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The W1ld-Flowers

of Selborne

and other Papers
by Fohn Vaughan, M.A.

Rector of Droxford and Hon. Canon of Winchester

LIBRARY
NBYVY YORK
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London: ‘fohn Lane, The Bodley Head
New York: “fohn Lane Company. mdccccvt

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Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANson & Co,
At the Ballantyne Press

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GARDEN

PREFACE

IN deference to the wishes of many friends the
writer has collected the following articles, the out-
come of a few hours of leisure in a busy life. In
doing so, he desires to express his obligations to
the editors of the various magazines in which the
papers originally appeared for their kind permission
to reprint them. To the courteous editor of Long-
mans his thanks are especially due, for the majority
of the articles were published in the pages of that
excellent magazine, the recent withdrawal of which he,
with many others, regrets. He also wishes to offer
his acknowledgments to the editors of the Cornhill,

ag emple Bar, Chambers's Journal, The Monthly Packet,

and Zhe Churchman for like favours. The papers are
reprinted almost entirely in their original form: it
seemed best not to attempt to recast them, even if
here and there a slight repetition be discernible.
Among the illustrations special interest attaches
to the frontispiece, which represents the design of a
school which it was proposed to erect at Selborne as
a memorial to Gilbert White. The original sketch
was lately discovered by Mr. John Lane in a cottage

vu

Vill PREFACE

at Selborne, and has now been presented by him to
the British Museum, where it is catalogued under
Hampshire Topography.

May the writer, in conclusion, express the hope that
these essays may please those to whom “the glamour
of the earth” is already more than a fancy, and that
they may lead others to share with him that “fresh
delight in simple things,” which is such an unfailing
source of happiness to those who possess it.

DROXFORD RECTORY,
22nd January 1900.

CONTENTS

THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE
GILBERT WHITE

THE USE OF SIMPLES

POT-HERBS

WILD FRUITS

WALL-FLOWERS .

OUR POISONOUS PLANTS

FLOWERS OF THE FIELD

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF PLANTS .
SOME ADDITIONS TO OUR NATIVE FLORA
THE FLORA OF HANTS.

ESSEX AND THE EARLY BOTANISTS
THE ESSEX MARSHES

MARY RICH, COUNTESS OF WARWICK .
IZAAK WALTON AT DROXFORD

AN “ANCIENT MARKET-TOWNE”: TITCH-
FIELD
A VILLAGE BY THE SEA: PORTCHESTER
ix b

= CONTENTS

FRENCH PRISONERS AT PORTCHESTER
OLD PARISH DOCUMENTS: PORTCHESTER.
JANE AUSTEN AT LYME

THE ISLE OF WIGHT OF LEGH RICHMOND'S
NARRATIVES.

PAGE
201

217

227

237

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

DESIGN FOR A SCHOOL PROPOSED TO BE ERECTED

AT SELBORNE AS A MEMORIAL OF GILBERT

WHITE: . ‘ : : ‘ d Frontispiece
JOHN GERARDE . { : : . To face page 20
JouHn Ray . , ; . ‘ ah hed RN me
TITLE-PAGE TO GERARDE’S “HERBAL” . _,, Mie 9
DEWLANDS (burnt down, Sept. 19, 1900). ,, 4 RS
Mary RicH, CounTESS OF WARWICK . Mi 4) 146
Droxrorpd CHURCH f : 4 eee LOG
Ruins oF PLacE Houses, TITCHFIELD a «ton
PORTCHESTER CASTLE - Jo, tod
THE Rev. LEGH RICHMOND . %4 eae

In the centre of the Cover ts a reproduction of
The Morley Sundial

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THE WILD-FLOWERS
OF SELBORNE

ONE hundred years have passed away since Gilbert
White was laid to rest in Selborne churchyard, and
those years have been years of considerable progress
in the study of botany. In White’s day botany as a
science can hardly be said to have existed, and so it is
not surprising to find that he considered it ‘“‘needless
work” to enumerate all the plants of his neighbour-
hood. However, in the Forty-first Letter to Daines
Barrington he gives a short list of the rarer and more
interesting plants, together with the spots where they
were to be found. It is the purpose of the present
paper to compare the botany of Selborne as chronicled
by Gilbert White in 1778 with what we know of it
to-day.

The most striking feature in the scenery of the
parish is undoubtedly the “ Hanger,” covered now, as
in White’s time, with beeches, ‘the most beautiful,”
as he thought them, ‘of forest trees.” The zigzag
path up the face of the hill is still crowned by the
Wishing-stone, from which, in clear weather, an
extensive view of the surrounding country may be
obtained ; the horizon is bounded by the Southdowns,

A

2 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

and the waters of Wolmer Pond gleam in the distance.
In wet seasons, the soil of the zigzag being chalk, the
path is so slippery as to be almost dangerous. In
early summer the dog-rose puts forth its delicate
blossoms, and the long stems of honeysuckle scramble
over the bushes. Later on the autumnal gentian, or
fellwort, may be found.

Down below, a little further along the ridge of the
hill, may be seen, through a gap made by some winter
storm in the dense forest of beech-trees, the house in
which White lived. There it nestles in the valley,
beneath the shadow of the “ beech-grown hill” ;
altered, indeed, by the hand of restoration, and en-
larged considerably beyond its former dimensions,
but yet, in part at least, just as the old naturalist
left it. The wing which contained his study and
bedroom remains untouched. The old staircase is
still there. You may see the room in which he slept,
with a heavy beam running across the ceiling, and
the windows looking out on the Hanger. Outside
on the lawn stands White’s sun-dial, while the brick
pathway—four bricks wide—still runs out into the
meadow beyond. This pathway formerly led to a
summer-house, which unfortunately was allowed to
go to ruin, and no trace of it now remains. Not far
off, among the long grass of the meadow, the leaves
of the wild tulip may at the right season be found,
but it is many years since a flower has been seen. In
the summer of 1780 a pair of honey-buzzards built
their nest upon a tall slender beech near the middle
of the Hanger, and from the summer-house below
White could watch them at their work. Here, too,
the fern-owls or goatsuckers glided about in the even-
ing twilight; and one summer a pair of hoopoes

THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 3

frequented the spot. On the Hanger still flourishes,
as it flourished a hundred years ago, though not in
such abundance, the stinking hellebore, or setterwort.
This handsome plant may often be seen in shrubberies
and garden-walks, but in a wild state it is not often
met with. Inthe good old times it seems to have been
much sought after by those learned in the properties
of herbs. ‘‘The good women,” says White, “give
the leaves powdered to children troubled with worms ;
but,” he adds, “it is a violent remedy, and ought to
be administered with caution.” As late as 1845 a
child died at Southampton from the effects of this
so-called remedy administered by its grandmother.
The name ‘‘setterwort” reveals another curious use
of this plant. ‘‘Husbandmen,” says old Gerarde,
“are used to make a hole, and put a piece of the
root into the dewlap of their cattle, as a sefov, in cases
of diseased lungs, and this is called pegging or setter-
ing.” Among the brushwood, on the top of the hill,
there grew in White’s time the Daphne Mezereum.
This fine shrub, with its pink fragrant flowers, which
appear in early spring before the leaves, may often
be seen in gardens in the neighbourhood, but on
Selborne Hanger it is no longer to be found. The
last plant has been removed into some cottage garden.
The spurge laurel, with its evergreen crown of shin-
ing leaves and dark poisonous berries, is everywhere
abundant. In the month of August, the sickly-looking
yellow Monotropa, or bird’s nest, may be found in
plenty under the shady beeches; and about the same
time, or a little later, that rare orchis, the violet helle-
borine, will be in flower. This plant is, perhaps, to
a botanist the most interesting of the Selborne Flora.
The trade of a truffle-hunter is all but extinct. Now

4 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

and then a man comes round with truffles for sale, but
not often. The last of the old race died not long since
in a hamlet within a few miles of Selborne. A hun-
dred years ago truffles abounded, White tells us, in
the Hanger and High Wood. They probably abound
now at the right seasons, but the supply from France
having swamped the English market the search for
them has become no longer profitable. And so the
profession of truffle-hunting is gone.

In the churchyard the ancient yew-tree, “ probably
coéval with the church,” sheds its pollen in clouds of
dust every spring. The trunk measured upwards of
23 feet in circumference in White’s time; in 1823
Cobbett found it to be 23 feet 8 inches; it has now
increased to 25 feet 2 inches. This is among the
largest yew-trees in Hampshire. On the north side
of the chancel a small head-stone marks the spot
where the old naturalist lies. His grave is in keeping
with the beautiful simplicity of his life. No ostenta-
tious monument covers his last resting-place; only a
head and footstone; on the former, under 2 feet in
height, is inscribed the letters “G. W.,” and the date,
“June 26, 1793.” Between the low lichen-covered
stones not even a mound is raised, but the grass
waves above him, and the daisies bloom.

From the churchyard a path leads down the Lyth,
towards the old Priory, about a mile distant. The
Priory was dissolved by Henry VIII., and not a stone
of it remains. The site is now occupied by a
modern farmhouse, known as the Priory Farm. In
the garden a stone coffin may be seen, and a few
encaustic tiles, but no further trace of the Augus-
tinian convent meets the eye. The path down the
valley is most picturesque, and was a favourite walk

THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 5

of Gilbert White. In one of his poems he thus
speaks of it :—

** Adown the vale, in lone, sequester’d nook,
Where skirting woods imbrown the dimpling brook,
The ruin’d convent lies ; here wont to dwell
The lazy canon ’midst his cloister’d cell ;
While Papal darkness brooded o’er the land
Ere Reformation made her glorious stand :
Still oft at eve belated shepherd-swains
See the cowl’d spectre skim the folded plains.”

Now, as when those lines were written, the wild ever-
lasting pea climbs among the brambles of the hedge-
row, and in the copse beyond, the small teasel still
grows in abundance, together with herb-paris, and
orpine or live-long. Several species of orchis may be
found in the meadow, including the green-winged
orchis, so called from the strongly-marked green veins
of the sepals, and the twayblade. The curious bird’s-
nest orchis, with its tangled mass of short, fleshy
root-fibres, supposed to resemble a bird’s nest, flowers
in June beside the pathway, while just within the
shadow of the trees sweet woodruff grows. Later
on large patches of musk mallow will be out in the
meadow. One plant, not mentioned by White, but
now to be found in great abundance in a swampy
piece of meadow land down the valley, is the bistort
(twice-twisted) or snake-weed, so called on account
of its large twisted roots. It is a handsome plant,
with its cylindrical spike of flesh-coloured flowers, and
of rare occurrence in Hampshire, and, had it existed
in its present locality in the eighteenth century, could
hardly have escaped White’s notice. Another plant
not mentioned is the snowdrop, which blossoms freely

6 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

every spring in a wood hard by. In the damper parts
of the valley near the stream the common soft rush is
very abundant; this is the plant which a hundred
years ago was gathered for the purpose of making
candles, the process of which is fully described by
White in one of his letters. Here, too, the red spikes
of rumex mingle with the white flowers of meadow-
sweet and the purple blossoms of thistle and self-heal,
while the air is fuil of the scent of water-mint. On
the rising ground, in an open part of the wood which
overshadows the valley, large patches of French-
willow are in blossom, and the large rose-coloured
flowers make a fine show against the dark green back-
ground. The red thread-like stems of the creeping
cinquefoil trail all over the ground, and star the
pathway through the wood with their showy yellow
flowers.

The “hollow lanes” present an even more rugged
appearance than they did in White’s time. He then
described them as “ more like watercourses than roads,
and as bedded with naked rag for furlongs together.
In many places they are reduced sixteen or eighteen
feet beneath the level of the fields, and after floods
and in frosts exhibit very grotesque and wild appear-
ances.” These hollow lanes are no longer used as
thoroughfares, a new road to Alton having been made
some years ago. In places it is hardly now possible
even to walk along them, so overgrown are they with
rank herbage. Here and there boughs of hazel, ash,
or maple meet overhead, while coarse umbellifere and
the tangled stems of briar and dog-rose obstruct the
narrow way. In places the perpendicular sides, often
18 feet high, are bare of herbage, and present a naked
surface of white freestone, broken by the gnarled roots

THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 7

of pollard-trees, and split in every direction by the
winter’s frost. Where the sunlight can penetrate these
gloomy hollows, flowers soon open their bright petals,
and purple foxgloves and the yellow St. John’s wort
lend colour to the scene. In early spring the golden
saxifrage blooms freely as it did a hundred years ago,
and on the very spot where Gilbert White found the
green-hellebore or Bear’s-foot the plant still maintains
a flourishing existence. The tutsan, so precious to
the old herbalists, may also be found in the rocky
lanes, and ferns now as then abound. But though
abundant they are confined comparatively to but few
species; and the rare moonwort, which used to grow
at Selborne, has not been seen for many years.

