of the Order, but they have hardly one fact in common, not even the founder’s name!

It is perhaps not very well known that there was once a French Order of the Thistle, or, as it was sometimes called, “Order of Bourbon.” It was instituted by Louis II., third Duke of Bourbon, surnamed the Good Duke, and it consisted six and twenty knights,[70] each of whom “wore a Belt, in which was embroydered the word Esperance in capital letters; it had a Buckle of Gold at which hung a tuft like a Thistle; on the Collar also was embroydered the same word Esperance, with Flowers de Luce of Gold from which hung an Oval, wherein was the Image of the Virgin Mary, entowered with a golden sun, crowned with twelve stars of silver and a silver crescent under her feet; at the end of the Oval was the head of a Thistle.”

There are other Orders called after flowers, or of which flowers form the badge. Several of the “Christian Orders of Knighthood”—orders instituted for some religious or pious purpose—bore lilies among their tokens, and flowers-de-luce appeared in many. The Order of the Lily or of Navarre was instituted by Prince Garcia in 1048. The Order of the Looking-Glass of the Virgin Mary was created by “Ferdinand, the Infant of Castile, upon a memorable victory he had over the Moors. The Collar of this Order was composed of Bough-pots, full of Lillies, interlaced with Griffons.” Ross and Favyn give most curious accounts of the Order “De la Sainte Magdalaine.” This was instituted by a Noble Gentleman of France, who is alternately called John Chesnil or Sieur de la Chapronaye, “Out of a godly Zeal to reclaim the French from their Quarrels, Duels and other sins.... The Cross of the Order had at three ends, three Flowers-de-Luce; the Cross is beset with Palms to shew this Order was instituted to encourage Voyages to the Holy Land, within the Palms are Sunbeams and four Flowers-de-Luce to shew the glory of the French Nation.” They had a house allotted them near Paris, “wherein were ordinarily five hundred Knights, bound to stay there during two years’ probation.... The Knights that live abroad shall meet every year at their house called the lodging Royal on Mary Magdalene’s Festival Day.” The Lay Brothers were to be of good family; the Vallets des Chevaliers, of “honestes Familles d’Artisans et Mecaniques.” Their garb was carefully ordered, and they were to take the same vows as their master. Other elaborate arrangements were made—“But this Order, as it began, so it ended in the person of Chesnil.” One’s breath is taken away, as when, in a dream, one falls and falls to immense depths and awakes with a sudden shock! Francis, Duke of Bretaigne, created the Order of Bretaigne: “This Order consisteth of five and twenty Knights of the Ears of Corn, so called to signifie that Princes should be careful to preserve Husbandry.” Favyn, however, finds a much more romantic origin for the name, and tells a long story of a dispute among the gods as to the thing most essential to “les Humains.” After lengthy argument, “de sorte que Jupiter toujours favorisant les Dames,” he declared victory to rest with Ceres, to whose verdict that of Minerva was joined (Minerva had pleaded the Ox), and so they both triumphed over the others.

In Amsterdam, a literary guild was once named after a herb, and was called the White Lavender Bloom. Herbs have not appeared on many signboards, but in 1638 the marigold was the sign of “Francis Eglisfield, a bookseller in St Paul’s churchyard,”[71] as it still is of Child’s Bank—and several signs of the “Rosemary Branch” have been known.

The Blessed Thistle was a much prized herb, and its cousin, the Spear Thistle, makes a game for Scotch children; it is sometimes called “Marian,” and when the flower-heads have turned to “blow-balls” the children puff away the down and call:—

Dandelions are still commoner toys.

Grimmer associations are tied up with the bouquet presented to Judges at the Assizes, for originally this bouquet was a bunch of herbs, given to him to ward off the gaol-fever, that was cheerfully accepted as a matter of course for prisoners. Thornton, writing in 1810, says of Rue, that it is “supposed to be antipestilential” and hence our benches of judges are “regaled” with its unpleasing odour. Lupines are not properly to be included here, but Parkinson must be quoted as to a curious use of their seeds. In Plautus’ days, “they were used in Comedies instead of money, when in any scene thereof there was any show of payment.” One is glad he condescends to tell us this detail of ancient stage-plays. Among herbs used for nosegays he mentions Basil, Sweet Marjoram, Maudeline and Costmary, and evidently contemplates their being worn for ornament, and speaking of the prickly strawberry remarks it is “fit for a Gentlewoman to weare on her arme, etc., as a raritie instead of a flower.” Scents were more perpetually to be obtained by carrying a pomander, which was originally an orange stuffed with spices, and thought also to be good against infection. Cardinal Wolsey is described as carrying a “very fair orange, whereof the meat or substance was taken out and filled up again with part of a sponge whereon was vinegar, and other confection against the pestilential airs”; evidently some alexiphar-mick, which he “smelt unto” when going into a crowded chamber. Drayton says, in speaking of a well dedicated to St Winifred:—

The pomander developed into being a little scent-case, elaborately made. Mr Dillon describes a silver one of the sixteenth century which he saw in a collection. It was made to be hung by a chain from the girdle, and though “no larger than a plum, contains eight compartments inscribed as follows: ambra, moscheti (musk), viola, naransi (orange), garofalo (gillyflowers), rosa, cedro, jasmins.” Sweet-scented plants were reduced to “sweete pouthers,” and many were distilled into “sweete waters” and “sweete washing waters,” or helped to make “washing balls.” Orange-flower water is spoken of as “a great perfume for gloves, to wash them, or instead of Rose-water,” and less expensive distillations must have contented more economical housewives. Parkinson tells us of sweet marjoram being put into “sweete bags,” and costmary flowers and lavender tied up in small bundles for their “sweet sent and savour.” Regarding “sweet water” there is a delightful description in Ben Jonson’s Masque Chloridia, “Enter Rain, presented by five persons... their hair flagging as if they were wet, and in the hands, balls full of sweet water, which as they dance, sprinkle all the room.”

The following entry is made among “Queen Elizabeth’s Annual Expences”:—

Peck’s Desiderata.

These offices must have been of considerable importance, for when money went much further than it does nowadays, an annual fee of £40 for “stilling waters” was a high one.

Among some charming recipes Mrs Roundell gives a charming one for “Dorothea Roundell’s Sweet-Jar.” But, perhaps, even sweeter is the next recipe, called simply Sweet-Jar.

Sweet-Jar.

“½ lb. bay salt, ¼ lb. salt-petre and common salt, all to be bruised and put on six baskets of rose-leaves, 24 bay leaves torn to bits, a handful of sweet myrtle leaves, 6 handfuls of lavender blossom, a handful of orange or syringa blossoms, the same of sweet violets, and the same of the red of clove carnations. After having well stirred every day for a week, add ½ oz. cloves, 4 oz. orris root, ½ oz. cinnamon, and two nutmegs all pounded; put on the roses, kept well covered up in a china jar and stirred sometimes.” The recipe of a delicious Pot Pourri made in a country house in Devonshire has also been very kindly sent me:—

Pot Pourri.

“Gather flowers in the morning when dry and lay them in the sun till the evening.

“Put them into an earthen wide jar, or hand basin, in layers. Add the following ingredients:—

“Place the rose-leaves, etc., in layers in the jar. Sprinkle the Bay salt and other ingredients on each layer, press it tightly down and keep for two or three months before taking it out.”

The following herbs are those which are chiefly valued for their perfume or for their historical associations.