Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/407

 IN EARLY TIMES. 307 ing of a rose is one of the commonest species of quit-rent named in ancient conveyances. The extent to which the cul- tivation of this flower had been carried between the fourteenth and the sixteenth century, m.'iy be estimated by the varieties enumerated by Lawson ^ ; they are the red, damask, velvet, double-double Pi-ovcnce rose ; the sweet musk rose, double and single, and the double and single white rose. The Pro- vence rose was probably first imported in the fifteenth cen- tury, when the occu{)ation of Trance by the English may be conjectured to have caused the introduction of many addi- tional varieties of fruits and flowers ; the marriage of Marga- ret of Anjou Avith Henry the Sixth maybe regarded also as an event likely to have brought the Provence rose to our northern climate. Of all the flowers, however, known to our ancestors, the gilly-flowcr or clove pink ', (chu-de-r/iroj/ee,) was the com- monest, and to a certain degree the most esteemed. ]lr. Loudon has stated, erroneously, that the cruelties of the duke of Alva in 1507, were the occasion of om' receiving through the Tlemish weavers, gilly-flowers, carnations, and Provence roses. The gilly-flower had been known and prized in Eng- land centuries before: at the end of the sixteenth century, Lawson, who terms it the king of flowers, except the rose, boasted that he had gilly-flowers ''of nine or ten severall colours, and divers of them as bigge as roses. Of all flowers (save the Damaske rose) they are the most pleasant to sight and smell. Their use is much in ornament, and comforting the spirites, by the sence of smelling." There was a variety of this flower well known in early times as the wall gilh-flower or bee-flower, "because growing in walles, even in winter, and good for BeesJ." The reserved rent, " /f//if/.s cJavi (jario- JiHy which is of such frequent occurrence in medieval deeds relating to land, meant simply the render of a gilly-flower, although it has been usually understood to signify the pay- ment of a clove of commerce ; the incorrectness of this read- ing must be apparent if it be recollected that the clove was scarcely knoAvn in Europe in the twelfth and thir- teenth centuries, when this kind of reserved rent was most common. Another flower of common growth in medieval orchards, or gardens, was the pervinke, or periwinkle ; h " A New Orcliard and Garden," &c., J "The Country Housewife's Garden," p. 57. p. 1 1. > Dianthus Caryophyllus,