The Forest of Wolmer, three-fifths of which before
the formation of the parish of Blackmoor lay in the
parish of Selborne, is full of interest to the naturalist.
Though now partially enclosed and planted with oak
and larch trees, snipe and teal continue to breed there
in considerable numbers; and occasionally, especially
in hard winters, rarer wild-fowl are seen. White
enumerates but few of the forest plants; he mentions,
however, four as growing in the bogs of Bin’s Pond.
Of these, the round-leaved and the long-leaved sundew
still exist in abundance; and the wiry stems of the
creeping bilberry, with its bright red flowers and small
evergreen leaves, of which the margins are always
rolled back, may also be found, but not in any
quantity ; while the marsh cinquefoil has altogether
disappeared. The fruit of the creeping bilberry makes
excellent tarts, and in places where the plant is
plentiful is much sought after. Whortleberries—first-
cousins to cranberries—known in the district as
“‘whorts,” abound on “the dry hillocks of Wolmer

8 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

Forest,” and are gathered by the gipsies and sold in
the towns and villages. Hound’s-tongue, a stout
plant with lurid purple flowers, and a strong dis-
agreeable smell like that of mice, grows in several
parts of the forest; and in one particular spot a few
plants of the rare white horehound, covered, as its
name suggests, with white woolly down, and strongly
aromatic—once a famous remedy for coughs—may be
found, together with a few specimens of motherwort, a
plant very seldom met with in the neighbourhood. In
some places a North American plant, with perfoliate
leaves and small white flowers, called Claytonza, after
an American botanist, has established itself; and once
a specimen of dame’s-violet was found. In spring the
pretty little Teesdalia covers the sandy heath; and on
a bank the tower mustard grows, and the uncommon
—at least about Selborne—hoary cinquefoil. On a
“hanger” in a neighbouring parish thousands of
golden daffodils dance and flutter in the breeze every
spring, and people come for miles round to gather
them. At the foot of the “ Hanger,” in a small wet
copse, the lungwort grows. This particular copse is
full of it, but you may search every other wood in
the neighbourhood in vain. The flowers somewhat
resemble the cowslip, only their colour is purple;
indeed, some people call the plant the Jerusalem cow-
slip. Not far from the copse in which the lungwort
grows is an old disused chalk-pit, and in this_ pit
the deadly nightshade is abundant. It is the most
dangerous of British poisonous plants. The dark
purple berries, as large as cherries, are tempting to
children, and fatal cases of poisoning sometimes occur.
Fortunately, it is a plant of rare occurrence and is
mostly found in the neighbourhood of ruins.

d

GILBERT WHITE

THE interest in Gilbert White, and in all that concerns
the parochial and natural history of Selborne, con-
tinues unabated. New editions of the A/zstory are
constantly appearing ; and lately a life of the naturalist,
in two large volumes, by his great-grand-nephew, has
been published. A large mass of correspondence,
never before made public, has been brought together ;
and many interesting details with regard to the daily
life of the great naturalist are for the first time given
to the world.

It is well known that Gilbert White remained all his
life a bachelor; and it has been asserted by some of
his biographers—including the late Professor Bell of
Selborne—that this was due to an unrequited attach-
ment from which the naturalist never recovered. The
lady in question is said to have been Hester Mulso,
who afterwards became Mrs. Chapone, the sister of
his lifelong friend John Mulso, Rector of Meonstoke
and Canon of Winchester. This story, Mr. Holt-
White is at pains to show, has absolutely no founda-
tion, and it must be admitted that the series of letters
from Mulso to White, now for the first time published,
gives no encouragement to the idea; “nor,” adds his
latest biographer, “is any tradition of the disappointed
affections known among the family of the naturalist,

who had but one mistress—Selborne.”
9

10 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

But though White remained a bachelor, he seems
to have been a man of unusually affectionate dispo-
sition. His relations with the members of his family
were of the most cordial nature; and one or another
of his numerous nephews and nieces was generally on
a visit to Selborne. Indeed, he appears to have been
seldom alone. Nephews “ Jack,” or Sam Barker, to
whom he writes many letters on natural history, come
to stay with him, or ‘‘ Niece Molly,” for whom he has
a special affection. One winter ‘brother and sister
John” live with him; and after “brother John’s”
death the widow came to Selborne and resided with
her brother-in-law during the rest of his life. When
““Nephew Jack” marries, he sets off with his bride for
Selborne immediately after the ceremony. Gilbert is
much pleased with his new relation: “she is a nice
needlewoman,” he says, ‘‘and also a proficient in
music, and can shoulder a violin, and in her carriage
much of a gentlewoman.” Other friends too occasion-
ally visit our naturalist. John Mulso and his wife,
“a very inactive lady,” sometimes braved the journey
from Meonstoke, some sixteen miles distant, and would
stay a fortnight. Or Dr. Richard Chandler, the cele-
brated Greek traveller, would come, and the two lovers
of antiquity would examine together the ancient docu-
ments relative to Selborne Priory. Another intimate
friend was the Rev. Ralph Churton, a Fellow of Brase-
nose, who seems to have usually spent Christmas at
Selborne. White was also on terms of the closest
friendship with his clerical neighbours at the Vicarage
and at Newton Valence; and great was his distress
when within eleven months both Mr. Etty and Mr.
Yalden died.

Though College livings now and again fell to his

GILBERT WHITE II

share, White could never reconcile himself to the
thought of leaving Selborne. Once, indeed, when the
provostship of Oriel was vacant, he became a candidate
for the post, but failed to be elected. After this dis-
appointment he seems to have finally decided to remain
at Selborne ; though, as his friend Mulso’s letters re-
veal, there was occasionally a flutter of excitement
when some valuable piece of College preferment fell
vacant. However, at Selborne he remained, retaining
his Fellowship and also the College living of Moreton
Pinkney, in Northamptonshire, which, after the manner
of the age, was served by a curate; while White him-
self took clerical duty in the vicinity of his own home,
first in the neighbouring village of Farringdon, which
he served for twenty-five years, and afterwards in his
own parish of Selborne. The routine of duty was
regularly varied by visits to his relatives in Sussex,
Rutlandshire, and London, and by his annual visit
to Oxford. These journeys were mostly undertaken
on horseback—his friend Mulso calls him a “‘ hussar-
parson”—as it appears White suffered much from
what was called “‘stage-coach sickness.”

Many are the details of domestic economy that we
gather from the naturalist’s letters, especially from
those to his ‘dear niece Molly,” only daughter of
brother Thomas, of South Lambeth. He is constantly
asking her to do little commissions for him in London
—a pound of coffee, half-a-pound of soft sealing-wax,
two or three quires of small writing-paper, or a ‘‘ pound
of Mr. Todd’s 14s. green tea.” Or he asks her to pur-
- chase him “a good large ham,” and to send it down
by coach. The journey to Selborne was not always
accomplished without danger. ‘My ham,” writes
Gilbert White, ‘came safe, but had a great escape;

12 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

for in its passage down the waggon was robbed of
about 430 in value.” Again and again he writes to
Molly for “half a hundred of good salt fish,” or “ five
good Iceland codfishes,” to be sent down by carrier.
On one occasion a great calamity occurred. ‘‘We
thank you,” he writes, “for the salt fish, which proves
more white and delicate than usual. Instead of in a
parcel, the cod came down in a barrel, which, being
leaky, let the brine out on the kitchen floor. I there-
fore told Thomas he should carry it into the cellar.
Thomas, without much thought, took the barrel by
the hoops and got to the cellar stairs, when off came
the hoops, down fell the barrel, out flew the head;
in short, the stairs from top to bottom became one
broken, wet scene of barrel-staves and codfish.” Other
household matters sometimes occupy the attention of
our naturalist. He is busy making catchup from the
mushrooms gathered in the park below the Hanger;
or he is superintending the brewing of his strong beer,
or “ bottling out some very fine raisin wine,” or “half
an hogshead of Mrs. Atherley’s port,” which had, he
notices, ‘‘not quite so good a smell and flavour as
usual, and seemed always to show a disposition to
mantle in the glass.” His garden is a source of con-
stant pleasure and attention to him. He writes to
Molly about his cucumbers, asparagus, the prospect
of his wall-fruit, or the fine show his tulips are mak-
ing. We catch a glimpse of Goody Hampton, “the
weeding-woman,” whose services White proposes to
retain for the summer, “that the garden may be neat
and tidy’? when Molly comes. ‘‘This is the person,”
he adds, ‘‘that Thomas says he likes as well as a
man ; and, indeed, excepting that she wears petticoats,
you would think her a man!” Various improvements

GILBERT WHITE 13

are from time to time carried out on the premises,
He is engaged in making the Ha-ha wall, “built of
blue rags,” in the garden, which may still be seen;
or in erecting his sundial, the column of which, he
notes, is ‘‘very old, and came from Sarson House,
near Amport, and was hewn from the quarries of
Chilmarke.” The building of the “great parlour”
engaged his attention one summer, and seems to have
been a great event in the monotonous life of our
naturalist.

It has often been regretted that no portrait of Gilbert
White exists. Though urged by “brother Thomas”
to sit for his likeness, it does not appear that any
picture was ever made of him. He is said by his
biographer to have been only five feet three inches in
stature and slender in person, but at the same time to
have possessed a very upright carriage and a presence
not without dignity. It is also stated that he was kind
and courteous in manner, and liberal to his poorer
neighbours; while he is said to have been specially
devoted to the attention of his sick parishioners. This
last particular is fully borne out by the numberless
allusions in his letters to the sick and aged folk under
his care at Selborne. His own health appears to have
been generally good, though now and again we hear
of attacks of sickness, and for many years before his
death he was troubled with deafness, which rendered
conversation irksome, and which apparently caused
him to resort to an ear-trumpet, one being found
among his effects at his decease. In one of his letters
we find him alluding to an infirmity which we should
hardly have associated with the writer of the Matura-
list’s Journal. ‘You, in your mild way,” he writes to
Robert Marsham, “ complain a little of procrastination ;

14 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

but I, who have suffered all my life long by that evil
power, call her the Daemon of Procrastination; and
wish that Fuseli, the grotesque painter in London,
who excells in drawing witches, dzmons, incubus’s,
and incantations, was employed in delineating this
ugly hag, which fascinates in some measure the most
determined and resolute of men.”

In White’s letters to members of his family we
occasionally get glimpses of village life as it appeared
in the old-world days of the eighteenth century. There
were no good roads to Selborne, and during the winter
months the village was almost inaccessible except on
foot or horseback. Under date of March 15, 1756, it
is noted in 7he Garden Kalendar as an event worth
chronicling : ‘Brought a four-wheel’d post-chaise to
ye door at this early time of year.” John Mulso,
when he visited his friend at Selborne, regularly asked
for a guide to meet him ‘at the cross-roads,” remark-
ing that the village was as difficult of access as Rosa-
mond’s Bower. One winter a little diversion was
created by the quartering in the village of the “26
High-landers.” ‘These sans-breeches men,” says
White, ‘made an odd appearance in the village, where,
though they had nothing in the world to do, have yet
behaved in a very quiet and inoffensive manner, and
were never known to steal even a turnip or a cabbage,
though they lived much on vegetables, and were aston-
ished at the ‘dearness of Southern provisions.’” The
honesty of the soldiers seems to have been the more
notable in contrast with the doings of some of the
Selborne labourers. It appears from one of White’s
letters to Molly, that, in consequence of a bad harvest,
“the poor took to stealing the farmers’ corn by night ;
the losers offered rewards, but in vain.” The poor

GILBERT WHITE 15

people were beyond question very badly off: a few of
the labourers, it appears from the ‘‘letters,” kept pigs,
and in years when beech-mast was abundant did fairly
well; but, generally speaking, great poverty prevailed.
They tried, many of them, to make a few shillings by
keeping bees. “This day,” notes Gilbert White, “has
been at Selborne the honey-market: for a person from
Chert came over with a cart, to whom all the villagers
round brought their hives, and sold their contents.
Combs were sold last year at about 37d. per pound;
this year 3$d.-4d.” In addition to the general poverty
there was little enough to break the monotony of daily
life. Once, indeed, we read of a cricket-match, in
which “Mr. Woods had his knee-pan dislocated by
the stroke of a ball; and at the same time Mr. Webb
was knocked down and his face and leg much wounded
by the stroke of a ball.” Or a mad dog from ‘“ Newton
great farm” causes intense alarm by biting half the
dogs in the street and many about the neighbourhood.
In consequence of this “17 persons from Newton farm
went in a waggon to be dipped in the sea, and also an
horse.” Or a strange wedding sets all the village for
two days in an uproar, when “‘a young, mad-headed
farmer out of Berks came to marry farmer Bridger’s
daughter, and brought with him four drunken com-
panions.” But “the common people all agree that the
bridegroom was the most of a gentleman of any man they
ever saw.” Whether the labourers were accustomed
to attend their parish church in those days we cannot
discover from White’s letters, but they were not in the
habit of going to chapel. ‘For more than a century
past,” writes our parson-naturalist in the year 1788,
“there does not appear to have been one Papist in
Selborne, or any Protestant dissenter of any denomina-

16 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

tion.” And as there were no chapels, so neither was
there any recognised school. ‘ Selborne,” he adds,
“is not able to maintain a schoolmaster; here are
only two or three dames, who pick up a small pittance
by teaching little children to read, knit, and sew.” It
is interesting to know that after White’s death it was
proposed to build a village school as a memorial to the
historian of Selborne. The scheme was never carried
out, but a sketch lately found in the village of the
proposed building forms a fitting frontispiece to the
present volume.

