Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/404

 304 STATE OF HORTICULTURE IN ENGLAND trees were planted in the royal garden at Westminster in the fourth year of Edward the First, 1276 ". I have not found any notices of the nectarine or apri- cot earher than the fifteenth century ^. The ALMOND is mentioned by Necham ^, but we may reason- ably assume it was cultivated chieHy as an ornamental tree, and that the large quantities of this nut eaten during Lent, in ancient times, were imported from the south of Europe. It is worthy of remark that Necham speaks of the date-palm, a tree which appears to have been cultivated in England as early as the sixteenth century. Lawson, in his " New Orchard," gives instructions for setting date stones. Plums are seldom named in early accounts. Notwithstanding Mr. Loudon's assertion, it may be fairly presumed that the cherry was well known at the period of the Conquest and at every subsequent time. We have seen that it is mentioned by Necham in the twelfth, and that it was cultivated in the earl of Lincoln's garden in the thirteenth century. It is true no varieties of it are named, as of the pear, but when we examine writers of the beginning of the seven- teenth century, as for instance the " Husbandman's fruitfull Orchard," published before 1609, we find that four varieties of the cherry Avere then grown in England, viz., the Elemish, the Gascoyne, the English and the Black cherry. The foreign sorts ripened in May, the native not before June. It is ex- tremely probable that the Gascoyne cherry was brought into this country soon after Guienne became a dependency of the British crown, and our great mercantile intercourse with Flanders, from a very remote time, would naturally occasion the introduction of its fruits as well as its manufactures. The. late Mr. Loudon ^ refers to one Richard Haines, fruiterer to Henry the Eighth, as the ])erson supposed, by some, to have re-uitroduced the culture of the cherry in England. This opi- nion was derived from the " Epistle to the Reader," prefixed to " The Husbandman's fruitfull Orchard ;" the name of the fruiterer was not Haines but Harris ; he was an Irishman, and planted an orchard, celebrated in the seventeenth century, at Teynham in Kent, which bore the name of the " New-gar- u From the commentary of Goclefridus ^ Both are named by Lawson in the six- on Palladius, transhited in the fifteentli teenth century. century by NichoLas BoUarde, we find that J' Directions for planting it are given by the fruit of tl.e peach was then called its Nicholas ]5ollardc, in the fifteenth century. apple. " Also the appul of apechcr shalle MS. Karl. 1 1(J, fo. IS/i, 6. wox rede if liis ... be gryfted one a jdane >= Encyclopiedia of Gardening, ed. 183-5, (?plome) ti-e." MS. llarl. IKi, fo. h'AJ. p. 22.