Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/320

 300 Hiftory of Domejiic Manners his poem " De regimine principum," recently printed for the Roxburgh Club, fays (p. 47), — Thy lyfe, my Jone, is but a chery-feire. During the reft of the fifteenth century, the allufions to the cherry- fairs are very frequent.* Yet in face of all this, and ftill more, abundant evidence, Loudon (" Encyclopaedia of Gardening," edition of 1850) fays, " Some fuppofe that the cherries introduced by the Romans into Britain were loft, and that they were re-introduced in the time of Henry VIII. by Richard Haines (it fliould be Harris), the fruiterer to that monarch. But though we have no proof that cherries were in England at the time of the Norman conqueft, or for fome centuries after it, yet Warton has proved, by a quotation from Lidgate, a poet who wrote about or before 1415, that the hawkers in London were wont to expofe cherries for fale, in the fame manner as is now done early in the feafon." To turn from the fruit-garden to the flower-garden, modern writers have fallen into many ftmilar miftakes as to the fuppofed recent date of the introdu6tion of various plants into this country. Loudon, for inftance, fays that we owe the introduftion of the gilliflower, or clove-pink {dian- tliiis caryopkyUiis), to the Flemings, who took refuge on our fhores from the favage perfecutions of the duke of Alva, in the latter half of the ftxteenth century ; whereas this flower was certainly well known, under the name of gillofres, ages before, Rofes, lilies, violets, and periwinkles, feem to have continued to be the favourite garden-flowers. A manufcript of the flfteenth century in the Britifli Mufeum (MS. Sloane, No. 1201) furniflies us with a lift of plants then confidered neceflary for a garden, arranged firft alphabetically, and then in clafles, of which I will here give verbatim the latter part, as the beft illuftration of the mediaeval notion of a garden, and as being, at the fame time, a very complete lift. After the alphabetical lift, the manufcript goes on : — Of the fame herhes for potage. Borage, langdebefe (i), vyolettes, malowes, marciiry, daundelyoun, avenre, Archaic and Provincial Words," under the word Cherry-Fair. (I) Buglos. myntes.
 * For many references, the reader is referred to Halliweir.s " Dictionary of