THE USE OF SIMPLES

_

%

IN the language of the old herbalists, a “ simple” was
the general term for any herb or plant which was
supposed to possess medicinal properties. According
to the curious belief of the time, every plant in the
Materia medica was held to contain its own particular
virtue, and therefore to constitute a ‘‘simple” remedy.
Hence herbs were simples; and in the botanical litera-
ture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries an
expedition in search of plants was frequently termed
a “simpling-voyage” or a “simpling-journey,” while
an apothecary skilled in the knowledge of herbs is
designated by Gerarde “a learned and diligent searcher
of simples.”

The term has now become obsolete, but it may
serve to remind us of a curious branch of learning
which was once identified with the practice of medicine.
In ancient times ‘whatever was scientific in the art
of medicine was centred in the study of herbs, and the
materials of the healing art were wholly vegetable.”
The mineral and chemical remedies are of compara-
tively modern introduction, and date mainly from the
Arabic physicians of the Middle Ages. This priority
of herbal medicines, as Professor Earle has pointed
out, has left its trace in the vocabulary of our language.
The term drug, he tells us, “is from the Anglo-Saxon
drigan, to dry; and drugs were at first dried herbs.

17 B

18 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

Thus the study of plants was identified with’ medicine
by inveterate tradition; and when, in the sixteenth
century, with the beginnings of modern botany, the
chief cities of Europe established eas for study,
they were called Physic Gardens.”

The first of these public physic gardens appears to
have been founded at Padua in the year 1533; this
was quickly followed by similar institutions at Zurich,
at Bologna, and at Cologne. In England Dr. William
Turner, ‘the Father of British botany,” had a physic
garden at his Deanery at Wells and another at Kew,
while he also seems to have had the direction of the
Duke of Somerset’s garden at Sion House. Dear old
Gerarde, whose quaint and curious f/erbal is the
delight alike of the botanist and of the lover of
English literature, had a fine physic garden at Hol-
born, where he cultivated ‘‘ near eleven hundred sorts
of plants of foreign and domestic growth.” Physic
gardens were also established at Oxford and Edin-
burgh; and in the year 1673, owing in a great
measure to the influence and liberality of Sir Hans
Sloane, the friend of Ray, the famous garden at
Chelsea was founded by the Company of Apothe-
caries.

These physic gardens were of great utility in pro-
moting the study of botany and of medicine throughout
Europe. But as the knowledge of science increased,
the gulf between the vocation of the physician and of
the herbalist grew wider. “It was a severance,” says
Professor Earle, in his interesting introduction to
English Plant Names, “of the popular from the
scientific; and it went on widening as botany grew
stronger and more conscious of its vocation, while the
herbal sank ever lower in cant and charlatanry. These

THE USE OF SIMPLES 19

qualities early manifested themselves in connection
with herbals. Even in old Gerarde, favourite and
almost classic as he is, there is a spice of the mounte-
bank. It is not that his book is tinged with popular
error—all the books of the time are that—but his
book leans to the side of superstition. Its motto
might be the lines of Spenser in the Faerze Queene :

: “O who can tell
The hidden powre of herbes and might of Magick spell ?”

Ignored by the faculty, the herbal became the guide
of the quack; and in Culpepper's famous Herbal it
had become a fit companion for the Astrological
Almanack.”

As an illustration of the ignorance and superstition
associated with the use of simples, the belief in the
Doctrine of Signatures may be taken. This belief is
quaintly expressed by the old herbalist, William Coles,
in his scarce work on the Art of Simpling, published
in 1656: ‘Though Sin and Sathan have plunged
mankinde into an Ocean of Infirmities, yet the mercy
of God which is over all his workes, maketh Grasse
to grow upon the Mountaines, and Herbes for the use
of Men, and hath not only stamped upon them a
distinct forme, but also given them particular Signa-
tures, whereby a man may read, even in legible
characters, the use of them.”

Thus, to take two or three examples, the spotted
leaves of the Jerusalem cowslip, a plant common in
cottage gardens, and known in the New Forest as
“Joseph and Mary,” indicate its value in cases of
tuberculous lungs, and its former use for this purpose
has given it the name of lungwort. In like manner
the knotty tubers of the Scrophularia or figwort,

20 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

frequently found by the side of streams, are the sign
or signature that the plant is a sovereign remedy for
scrofulous or knotty glands; and the hard seeds or
stony nutlets of the Lzthospermum, or gromwell, pro-
claim it to be efficacious in cases of calculus or gravel.
The scaly pappus of the common scabious again is the
indication stamped upon it by God that the plant is
valuable for leprous diseases; and the red hue of the
stem and leaves of herb Robert (Geranium Robertia-
num, L.), so abundant in our hedgerows, is a certain
sign that the plant is powerful as a “stancher of
blood.” In many of our Hampshire woods the
elegant plant known as Solomon’s seal is found. If
the rootstock be cut transversely across, some marks
like unto a seal will be noticed. This was sufficient
to show the old herbalists that the plant was specially
created for the express purpose of ‘ sealing” or heal-
ing wounds. ‘The root of Solomon’s seal,” says
Gerarde, ‘‘taketh away in one night, or two at the
most, any bruise, black or blue spots, gotten by falls,
or women’s wilfulness in stumbling upon their hasty
husbands’ fists.”

In spite, however, of the quackery which was in-
separably bound up with the profession of the herbalist,
there can be no doubt that a belief in the virtue of
simples was very general among all classes in the
olden times. There is a curious passage in George
Herbert’s Country Parson, in which the saintly poet
of Bemerton insists on a “knowledge of simples” as
part of the necessary equipment of a parish priest.
The parson, except in “ticklish cases,” is to be the
physician of his flock. He is to keep by him “one
book of physic, one anatomy, and one herbal.” He
is to make the vicarage garden his shop, ‘for home-

THE USE OF SIMPLES 21

bred medicines are both more easy for the parson’s
purse, and more familiar for all men’s bodies. So,
when the apothecary useth either for loosing, rhubarb,
or for binding, bolearmena, the parson,” says Herbert,
“‘useth damask or white roses for the one, and plain-
tain, shepherd’s purse, knotgrass for the other, and
that with better success.” So for salves, the parson’s
wife—for the wife, says Herbert, is to be chosen, not
for her ‘‘ qualities of the world,” but for her “skill in
healing a wound’’—“ seeks not the city, but prefers
her garden and fields before all outlandish gums.
And surely hyssop, valerian, mercury, adder’s tongue,
yarrow, meliot, and St. John’s-wort, made into a salve,
and elder, camomile, mallows, comphrey, and smallage,
made into a poultice, have done great and rare cures.
And in curing of any the parson and his family use
to premise prayers, for this is to cure like a parson,
and this raiseth the action from the shop to the
church,”

And doubtless there was a certain virtue in many
of these old-world remedies. The use of them would
hardly have been continued had their efficacy been
found altogether wanting. And certain it is that
many of these herbal preparations were regarded with
favour even by scientific men. John Ray was the
greatest naturalist of his age, and may be fairly said
in his Methodus Plantarum to have laid the foundation
of modern scientific botany, yet he not only believed
in the virtue of plants, but even used herbal remedies
for his own ailments. Towards the end of his life
Ray suffered severely from some scrofulous complaint,
and was greatly troubled with ulcers on the legs. For
this we find him using a ‘decoction of elecampane,
dockroot, and chalk, in whey, and bathing the affected

22 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

parts therewith”; while, instead of physic, he is taking
a ‘plain diet drink, made of dockroot, watercress,
brooklime, plaintain, and alder leaves, boiled in wort.”
For a time, he tells Sir Hans Sloane, he received
some benefit from this treatment, till “the winter
coming on, and little virtue in the herbs,” he was
forced to give it over.

In Gilbert White’s Hzstory of Selborne we learn,
unfortunately, very little about the use of simples.
He recommends, indeed, that the botanist should
direct his attention to the examination of “the powers
and virtues of efficacious herbs,” and should endea-
vour to “ promote their cultivation”; but he has little
to tell us about the actual use of them. The only
instance he gives is with reference to //elleborus
fetidus, the stinking hellebore, or setterwort, to which
we have already alluded.

But the belief in the efficacy of simples has almost
entirely disappeared. The last of the old race of herb-
doctors is gone. One of the last, Dr. Prior tells us,
was living at Market Lavington, in Wiltshire, at the
close of the eighteenth century. His name was Dr.
Batter. He had been brought up very humbly, and
“lived and dressed as a poor man in a cottage by the
roadside, where he was born and where his father and
grandfather had lived before him, and been famous in
their day as bone-setters. There, if the weather per-
mitted, he would bring out his chair and table, and
seat his numerous patients on the hedgebank, and
prescribe for them out-of-doors. It is said that, being
well acquainted with every part of the county, he
would usually add to the names of the plants that he
ordered, the localities near the home of his visitor
where they would most readily be found.” Still,

THE USE OF SIMPLES 23

though the genuine old-fashioned race of herbalists
has died out, yet here and there in remote country
districts there is a lingering belief in the efficacy of
“harbs.” Richard Jefferies relates that once he met
a labourer who was deeply depressed because of the
death of a son. The poor fellow had had every atten-
tion, but still he regretted one thing. There was a
herb, which grew in wet places and was known only
to a few, that was a certain cure for the kind of
wasting disease which had baffled the skill of the
doctor. There was an old man, said the rustic, living
somewhere by a river, fifty miles away, who possessed
the secret of this herb and by it had accomplished
marvellous cures. He had heard of him, but could
not by any inquiry find out his exact whereabouts ;
and so his son died. Everything possible had been
done, but still he regretted that the herb had not been
applied.

Some years ago there lived in a former parish of
the writer’s a very old woman who in her younger
days had gained a livelihood by selling flowers in
a neighbouring town. Sometimes, too, at the right
season she would tramp the country for miles around
after watercresses and herbs. With regard to the
herbs it was difficult to get much information. The
old lady was very reticent on the subject. The names
of the herbs she would never mention, but she took
them, she said, to a shop at Portsmouth to a man
“she knowed.” One day, when the old lady was ill,
she was in a more communicative mood. A strange
thing happened once; she hardly liked to speak of it,
but it was true. She had been out all day in Bere
Forest after “‘harbs’—twenty miles she had been
after °em—when coming home in the evening, not far

24 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

from the “monument,” near the top of the hill, all of
a sudden a man she had never seen before stood
before her—a sharp-featured man he was, in dark
clothes—and said, ‘I'll give you a sovereign for them
harbs.” ‘‘A sovereign?’ says I. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘a
sovereign,’ and without another word he puts a piece
of money in my hand, takes the harbs, and was gone.
I stood there, tremblin’ from head to foot, I did, I was
that frightened; it were a sovereign right enough—
there was no mistake about that—but who the man
might be, and where he had got to—that’s what
frightened me. I kept that sovereign, for years I
kept it; 2 didn’t dare spend it.” ‘But, Liza,” I
ventured to ask, ‘(did you never see the man again ?”
‘Ever see’im again? Yes,” she said, “I seed ‘im
once again, years afterwards it was, but I know’d ’im;
you couldn’t mistake them sharp features, and them
clothes. I was comin’ along the road, past Wickham
Wood, when there, not twenty yards ahead of me, he
stood; but almost afore I seed ’im he was gone. No,
I didn’t dare'spend that sovereign.” When Liza died
more than six hundred gold pieces were found in two
leather bags concealed in her mattress. She had done
well with her flowers and her “‘harbs.” But she was
the last of the simple-gatherers of Hampshire. It is
seldom now that you meet with a cottager who knows
even by sight the plants which once constituted the
village remedies. They still grow in their old locali-
ties, in the meadows and the hedgerows and the woods
—a few even linger in the cottage gardens; but no
one comes to gather them. It is not that the labourers
have ceased to believe in infallible remedies; but now
they send on market days to the chemist’s shop in the
town for the quack medicines advertised in the local

THE USE OF SIMPLES 25

papers, and in which they believe as firmly as their
forefathers believed in simples. Times have changed.
The hellebore still flourishes on Selborne Hill, but the
good women no longer gather it, and do not so much
as know of its existence.

Not so very long ago a decoction of the greater
celandine, a plant allied to the poppies, and having a
gamboge-coloured juice, was commonly used in the
Isle of Wight as a remedy for infantine jaundice. The
plant may still be seen in considerable plenty between
Yarmouth and Freshwater, not far from the spot where
the wild asparagus grows, but the country folk pass it
by. Among the ruins and in the neighbourhood of
ancient priories plants may often be found which once
flourished in the monastic herb-gardens. The Avzs-
tolochta, or birthwort, formerly held to possess great
medicinal virtue, may perhaps still be seen on the vener-
able walls of St. Cross at Winchester. In the woods
near Quarr Abbey, in the Isle of Wight, the lungwort
is abundant every spring; it may also be found in the
neighbourhood of Beaulieu Abbey in the New Forest.
Another medicinal plant still to be found among the
picturesque ruins of the great Cistercian Abbey is the
hyssop (//yssopus officinalis), This plant is probably
the hyssop of Scripture, and was much valued for its
healing properties. Gerarde grew it in his garden at
Holborn, and Spenser spoke of it as ‘Sharp Isope,
good for green wounds’ remedies.”

The ancient use of hyssop as a simple is indicated
by its specific name officinalis. This term, as used
in our British flora, always signifies that the plant so
named had a recognised place in the Materia medica.
From twenty to thirty of our British plants carry this
specific title, and in every instance the term recalls to

26 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

mind their former use. We have already noticed
several of these medicinal plants, the lungwort, the
gromwell, the Solomon’s seal. Among others may
be mentioned such well-known herbs as fennel, and
borage, and comfrey, and calamint, and barm. The
anti-scorbutic properties of watercress (lVasturtium
officinale) and scurvy grass (Cochlearia officinalis) are
generally admitted, though since the discovery of lime-
juice they are seldom used medicinally. The root of
the dandelion still yields a well-known medicine. The
use of vervain ( Verbena officinalts), a plant often found
in churchyards and waste places, dates back to very
remote times. It was one of the four sacred plants
of the Druids, who attributed to it virtues almost
divine. It was supposed to ‘vanquish fevers and
other distempers, to be an antidote to the bite of ser-
pents, and a charm to cultivate friendship.” But of
all plants used as simples, none perhaps had a greater
repute among our forefathers than Luphrasza offi-
cinalis, or eyebright. Its praises were sung by
Spenser and Milton and Thomson. Its efficacy was
such that, according to the old herbalist, “if the herb
were as much used as it is neglected, it would half
spoil the spectacle-maker’s trade ;’’ and he adds: “A
man would think that reason should teach people to
prefer the preservation of their natural sight before
artificial spectacles.” The belief in the efficacy of
eyebright has hardly died out yet. Anne Pratt tells
us that, going into a small shop at Dover, she saw a
quantity of the plant suspended from the ceiling, and
was informed that it was gathered and dried as being
an excellent remedy for bad eyes. Still in rural dis-
tricts persons are met with who have “heard tell”

THE USE OF SIMPLES 277

that the plant is good for weak eyes; just as now and
then, though very rarely, a cottager may be seen
gathering nettles and dandelions for the purpose of
making tea. This occasional use of “ harb-tay” seems
to be the last vestige of a belief in simples which was
once universal among our forefathers.

POT-HERBS

THERE is an interesting passage in one of Gilbert
White’s letters, in which, speaking of the disappear-
ance of the leprosy in England, he attributes it in a
great measure to the increased use of vegetables.
“As to the product of a garden,” he says, writing in
1778, “every middle-aged person of observation may
perceive, within his own memory, both in town and
country, how vastly the consumption of vegetables is
increased. Green-stalls in cities now support multi-
tudes in a comfortable state, while gardeners get
fortunes. Every decent labourer has his garden,
which is half his support, as well as his delight.
Potatoes have prevailed in this little district, by means
of premiums, within these twenty years only, and are
much esteemed by the poor, who would scarce have
ventured to taste them in the last reign.”

In these days, when potatoes form a not inconsider-
able part of a working man’s dinner, and when every
farm labourer has his garden, or piece of allotment-
ground, it is difficult to realise the state of things
when potatoes were unknown and vegetables were
luxuries. Although, as Lord Bacon reminds us, ‘‘ God
Almightie first planted a garden,” yet it is evident
that in this country the cultivation of vegetables has
only become general in comparatively modern times.

Our Saxon forefathers certainly had some sort of
29

30 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

cabbage, for they called the month of February Sprout-
cale, but, as White observes, “long after their days
the cultivation of vegetables was little attended to.”
In the Middle Ages most of the monasteries and re-
ligious houses had their herb- gardens, where they
cultivated “simples” for the sake of the sick, and
doubtless ‘pot-herbs”’ for the use of the brethren,
but to what extent it is difficult to determine. In the
few monastic Diet-rolls that have been discovered
while the consumption of mushrooms, both in summer
and winter, is shown to have been enormous, there is
an almost entire silence with regard to vegetables. It
is possible, however, that the convent garden being
under the care of the hortulanus, or gardener, this
item might have appeared in a separate roll. With
the revival of botanical learning in the sixteenth cen-
tury, when physic gardens were established, not only
at the Universities, but also by private personages, a
great impetus was undoubtedly given to the cultivation
of vegetables, and many new kinds were introduced
into the country, yet the movement cannot be said to
have touched the habits of the poorer people. Still, it
would be a mistake to suppose that the labourers of
the olden time were entirely destitute of green food.
It seems to be beyond dispute that the use of certain
wild plants as vegetables was general among our fore-
fathers. A considerable number of our indigenous
British plants are useful vegetables, and in days when
large tracts of country were entirely uncultivated must
have existed in large quantities; and these plants,
known as “ pot-herbs,” took the place of garden-stuff
in Medizeval England. We propose to consider in
this paper some of these indigenous pot-herbs which
may still be found in their native haunts, and which

POT-HERBS 31

once formed the vegetable supply of our popula-

tion.
In its strict sense, as used by the early botanists, a

pot-herb is a “‘herbe that serves for the potte,” and of
these we have a considerable number in our native
flora. Among them may be mentioned the wild cab-
bage, sea-beet, and mercury. The use of the wild
cabbage or sea colewort is hardly extinct yet. It is
still gathered by the peasants on the sea cliffs of
Devonshire in hard winters when garden produce
is scarce. This plant is the origin of our garden
varieties, such as savoys and brussels-sprouts and
broccoli and cauliflower, and has been cultivated from
very early times. The great naturalist, John Ray,
noticed it growing wild on “ Dover Cliffs,” where it
still flourishes in remarkable abundance. Indeed, in
summer time the white chalk cliffs from Dover to St.
Margaret’s Bay are gay with the pale yellow blossoms
of this plant. It may also be seen in considerable
plenty on the picturesque cliffs which command the
entrance to Dartmouth Harbour, in South Devon.
In the Isle of Wight it was formerly abundant, espe-
cially on the Culver Cliffs between Bembridge and
Sandown; but for some reason it has disappeared of
late years. The sea-beet (Beta maritima, L.), some-
times called sea-spinach, the origin of our beetroot
and mangold-wurtzel, is a common plant near the sea.
lt is mostly abundant in salt marshes, and on banks
and waste places along the shore. Fifty years ago
the young leaves were regularly gathered by the
poorer classes in the Isle of Wight, and “boiled and
eaten as greens with the pork or bacon which then
formed so constant an article in the dietary of our
Hampshire peasantry.” Occasionally the plant is so

32 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

used now, and it certainly forms an excellent sub-
stitute for spinach.

In Lincolnshire, Good King Henry or All-good
(C. Bonus-Henricus, L.), is still cultivated as a pot-
herb, and in former times was much used. The origin
of the name “‘Good King Henry” is unknown, but,
says Dr. Prior, “it has nothing to do with our Henry
VIII. and his sore legs.” From its general habit and
appearance the plant is called “wild spinach” in the
Isle of Wight, where it may often be met with in waste
places and by roadsides. In other districts it is known
as “mercury,” but the true mercury is Mercurialis
annua, a plant not infrequently met with as a weed in
gardens, and which is very abundant about Winchester.
This plant was among the most famous of the ancient
pot-herbs. Dr. Turner, in his black-letter herbal,
published at Cologne in 1568, gives two excellent
woodcuts of the plant, and after a description of its
parts, goes on to say: ‘‘By thys description it is
playn that our forefathers have erred in England
which hitherto in the most parte of all England have
used another herbe in the stede of the ryghte mercury.
Therefore as many as had leuer ete whete than acornes,
let them use no more theyr old mercury, but thys
mercury (JZ. annua) whych Dioscorides describeth.
The ryght mercury groweth comon in the fields and
wynyardes of Germany without any settyng or sowyng.
And it beginneth now to be knowen in London, and in
gentle mennis places not far from London. I neuer
saw it grow more plenteously in all my lyfe than about
Wormes in Germany.” The plant used by our fore-
fathers ‘‘in the stede of the ryghte mercury” was
doubtless the “‘Good King Henry” referred to above,
and which is often called by old writers “ English

POT-HERBS 33

mercury”; while from Turner’s description it would
appear that the “ryghte mercury,” also known as
“French mercury,” was at that time usually seen only
in gardens in England. This is partly confirmed by
Gerarde, who says: “French mercury is sowen in
kitchen gardens among pot-herbs. I found it under
the dropping of the Bishop’s house at Rochester; from
whence I brought a plant or two into my garden, since
which time I cannot rid my garden from it.” Ray,
on the other hand, who also calls the plant “ French
mercury,” speaks of it as growing “ plentifully on the
sea beach near Ryde, in the Isle of Wight.” It is
curious how a plant once held in such repute as a
pot-herb should have passed so entirely out of use;
and its virtue as a “simple” was only equalled by its
excellence as a vegetable; hence the old proverb—

“Be thou sick or whole,
Put mercury in thy koole.”

Among other plants once in general use as pot-herbs
may be mentioned sorrel, scurvy-grass, and the common
nettle ; while the young shoots of the common hop are
still regarded, and not without reason, as an excellent
substitute for asparagus.

Asparagus has been cultivated as a vegetable since
the time of the Romans. In its wild state it is still
found on the coasts of Wales and Cornwall, and in the
Channel Islands. It is interesting to notice that in
1667 John Ray found ‘“‘sparrow-grass” at the Lizard
Point; and he adds: ‘‘said also to be found in the
marshes near Bristol, about Harwich in Essex, and
divers other places.” Gerarde met with it “in a
meadow adjoining a mill beyond a village called
Thorpe”; “likewise,” he adds, “it groweth in great

Cc

34 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

plenty near unto Harwich, at a place called Bandamar
lading.” The writer knows of one spot in the Isle of
Wight where, among the loose sand of the sea-shore,
the plant has existed for a great number of years, but
perhaps it can hardly be considered as indigenous.

Another plant in great repute as a vegetable, and
which may be found in a wild state at various stations
on the English coast, is the seakale—Crambe maritima.
This plant has only been cultivated as a vegetable for
a little over a century, though it appears to have been
used in its wild state for a longer period. It abounds
on the sandy shore by Calshot Castle, near the entrance
to Southampton Water, where, for a great number of
years, the fishermen have been accustomed to blanch
the young shoots by covering them with sand and
shingle, and afterwards to send them to Cowes or
Southampton for sale. To William Curtis, the author
of the Flora Londinensis, belongs the credit of bring-
ing seakale into general use as a vegetable. Towards
the end of the eighteenth century he made a con-
siderable plantation of it in his botanical garden at
Brompton. At first the experiment met with little
encouragement, and the first consignment was returned
from Covent Garden unsold. Curtis, however, perse-
vered ; he wrote a pamphlet on the culture of seakale,
and presented a packet of seed with each copy, and
thus he at length succeeded in bringing the new vege-
table into notice. It is said, and doubtless with some
truth, that the wild plant, blanched with sand on its
native shore, is superior in delicacy of flavour to the
cultivated vegetable.

In his tour of Europe, undertaken in the year
1663, John Ray observes that ‘‘The Italians use
several herbs for sallets which are not yet or have

POT-HERBS 35

not been but lately used in England, viz. se//ert, which
is nothing else but the sweet smallage; the young
shoots whereof, with a little of the head of the root
cut off, they eat raw with oil and pepper.” By the
“ sweet smallage” Ray doubtless meant Ap7zum graveo-
lens, or wild celery, a plant not uncommon in wet
places, especially near the sea, and which is un-
doubtedly the origin of our garden celery. At that
time, however, the root of Smmyrnium Olusatrum, the
common alexanders, seems to have been used in the
place of celery, for Gerarde says, “the roote hereof
is in our age served to the table raw for a sallade
herbe.” This plant is one of the most ancient of
vegetables. From the time of Dioscorides it has been
in use as a pot-herb (as its specific name signifies),
“boiled and eaten like greens,” besides being ‘‘ served
raw as a Sallade herbe.” Its ancient use is now
entirely abandoned and its very name forgotten, the
plant being mostly confounded with the “ wild celery,”
by which name it is known in the Isle of Wight. It
is not, however, an uncommon plant, especially in the
neighbourhood of monastic ruins, where it is doubt-
less an outcast from the old convent garden. The
writer has noticed it, among other localities, in the
“old churchyard” at Dunwich on the coast of Suffolk ;
among the ruins of Portchester Castle where there
was once a priory of Austin Canons; beside the
crumbling remains of Southwick Priory; at Caris-
brooke in the Isle of Wight; and in a copse near
the picturesque ruins of Quarr Abbey.

The water-cress, so abundant in our streams, and
now so extensively cultivated for the market, has been
known for ages as an early and wholesome spring
salad, and among other native plants once used as

36 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

‘“sallet-herbes”’ may be mentioned lamb’s-lettuce or
corn-salad, a small annual with pale lilac flowers, often
found in cornfields ; the common dandelion, the young
leaves of which are excellent in spring; and Barbarea
pre@cox, or winter-cress, a plant supposed to have been
introduced from America. It is frequent in the Isle
of Wight, where it is known as land-cress, in contra-
distinction to water-cress.

Not so many years ago the gathering of samphire
for purposes of pickling was a regular occupation on
various parts of the coast. This trade is a very
ancient one, and is alluded to by Shakespeare in
King Lear :—

“ Half way down,

Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade !
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.”

This plant still grows abundantly on the white chalk
cliff known as Shakespeare’s Cliff at Dover, though
the ‘dreadful trade” has ceased. Fifty years ago,
however, it was regularly followed in the Isle of Wight.
“The warm, aromatic pickle prepared with this plant,”
wrote the author of Flora Vectensis, about the year
1848, ‘“‘is greatly esteemed and commonly seen at
table in this island. The herb, minced, is also served
up with melted butter in lieu of caper-sauce. For the
purpose of pickling it is annually collected in large
quantities from the cliffs at Freshwater, and sent up
to some wholesale houses in London by the cliffsmen,
who make samphire gathering a part of their summer
occupation, and for which, when cleaned and sorted,
they receive 4s. per bushel. It is put up in casks
with sea water, for its better preservation on the
journey, and probably also to extract any bitterness

POT-HERBS 37

it may contain. For smaller quantities the charge
for collecting is Is. per gallon. The samphire is
considered in perfection when just about to flower,
or towards the end of May.” The gathering of
samphire on the precipitous chalk cliffs being a very
difficult and dangerous occupation, it is not surprising
to learn that some little fraud was occasionally prac-
tised by the fishermen in substituting other plants
of a similar appearance for the true article. For this
purpose the sea-aster, marsh-samphire, and golden-
samphire were usually employed, but they are said
to form for “ medicinal and culinary purposes” a very
poor substitute.

Another native plant, once extensively used in the
manufacture of food, is the well-known Aru macu-
latum, ‘‘Cuckoo-pint” or “ Lords-and-ladies.” It was
from the corms of this plant that the famous Portiand
arrowroot or Portland sago was made. The mode of
manufacture is said to have been as follows: “The
corms, which are dug up in June, are well washed,
then bruised, and well stirred in a vessel of water.
The coarser particles are then strained off, and the
fecula, after repeated subsidence and washings, is
finally dried in the sun, and the result is a starch
well known as being one of the smaller varieties,
yielding a jelly which, although inferior to Bermuda,
is superior or equal to ordinary arrowroots.” The
manufacture of arrowroot in the Isle of Portland was
continued up to the year 1855, or a little later, after
which time it seems to have entirely ceased. A writer
in The Phytologist for November 1858, attributes the
cessation of this trade to improved methods of agri-
culture. Formerly, it appears, the fields were only
cropped once in two years, being left fallow the

38 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

remainder of the term, and were crowded with the
Bee Orchis and Avum maculatum. But, says our
writer, Mr. Henry Groves, “the rotation of crops,
which has at length been adopted in the island, has
almost destroyed this branch of industry, so that
instead of being able to procure some pounds of
arrowroot, one can scarcely get as many ounces at
the present time. There are only one or two persons
who make it, and the aggregate quantity is so small
that we were unable to obtain any for oneself in
1857.” In spite, however, of modern agriculture, the
Arum continues to flourish in the Isle of Portland,
and may still be found, writes a correspondent, “ by
the thousand.”

In conclusion, it may be noted that many of our
garden herbs, still in common use for purposes of
seasoning, are in reality British plants. Among them
may be mentioned mint and marjoram, and thyme and
calamint, all of which may be found in their native
haunts. Fennel is abundant on seacliffs in many
places in the south of England. Wild balm used to
be found within the ancient walls of Portchester
Castle. The garden parsley was formerly abundant
on the shingly beach at Hurst Castle, where it used
to be gathered for domestic purposes. One native
herb, however, much in use among our forefathers,
is now seldom seen in kitchen gardens—we mean
Tanacetum vulgare, the common tansy, the dull yellow
flowers of which are often conspicuous in waste
places. The young leaves and juice of this plant
were formerly employed to give colour and flavour
to puddings, which were known as tansy cakes, or
tansy puddings. In medizval times the use of these
cakes was specially associated with the season of

POT-HERBS 39

Easter; and it is interesting to notice that in the
Diet-rolls of St. Swithun’s Monastery at Winchester,
which belong to the end of the fifteenth century, we
come across the entry “ tansey-tarte.” It has been
said that the use of tansy cakes at this season was
to strengthen the digestion after what an old writer
calls “‘the idle conceit of eating fish and pulse for
forty days in Lent”; and it is certain that this was
the virtue attributed to the plant by the old herbalists.
“The herb fried with eggs, which is called a Tansy,”
says Culpeper, ‘‘helps to digest and carry away those
bad humours that trouble the stomach.” It seems,
however, more probable that the custom of eating
tansy-cakes at Easter-time was rather associated with
the teaching of that festival, the name “tansy” being
a corruption of a Greek word meaning “‘ immortality.”

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WILD FRUITS

IN the olden times, when the conditions of life were
far more simple than they are now, the use made of
wild plants, as has been already noticed, was con-
siderably greater. In days when cottage gardens and
allotment grounds were almost unknown, our fore-
fathers were accustomed to gather pot-herbs for use as
vegetables. The leaves of mercury, good-King-Henry,
and of the wild beetroot were boiled as spinach; and
the roots of Syyruium olusatrum, or alexanders, were
used as celery. The wild seakale was bleached with
sand or shingle on the seashore, and the wild cab-
bage was gathered on the cliffs. In the place of
lettuce, watercress from the running brook was exten-
sively used, together with corn-salad and the leaves
of dandelion. Before the days of parish doctors and
of quack medicines, now so widely advertised and so
largely purchased by our poorer people, the know-
ledge of “‘simples” was very considerable among the
good women in country places. In every village some
one skilled in the use of herbs was sure to be found
ready and able to minister to the sick. The gathering
of simples was a recognised branch of industry in
those primitive times. Agrimony, and eyebright, and
scurvy-grass, and lungwort, and Solomon’s-seal, and
many another native plant, was then duly gathered

and prepared against the time of need. The virtue
41

42 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

of many of these herbs seems to be beyond question,
but they are never used now. They may still be
found, by those learned in the ways of plants, grow-
ing in our copses and hedgerows, or along the banks
of streams, but their very names are forgotten by the
country people.

In our native flora there are a goodly number of
“trees yielding fruit,” which in former years were
highly prized among our forefathers. The use of
these wild fruits is not now so general as it used to
be; in many instances it is altogether obsolete, but
the subject is one full of interest to all lovers of
country life.

In Saxon and medizval times, even after the intro-
duction of wheat and other cereals, there can be little
doubt that acorns were regularly used by the poorer
peasants for the purposes of making bread, and not
only in seasons of scarcity, but as a general article
of food. Oak trees were then chiefly valued because
of the acorns which they produced. In the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle for the year 1116, which is described
as ‘fa very calamitous year, the crops being spoiled
by the heavy rains, which came on just before August
and lasted till Candlemas,” it is expressly recorded as
an aggravation of the “heavy time” that “mast was
also so scarce this year that none was to be heard of
in all this land or in Wales.” The days of mast-bread
are happily gone for ever; and even barley-bread, in
common use during severe winters not so many years
ago, has now everywhere given place to that of “the
finest wheat flour.” The fruit of one member of the
same order is, however, highly valued. We refer, of
course, to the hazel, so abundant in our woods and
hedgerows. To go a-nutting is still as popular a

WILD FRUITS 43

pastime as in former years; but the old customs in
connection with it are as obsolete as the use of acorn
bread. No one will now be found, with the good
Vicar of Wakefield and his honest neighbours, to
“religiously crack nuts on Michaelmas eve.”

It is to the order Rosacee that most of our wild
fruits belong. In this large and important tribe are
included such well-known examples as plums, cherries,
strawberries, raspberries, apples, and pears, all of
which may be found in a wild state in Britain. Plums
are represented in our native flora by three species,
or sub-species—the common sloe or blackthorn, the
bullace, and the wild plum. The latter can hardly
perhaps be pronounced with certainty to be indigenous,
though it is often found in apparently wild situations,
but of the other two species there can be no question.
The sloe-bush or blackthorn is very common in our
thickets and hedgerows, and the fruit is still gathered
for the purpose of making sloe-gin. Old Nicholas
Culpeper says, and truly, that “the fruit ripens after
all other plums whatsoever, and is not fit to be eaten
until the autumn frost mellow them.” The bullace,
though less common than the last, is still plentiful in
many districts, as, for instance, in the Isle of Wight,
where it was formerly gathered by the country people,
and taken into market for sale for the purpose of
making tarts and puddings. ‘I once,” wrote Dr.
Bromfield of Ryde in the year 1848, ‘“‘ brought home
a quart or more of these wild bullaces, and had them
made into a tart, which was one of the best flavoured
and most juicy I ever partook of.”

A near relation of the bullace is the wild cherry-tree,
or merry-tree, also known in certain districts as the
““Gean.” This handsome tree is the origin of the

44 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

Geans, Hearts, and Bigaroon cherries of our gardens,
and is not uncommon in woods and copses in the
south of England, where it may be considered indi-
genous. A dwarf variety of the ‘‘Gean,” but thought
by some botanists to be a distinct species, is Prunus
cerasus, a bush with copious suckers, first discovered
to be a British plant by Dr. Bromfield in 1839, when
he found it in ““a wood between Whippingham Street
and Wootton Church, but nearer to the former, and
close 'to a place called Blankets, growing plentifully
and apparently indigenous.” This shrub is the parent
stock of such well-known varieties as the Morello,
Duke, and Kentish cherries.

Of all the gezera in the British flora there is none
so puzzling to the botanist, because of the vast number
and uncertain character of its varieties, as the rudus,
or bramble. To this family belong the well-known
blackberry of our hedgerows, the raspberry, and the
cloudberry. This latter is an Alpine species, growing
only some six inches in height, and much prized in the
north of England and in Scotland for its orange berries,
which are eaten fresh or preserved. In Norway, we
are told, the fruit is regularly gathered, packed in
wooden vessels, and sent to Stockholm, where it is
served in desserts or made into tarts. The plant is
so abundant in Lapland that the celebrated traveller,
Dr. Clarke, observes, ‘‘ Whenever we walked near the
river we found whole acres covered with these blush-
ing berries (at first crimson, afterwards becoming
yellow), hanging so thick that we could not avoid
treading upon them.” The dewberry is a well-known
variety of the common bramble, marked by its creeping
habit and the glaucous bloom which covers its fruit.
The origin of the name is obscure, but Dr. Prior would

WILD FRUITS 45

connect it in some manner with the “‘ Theve-thorn,” a
word which occurs in Wycliffe’s Bible, as the rendering
of rhamnus, in the story of Jotham’s parable of the
Trees. It is not known what species of bramble
Wycliffe meant by the ‘ Theve-thorn”; but monkish
commentators, doubtless following some ecclesiastical
tradition, understood the rkamnus to be the dewberry.

The wild raspberry, the origin of our garden varieties,
is common enough in woods, especially in the north
of England. This plant is commonly called ‘“hind-
berry” by the early botanists; and it is curious to
notice that Gerarde remarks that the fruit is “in taste
not very pleasant.” Such, however, was not his
opinion of the strawberry. As old Izaak Walton
happily says, quoting one Dr. Boteler, ‘‘ Doubtless God
could have made a better berry, but doubtless God
never did.” And the strawberry of those days seems
to have been only the wild strawberry of the woods,
probably improved by cultivation. It flourished, as
we know from Shakespeare, in the Bishop of Ely’s
garden at Holborn, which was equally celebrated for
its roses and its saffron crocuses. ‘ Wife,” says
Thomas Tusser, the homely farmer-poet of Suffolk, in
the sixteenth century—

“ Wife, into thy garden, and set me a plot
With Strawberry rootes of the best to be got:
Such growing abroade, among Thornes in the wood,
Wel chosen and picked, prove excellent good.”

And even in the next century, as Mr. Ellacombe
reminds us, Sir Hugh Plat, in his Garden of Eden,
says: “Strawberries which grow in woods prosper
best in gardens.” And these wild strawberries, so
abundant in shady places throughout England, and

46 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

as far north as the Shetland Isles, are doubtless the
origin of the cultivated varieties.

In these days of advanced horticulture the fruit of
the wild apple (Pyrus malus), and of the wild pear
(P. communis), would hardly be regarded as “ good
for food”; but it is certain that in ancient times they
were both largely used. In the lake-dwellings of
Switzerland and Italy great quantities of wild apples
and a few wild pears have been found. ‘The in-
habitants of the ‘terra-mare of Parma, and of the
palafittes of the lakes of Lombardy, Savoy, and
Switzerland,” says De Candolle, ‘‘made great use of
apples. They always cut them lengthways, and pre-
served them dried as a provision for the winter. The
specimens are often carbonised by fire, but the internal
structure of the fruit is only the more clearly to be
distinguished.” And from a scientific examination of
these carbonised specimens it seems to be established
that many of these ancient apples were almost identical
with the wild apple of to-day. But even in the six-
teenth century the crab-apple of our woods was held
in far higher esteem than it is now. “Roasted crabs”
served with hot ale was, as we learn from Shake-
speare, a favourite dish among our forefathers, especi-
ally at Christmas time. Another use of the crab-apple
was in the making of verjuice, of which mention is
made by Izaak Walton in his Compleat Angler:
“When next you come this way,” says the honest
milk-woman, “if you will but speak the word I will
make you a good syllabub of new verjuce, and you
shall sit down in a haycock and eat it.” But we don’t
care for such rustic delicacies now.

Like the strawberry, the cultivation of currants
and gooseberries was unknown among the Greeks and

WILD FRUITS 47

Romans, and dates only from the sixteenth century.
It has been a matter of dispute whether these shrubs
should be considered as genuine natives of Great
Britain ; but, in the light of further research, this claim
to be indigenous, at least in the north of England,
will now hardly be denied. In the southern counties,
though the species are now common enough in woods
and thickets, it is possible that they may be escapes
from cultivation. It is interesting to notice that John
Ray speaks of black currants as “‘ squinancy-berries,”
a name which shows that they were commonly used
then, as now, in cases of sore-throat.

The fruit of the wild elder which, says old Culpeper,
need not be described, ‘“‘ since every boy that plays
with a pop-gun will not mistake another tree instead
of elder,” is still gathered by country people for the
purpose of making elderberry wine, which is held to
possess considerable medicinal virtue. ‘‘If,” says
John Evelyn, “the medicinal properties of the leaves,
bark, and berries of this tree were thoroughly known,
I cannot tell what our countrymen could ail for which
they might not find a remedy from every hedge, either
for sickness or wound.” These so-called natural
remedies are now seldom employed; it is therefore
the more interesting to notice that elderberry wine
is still frequently used by poor people in country
places.

In former years the barberry seems to have been
far commoner in our hedgerows than it is now. Ray
mentions this handsome shrub as abundant in his day
about Saffron Walden, in Essex, where it has now
entirely disappeared. In Hampshire and the Isle of
Wight, the district best known botanically to the
writer, it is a very rare plant; and its present scarcity

48 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

is doubtless to be explained by the belief that its
presence caused mildew in wheat. Hence the bar-
berry was extirpated in many places, and has now
become extremely scarce. It was formerly known as
the Pipperidge-bush, that is, ved-fzp, a name descrip-
tive of the colour and character of its berries, which
were preserved in various ways. It is a curious fact
that the juniper, so abundant on many of the chalk
downs of Hampshire, as for instance about Petersfield,
should be absent from the flora of the Isle of Wight.
In former years juniper berries were far more commonly
used than now, especially for the purpose of flavouring
Hollands or gin. They were also generally employed
in the curing of hams, but for this purpose they are
now rarely sought after.

Several species of the order Evicacee, or Heath
tribe, produce berries good for food. Of these the
best known are the bilberry and the cranberry. The
former, also known as whortleberries, are abundant in
Scotland and the north of England, and in certain
districts in the south, as about Hindhead, in Surrey.
Gilbert White recorded the plant as found on “ the
dry hillocks of Wolmer Forest,” where it still flourishes
in great abundance. The berries, known locally as
“‘whorts,” make excellent tarts, for which purpose
they are annually gathered by the gipsies and country
people and sold in the neighbouring towns and villages.
The cranberry, a near relative of the whortleberry, is
found in peat bogs, and is a beautiful plant, with its
bright red flowers and evergreen leaves, the margins
of which are always rolled back, and its wiry stems
creeping over the sphagnum moss. In the south of
England the plant is rare, but the writer has found
it “in the bogs of Bin’s Pond,” near Selborne, where

WILD FRUITS | 49

Gilbert White noticed it more than a hundred years
ago. In the hilly districts of the north another member
of the same tribe, known as cowberry, is also found,
the berries of which resemble those of the cranberry
for which they are sometimes sold.

In conclusion one more plant, belonging to the
Ericace@, must be mentioned. This is the handsome
evergreen shrub, Arbutus unedo, the strawberry tree,
which grows abundantly in a wild state about the
beautiful lakes of Killarney. The fruit, which re-
sembles a strawberry in shape and colour, is occasion-
ally eaten by the Irish peasantry. It is, however, very
dry and of a somewhat insipid flavour. Indeed, it is
this characteristic of the fruit which gave to the plant
its specific name of wnedo, ‘‘ One I eat,” as if to imply
that having tasted one berry no man would care to
try a second.

WALL-FLOWERS

IT is curious how some plants love to grow upon old
walls and ruins. Indeed, there are certain species of
wild-flowers which are seldom found except in such
situations. It may be truly said that our ancient
churches and cathedrals, the ruins of medizeval castles
and of monastic houses, the remains of old city walls,
and such like picturesque localities, support a flora of
their own.

The most conspicuous example of this interesting
flora is the well-known wallflower of our gardens,
which is never found in a wild state except upon
walls or ruins. But the wall-gilliflower, as it used
to be called, is not by any means the only plant
which deserves the distinguishing name of wad/-
flower. There are many others, of which the snap-
dragon, the yellow sedum, the wall pennywort, and
the pretty little Draba verna, or whitlow-grass, will
occur to all. In the west of England almost every
wayside wall is green with vegetation. The most
delicate ferns abound—the wall rue, the ceterach, the
maidenhair spleenwort. Go where you will, you will
see ferns and flowers growing from the interstices of
the stones..

Several of our greatest British rarities belong to the
wall-flora. The little Hlolosteum umbellatum used to
grow on old walls at Eye, and Bury, and Norwich, and

a

52 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

other places in East Anglia. It is now, alas! almost,
if not quite, extinct. The walls have been demolished,
and the plant is gone. The yellow whitlow-grass
(Draba aizoides) is only to be found on old walls at
Pennard Castle, in Wales. The sweet-scented Not-
tingham catchfly is so called because it was first
discovered by a friend of the famous naturalist John
Ray growing on the walls of Nottingham Castle.
Strange to say, after the burning of the castle in
1830 the plant for a few years completely overspread
the ruins, establishing itself on the walls, in the
crevices between the stones, and in every place where
it was possible to obtain a footing. It is still there,
though not nearly in such abundance. It was, how-
ever, fairly plentiful a few summers ago near the spot
known as “‘ Mortimer’s Hole.” On several old walls
at Oxford a strange kind of yellow ragwort may be
seen. Its proper home is in the south of Europe,
but by some means or other it has found its way to
Oxford, and evidently means to stay there.

In the county best known botanically to the writer
many interesting species of our wall-flora may be
seen. Hampshire possesses several fine ruins, and
many hundred yards of ancient walls. There is Port-
chester Castle, and Carisbrooke in the Isle of Wight.
There are the ruins of the great Cistercian monas-
teries of Quarr, of Netley, and of Beaulieu in the
New Forest. There are the remains of Titchfield
Abbey and Southwick Priory; and ancient walls may
be seen at Winchester, at Southampton, and else-
where.

It may appear almost superfluous to mention the
common ivy in connection with walls and ruins, It
is so intimately associated with such places that ‘an

WALL-FLOWERS 53

ivy-mantled tower” is regarded as a matter of course.
Sometimes, however, the shrub assumes such huge
proportions as to call for notice. At Portchester
Castle, for instance, it covers the northern face of
the Norman keep to the depth of some six or seven
feet, and this in spite of the fact that the stems in
places have been severed above the ground. One
wonders how the hard Norman masonry can provide
nourishment for so vast a mass of evergreen. It is
strange, however, how large species manage to exist
in barren places. An old print of the castle, dated
1761, shows several trees growing on the summit of
the broken battlements, and elder-bushes of consider-
able size still flourish there.

The late Lord Chancellor Selborne, who was a keen
observer of nature, once said that when he was a boy
at Winchester he well remembered some fine plants
of the red spur-valerian on the tower of the cathedral.
It is interesting to know that the plant still flourishes
there in considerable abundance. On the walls of the
close, which shut in the canons’ gardens, some plants
of Evrigeron acris will be seen, while the beautiful
little ivy-leaved toad-flax is everywhere. It is curious
that John Ray is silent as to the occurrence of this
plant in England, though he mentions it as abounding
on damp walls and rocks in Italy, and on the walls of
Bale, in Switzerland. Gerarde, however, who gives a
very fair woodcut of the plant, says it ‘‘ growes wilde
upon walls in Italy, but in gardens with us.” But
Parkinson, a contemporary of Gerarde, states that
“it groweth naturally in divers places of our land,
although formerly it hath not beene knowne to bee
but in gardens as about Hatfield and other places that
are shadie upon the ground.” Since then the plant

54 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

has spread generally throughout England, and is now
found on most ancient walls. In the Isle of Wight,
where it is known as “ Roving Jenny” and “ Roving
Sailor,” it flourishes at Carisbrooke Castle, on the
ruins at Quarr, and on old walls at Shorwell, Knighton,
and elsewhere. In America it has acquired the name
of Kenilworth Ivy, doubtless from its growing on the
walls of that castle which the genius of Scott has
made familiar to the world. It abounds on the vener-
able walls of St. Cross, Winchester, together with the
hairy rock-cress, or Avabis hirsuta.

Of the plants which love to blossom on ancient walls
the most generally distributed is the wallflower. It
may be found on all the ruins in Hampshire—at
Wolvesey, Netley, Beaulieu, on the Norman keep at
Christchurch, where the flowers are of an exception-
ally pale colour, at Quarr and at Carisbrooke. But
nowhere is it to be seen in such profusion as at Port-
chester. The plants begin to flower early in March,
and by the first week in April are in full bloom. They
blossom everywhere—on the grey Roman walls, on
the mighty Norman keep, on the crumbling Plan-
tagenet ruins. Later on the walls of the great ban-
queting hall will be gay with the flowers of the red
valerian, with here and there a gigantic spike of the
yellow mullein. But the appearance of the castle is
never so picturesque as when the wallflowers are in
bloom.

Another mural plant, nearly allied to the wallflower,
but easily to be distinguished by its far paler flowers,
is the wall-rocket (Dzplotaxis tenutfolia). It cannot be
called rare, and the writer remembers seeing it, among
other places, at Dover Castle, at St. Osyth’s Priory
in Essex, and on the monastic ruins at Dunwich, in

WALL-FLOWERS 55

Suffolk. But, strange to say, it is only found in Hamp-
shire in one locality. Though we should expect to
find it on most of the ancient walls throughout the
county, yet, such is the incomprehensible way of
plants, it only cares to grow at Southampton, and
there on the old town walls which skirt the western
shore it blossoms abundantly.

But perhaps the most interesting species of our
wall-flora in Hampshire are to be found on the his-
toric walls of Beaulieu Abbey, and probably date back
to the days of the Cistercian monks. In early summer
the grey walls of the ruined cloisters are gay with the
purple flowers of the wild pink (Dzanthus plumarius,
L.). This plant is the origin of our garden pinks, and
is naturalised in only a few places in England. No-
where else in Hampshire is it to be found save on the
cloister walls of the abbey of Beaulieu. In company
with the wild pink will be seen another plant with an
interesting history. This is Hyssopus officinalis, pro-
bably identical with the hyssop of Scripture. In the
middle ages this plant always had a place in the
monastic herb-garden, and was much prized for its
medicinal properties. ‘‘ Hyssop,” says the old Herbal,
“is a very pretty plant, kept for its virtues. It grows
two feet high. The flowers are small, and stand in
long spikes at the tops of the branches; they are of a
beautiful blue colour. The whole plant has a strong,
but not disagreeable, smell.” The plant was gathered
when just beginning to flower, and dried. The infu-
sion, made in the manner of tea, was “excellent against
coughs, hoarsenesses, quinseys, and swellings in the
throat.” It also, we are told, ‘“‘helps to expectorate
tough phlegm, and is effectual in all cold griefs of the
chest or lungs.” The monastic herb-garden has now

56 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

entirely disappeared, but the hyssop remains, and is
as fully established as the pellitory, calamint, and
other mural plants which flourish on the picturesque
remains of the once “ proud abbaye.”

The pellitory-of-the-wall, a curious plant belonging
to the nettle and hop tribe, is one of the most gener-
ally distributed of the wall-flora. A medicinal plant
of considerable repute in the olden times, it is found
at Quarr and Carisbrooke, and also on the ledges and
“‘sreens” which line the almost perpendicular chalk
cliffs at Freshwater; most luxuriant, too, on the walls
of Portchester and Beaulieu, and many another relic
of medizeval magnificence—

“ Where the mouldering walls are seen
Hung with pellitory green.”

But few wall-loving ferns are to be found in this
part of England, and these have a tendency to become
scarcer. In Gilbert White’s time both the ceterach
and the rue-leaved spleenwort were to be seen on the
walls of Selborne Church. Both these have entirely
disappeared, and also Asplentum Trichomanes in
‘“‘Temple Lane.” The ceterach only just manages to
maintain an existence in Hampshire. The writer
knew of a single plant at Portchester, and it may still
be found in one or two other localities. The maiden-
hair spleenwort is commoner, but it is not to be seen
in any abundance. The rue-leaved spleenwort (A.
Ruta muraria, L.) is fairly well distributed both in the
island and on the mainland. In some localities, as up
the Meon Valley, it is comparatively common, and
may be seen on many an old wall, including that of
the Saxon church of Corhampton.

One more plant must be mentioned. Every one

WALL-FLOWERS 57

knows the yellow biting stonecrop, so common on
our rockeries and garden walls. This well-known
plant has a very scarce first-cousin with thick leaves
and pure white flowers, which at the beginning of the
last century flourished on the church walls of one par-
ticular parish in the Isle of Wight. This church has
since been restored, outside as well as inside; but it
is satisfactory and interesting to know that Sedum
dasyphyllum still maintains a prosperous existence in
its old home.

OUR POISONOUS PLANTS

THE number of poisonous; species in the British flora
is far greater than is generally supposed. Fortunately
a few only possess qualities of such a virulent nature
as hemlock and the deadly nightshade, but a large
number are highly injurious to man. Hardly a
summer passes without fatal cases of poisoning by
British plants being recorded in the newspapers. In
1899 a child died in Gloucestershire from the effect
of eating privet-berries; and in the same year an
inquest was held at Birmingham on the bodies of two
children who had been poisoned by the fruit of cuckoo-
pint. And the number of cases in which the sufferers
recover, and which consequently never find their way
into print, must be considerable.

To the eye of an ordinary observer there is nothing
to distinguish a poisonous berry from a harmless one;
and that a large number of our native fruits are not
only harmless but wholesome is well known to all
dwellers in the country. We need only mention the
wild strawberry, the blackberry, the dewberry, and
the black currant, formerly known as squinancy-berry
from its use in cases of quinsy and sore throat.
Elder-berries, too, and the fruit of the blackthorn are
largely gathered in some districts for the purpose of
making wine and sloe-gin. Other wild fruits, again,
if they are not palatable, are at any rate perfectly

59

60 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

innocuous, such as the crab-apple, the wild pear, the
wild cherry, and the hips and haws of our hedgerows.
But, on the other hand, many British berries contain
deleterious properties. The black berries of the
spurge laurel—a plant frequently found in woods and
copses, of the privet, of the uncanny-looking herb-
paris, another denizen of our damp woods, of the
trailing garden nightshade, are all poisonous; also
the scarlet berries of Daphne Mezereum, a rare
and handsome shrub still to be found growing wild
in certain Hampshire woods, of the arum or cuckoo-
pint, commonly known among children as “lords and
ladies,” of the woody nightshade or bittersweet, and
of the common briony. The bright scarlet fruit of
the yew-tree contains a seed of dangerous and even
deadly quality. But of all our native berries the
large black ones of Atropa Belladonna, the deadly
nightshade, are the most fatal. Even half a berry
has been known to cause death within a few hours.
Other British plants possess acrid properties in the
juices of the stem and leaves; while others again
contain a narcotic or an irritant poison in the roots
which has proved injurious to man. The poisonous
nature of many toadstools is well known, but the
Fungi form so entirely a distinct class of botany by
themselves that we do not propose to consider them
in the present paper.

Now while some orders of plants are remarkable
for the large number of species they contain which
are useful and beneficial to man, other families have
a bad reputation, and most of the members must
be regarded with suspicion. Among the former the
Grass family is a conspicuous example. From remote
antiquity it has formed the principal basis of human

OUR POISONOUS PLANTS 61

food, and it only possesses one species that is known
to be injurious to man. To the Crucifer family we
are again indebted for many of our most wholesome
garden vegetables, including seakale and watercress
and the various descendants of the wild sea-cabbage.
On the other hand, the order Ranunculacee, or the
Buttercup family, must be classed among the danger-
ous tribes. Nearly all the members of this extensive
family, including the delicate wood anemone and the
traveller’s joy, possess baneful properties. The juice
of even the beautiful yellow buttercup of our May
meadows is sufficiently acrid to blister the hand, and
the knowledge of this fact has frequently been made
use of by cunning beggars, who, as Gerarde tells us,
“do stampe the leaves, and lay it unto their legs and
arms, which causeth such filthy ulcers as we daily see
(among such wicked vagabonds) to move the people
the more to pittie.” The following story, related by
the same authority, evidently refers to some species
of this order. After speaking of the “hot and hurtfull
qualities ” residing in the juice of certain buttercups,
our old herbalist continues, in his quaintest manner :
“This calleth to my remembrance an history of a
certain Gentleman, dwelling in Lincolnshire, called
Mahewe, the true report hereof my very good friend
Mr. Nicholas Belson, sometime Fellow of King’s
College in Cambridge, hath delivered unto me: Mr.
Mahewe, dwelling in Boston, a student in physick,
having occasion to ride through the fens of Lincoln-
shire, found a root that the hogs had turned up, which
seemed unto him very strange and unknown, for that
it was in the spring before the leaves were out; this
he tasted, and it so inflamed his mouth, tongue, and
lips that it caused them to swell very extremely, so

62 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

that before he could get to the towne of Boston he
could not speak, and no doubt had lost his life, if that
the Lord God had not blessed those good remedies
which presently he procured and used.”

The two hellebores, 7. fvtzdus, L., and H. viridis,
L., also belong to the Buttercup family, and are both,
especially the former, narcotic-irritant poisons. These
handsome plants are but seldom met with in a wild
state, but, curious to relate, they both flourish, as has
been already noticed, in the historic parish of Selborne,
and on the same spots where Gilbert White discovered
them more than a century and a half ago. The green
hellebore may be seen in the early spring growing
abundantly on a steep bank in one of the dark hollow
lanes which form so characteristic a feature in the
scenery of Selborne. Its rarer and more striking
relative, the stinking hellebore, sometimes known as
bear’s-foot and setterwort, also manages to maintain
a position in its old locality, but with difficulty, per-
haps owing to its ornamental appearance, which has
led to its removal to walks and shrubberies.

But far more deadly than either of the hellebores
is Aconitum Napellus, L., the monk’s-hood or wolf’s-
bane, known as friar’s cap in Devonshire. This plant
contains one of the most virulent of vegetable poisons.
It was known to the ancients for its deadly properties,
and is mentioned, among other writers, by Virgil and
Pliny. In Great Britain the aconite as a wild plant
is rare, but it is indigenous in Wales and in several
English counties—the specimen in the writer’s her-
barium came from Somerset—while in gardens, from
its handsome efflorescence, it is frequently met with.
Among the early herbalists the plant is often alluded
to because of its poisonous character, or supposed

OUR POISONOUS PLANTS 63

medicinal virtue. Dr. Turner, in his Herbal, dated
1551, says: “This of all poisons is the most hastie
poison”; and Will Coles, in his Avt of Simpling,
speaks of it as ‘“‘a rank poison reported to prevail
mightily against the bitings of serpents and vipers.”
And this seems to have been the common belief, for
Ben Jonson says—

“ | have heard that Aconite,
Being timely taken, hath a healing might
Against the scorpion’s stroke.”

The root of this dangerous plant is conical and taper-
ing, and on more than one occasion has been mistaken,
with fatal effects, for horse-radish. A case of this
kind occurred at Dingwall in Ross-shire in the year
1856, whereby three persons lost their lives.

Another order of plants which contains a number
of dangerous species is the Umbellifere, or Parsley
tribe. ‘This is an extensive order, numbering some
sixty species in Great Britain, and including in its
_ranks both useful and injurious plants. While, on
the one hand, it provides us with wholesome vege-
tables, such as carrots and parsnips and celery, and
with culinary herbs, as parsley and fennel and sam-
phire, it also contains plants of such baneful properties
as hemlock and cowbane. With the exception of
aconite and the deadly nightshade, hemlock is pro-
bably the most poisonous plant in the British flora.
It is not uncommon, especially in the north of England,
where it may often be seen on hedgebanks by the
wayside. Fortunately it can always be distinguished
from all other members of the Umbelliferous family
by the appearance of its stems, which are mottled
and dotted all over with irregular spots and blotches

64 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

of a red or dull purple colour. In ancient times
the poison prepared from this plant, now known as
“conia,” is said to have been the state poison of
Athens, by which Socrates was put to death. It will
be remembered that the “root of hemlock digg’d i’
the dark” formed part of the ingredients of the
witches’ caldron in Macbeth—a plant, says our old
friend Gerarde, “very evill, hurtful, dangerous, poison-
ous, inasmuch that whosoever taketh of it into his
body dieth remedilesse.”’ Closely allied to the hem-
lock, and almost as baneful, is the water-dropwort,
Ginanthe crocata, L., sometimes called hemlock-
dropwort. The leaves of this plant, which is abun-
dant in ditches and marshes throughout Great Britain,
bear a great resemblance to those of the wild celery,
while its roots have been sometimes mistaken for
parsnips with disastrous results. John Ray relates,
on the authority of one Dr. Francis Vaughan, a learned
physician in Ireland, how “eight young lads went
one afternoon a fishing to a brook in the county of
Tipperary, and there, meeting with a great parcel of
this plant, did eat a great deal of the roots of them.
About four or five hours after going home, the eldest
of them, who was almost of man’s stature, without the
least previous appearing disorder or complaint, on
a sudden fell down backward, and lay kicking and
sprawling on the ground. His countenance soon
became ghastly, and he foamed at the mouth. Soon
after four more were seized the same way, and they
all died before morning. Of the other three, one ran
stark mad, but came to his right reason again next
morning. Another had his hair and nails fall off, and
the third (Dr. Vaughan’s brother-in-law) alone escaped
without receiving any harm.” Many other instances

OUR POISONOUS PLANTS 65

are on record of the poisonous effects of this plant.
In 1758 a person died at Havant, in Hampshire,
“from having taken,” says Mr. Watson, “about four
spoonfuls of the juice of the root, instead of that of
the water-parsnip.” In more recent times the case
is recorded of a number of convicts, working on the
banks of the Thames near Woolwich, who finding
a quantity of this plant, and, believing it to be the
wild parsnip, partook of it. Shortly afterwards nine
of the men were seized with convulsions and six of
them died. In this instance, as in several others
recorded of poisoning by this plant, all the sufferers
were affected with tetanus and delirium.

Another plant that appears to have caused mischief
in former days by being mistaken for a harmless rela-
tive is the perennial or dog’s mercury. This species,
which is a very common plant, closely resembles the
annual mercury which, in days when garden vege-
tables were scarcer than they are now, was commonly
used as a pot-herb, and several cases are on record in
which painful results followed a mistaking of the one
for the other. Dr. John Hill, in his Famzly Herbal,
says, with his usual exaggeration, “there is not a
more fatal Plant, Native of our Country, than this;
many have been known to die by eating it boiled with
their Food; and probably many also whom we have
not heard of.” Still Ray relates an instance in which
a man, his wife, and three children suffered severely
from eating it fried with bacon; and as late as 1820
several fatal cases occurred from this cause near Wor-
cester among a party of Irish vagrants. The plant
belongs to the Spurge family, which contains several
other injurious species.

But by far the most dangerous order in the British

E

66 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

flora is the Solanacee, or Nightshade family. To this
same order belong, strange to say, the potato, first
brought to England from Virginia by Sir Walter
Raleigh in 1586, and the tomato-plant. But four
species of this large and important family can claim
to be British, although one other, the thorn-apple, has
found its way over from America, and is now fre-
quently met with, as at Portchester, in a semi-wild
state. These four species are the dwale, or deadly
nightshade; the henbane; and the two common night-
shades, sometimes distinguished as the woody night-
shade and the garden nightshade. These last species,
which are closely allied to each other, though often
confounded, at least in name, with the deadly night-
shade, are far less poisonous, and, unlike their more
dangerous relative, are common plants, being fre-
quently met with in waste places, by the roadside,
and as a weed in gardens. In appearance they are
entirely different from the deadly nightshade, and _it
is strange that they should ever have been con-
founded. The woody nightshade, or bittersweet, is
a long, straggling plant, of untidy habit, which may
be often seen climbing among bushes by the wayside,
and is well marked by its purple flowers with yellow
anthers, which are followed by clusters of scarlet
berries. Its near relation, the black or garden night-
shade, is a common weed in cultivated ground, having
small white flowers, resembling those of the last
species in form and also in the colour of the anthers,
but succeeded by black berries. The deadly night-
shade (Atropa Belladonna, L.), on the other hand, is a
tall and stately plant, often three and even four feet
in height, with large pubescent, egg-shaped leaves,
and solitary, drooping, campanulate flowers of a dull

OUR POISONOUS PLANTS 67

purple hue. In the place of the flowers ‘“ come forth
great round berries of the bignesse of the black chery,
green at the first, but when they be ripe of the colour
of black jet or burnished horne, soft, and full of purple
juice.” It is these tempting berries that are ‘so
furious and deadly.” ‘To give you an example
hereof,” says our good herbalist, “it shall not be
amisse: it came to passe that three boies of Wisbich
in the Isle of Ely did eate of the pleasant and beauti-
full fruit hereof, two whereof died in lesse than eight
hours after that they had eaten of them. The third
child had a quantitie of honey and water mixed together
given him to drinke, causing him to vomit after: God
blessed this meanes, & the child recovered. Banish
therefore,’ adds this wise ‘master in chirurgerie,”
“these pernitious plants out of your gardens, and all
places neere to your houses where children do resort.”
The dwale, or deadly nightshade, is probably “the
insane root” of Shakespeare, which ‘‘ takes the reason
prisoner”; and it is supposed to be the plant which
occasioned such disastrous consequences to the Roman
troops when retreating from the Parthians, concerning
which Plutarch tells us that “those who sought for
roots and pot-herbs found few that they had been
accustomed to eat, and in tasting unknown herbs they
met with one that brought on madness and death.
He that had eaten of it immediately lost all memory
and knowledge; but at the same time would busy
himself in turning and moving every stone he met
with, as if he was upon some very important pursuit.
The camp was full of unhappy men bending to the
ground, and thus digging up and removing stones, till
at last they were carried off by a bilious vomiting,
when wine, the only remedy, was not to be had.” It

68 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

is also related by Buchanan that when the Danes
under Sweno invaded Scotland and gained a victory
near Perth, the Scots, having arranged a truce, agreed
to supply the hostile army with food. This they pro-
ceeded to do, having first mingled with the bread the
juice of the deadly dwale, which stupefied the in-
vaders, who were then slain by their treacherous
oes.

The deadly nightshade seems to have been formerly
a far commoner plant than it isnow. Gerarde speaks o1
it as growing plentifully in the Isle of Ely, in Lincoln-
shire, and in other localities; and John Ray mentions
many places where in his day it was to be found, as
“in the lanes about Fulbourn in Cambridgeshire
plentifully,” at Cuckstone, near Rochester in Kent,
‘‘where all the Yards and Backsides are over-run with
it.” Less than a hundred years ago, it is noted by
Thomas Garnier, afterwards Dean o1 Winchester, a
famous Hampshire botanist and horticulturist, that the
plant ‘‘abounded on the roadsides at Otterbourne,” a
village some four miles from the cathedral city, and
since associated with the names ot Keble and of
Charlotte Yonge, and he adds, ‘‘I mean to procure its
being rooted up from thence, as a very dangerous
situation for it.” The plant has now disappeared from
the wayside at Otterbourne, perhaps owing to Mr.
Garnier’s intervention, and indeed it has become a
great rarity in Hampshire, being only found in one or
two localities. In the Isle of Wight it is entirely ex-
tinct, but on the mainland it may still be seen in an
old disused chalk-pit, not far from Selborne, where it
doubtless flourished in the days of Gilbert White, and
in another locality known to the writer, where it grows
in such extraordinary abundance as to call for special

OUR POISONOUS PLANTS 69

notice. The name of the place shall not be mentioned:
it will be sufficient to speak of it as the Warren, A
desolate and dreary region is this stretch of elevated
land, far from any human habitation, but the home of
countless rabbits, and the nesting-place of the great
Norfolk plover. The soil is parched and arid in the
extreme, consisting of coarse sand or gravel, with here
and there a mixture of crumbling chalk. In places the
surface is absolutely bare, as bare as the sea-shore, but
for the most part overspread with a scanty covering
of herbage, with pale moss and sickly lichens, and
strange abundance of yellow stonecrop. Two deep
depressions run in a parallel direction across the
Warren, and, like the rest of this weird and blighted
wilderness, are entirely destitute of trees, except here
and there a gnarled and stunted thorn or elder heavily
laden with grey and shaggy lichens. A veritable
valley of Hinnom has this Hampshire warren been
called, where all poisonous and deadly herbs flourish
as in a witch’s garden. Here Atropa Belladonna may
be seen, not in single plants scattered about here and
there, but in lavish and incredible abundance. There
are thousands of lusty plants. The rabbits fatten upon
the leaves and acquire, it is said, a superior flavour. As
the summer advances the large bushy plants become
loaded with their shining black berries, and make a
show not readily forgotten. And the dwale has other
deadly plants to keep it company. Its first cousin, the
henbane, only occasionally met with elsewhere in
Hampshire, grows plentifully on the Warren. It is
almost as poisonous as the nightshade, and the whole
plant, as Nicholas Culpeper remarks, ‘has a very
heavy, ill, soporiferous smell, somewhat offensive.”
Here, too, may be seen rank masses of hemlock, and

70 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

nettles, and gorgeous foxgloves from which the deadly
drug dzgztalis is extracted. Scattered along the lonely
waste are plants of the black mullein, and the stinking
black horehound, while trailing over the dry and
naked soil will be seen in wonderful abundance the
cucumber-like stems of the common or red-berried
bryony. This again is a plant of ill-repute, and has
played a conspicuous part among quacks and herbalists.
The roots are often of immense size, and Will Coles in
his Art of Simpling tells us that “witches take the
roots of bryony, which simple folks take for the true
mandrake, and make thereof an ugly image by which
they represent the person on whom they intend to
exercise their witchcraft.’’ Gerarde relates that ‘the
Queen’s chiefe Surgion, Mr. William Godorous, a very
curious and learned gentleman, shewed me a root
herof that waied half a hundred weight, and of the
bignes of a child of a yeare old.” The berries, which
are of a dull scarlet colour and grow in small clus-
ters, are highly poisonous, and withal of a most fetid
and sickening odour. Indeed, wrote a distinguished
botanist, who visited the Warren some fifty years ago,
“the smell on a hot summer’s day from such a
multitude of ill-favoured weeds is far from refreshing,
and quite overpowers the fragrant honeysuckle, the
only sweet and innocent thing that lives to throw a
charm over what is else but dead, dreary, and baleful.”

We have not by any means exhausted the number
of species of British plants which may be regarded as
dangerous. Many members both of the Daffodil and
the Lily families, including such beautiful species as
the Varcissus, the snowflake, the fritillary, the autumn
crocus, the lily of the valley, contain harmful properties
in their bulbs; but instances of poisoning by these

OUR POISONOUS PLANTS ve.

plants are rare. Far otherwise is the case with some
of those species treated in this paper. Quite recently
a sad and fatal case of belladonna poisoning occurred
on the borders of Sussex. A party of four children,
in the course of an afternoon’s ramble near Emsworth,
came across several plants of the deadly nightshade
loaded with fruit. Ignorant of their poisonous pro-
perties, and naturally attracted by their tempting
appearance, they ate a number of the dark purple
berries. On returning home to tea they were all
seized with the usual symptoms of belladonna poisoning
—dry throat, a difficulty in swallowing, rapid pulse,
widely dilated pupils, and delirium, The local surgeon,
who was quickly summoned, at once realised the
gravity of the situation, and without delay applied the
proper remedies. In the case of the three younger
children his skill and promptitude were rewarded with
success ; but the fourth sufferer, a lad of eleven who
had come from Portsmouth to spend a few days in the
country, never rallied, but passed away early on the
following morning.

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FLOWERS OF THE FIELD

IT is difficult to define a weed. In popular language
a large number of plants so designated are of distinct
beauty and interest. There are flowers of the field,
as well as of the woods and moorlands and of the sea-
shore. Some rare and delicate species are to be found
among what Shakespeare calls “the idle weeds that
grow among our sustaining corn,” and few will venture
to deny that a large wheatfield overrun with scarlet
poppies is a splendid sight, or a wide stretch of yellow
charlock, a veritable “ field of the cloth of gold.” The
truth is that the term ‘ weed” has reference rather to
the locality in which the plant is found than to any
peculiarity in the species itself. It is a plant growing
where it isnot wanted. It is not any particular plant,
or species of plants; it is any plant, no matter how
beautiful or how botanically interesting, which -has
trespassed on cultivated ground and is injurious to
the growing crop. It is a troublesome intruder: it is
an agricultural nuisance.

In ancient times, among our old writers, all corn-
field plants seem to have been classed together under
the general names of “cockle” or “darnel.” The
words stood for all hurtful weeds that ‘choke the
herbs for want of husbandry.” ‘Under the name of
Cockle and Darnel,’ says old Newton in his Herbal,

published in 1587, “is comprehended all vicious,
73

74 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

noisom, and unprofitable graine, encombring and
hindring good corne.” And in that sense ‘“cockle”
had been already used by Chaucer. It is further of
interest to notice that in the Anglo-Saxon version of
the Parable of the Tares, recorded in the thirteenth
chapter of St. Matthew’s gospel, the strange Greek
word &fava, not found in classical literature, and
simply Latinised in the Vulgate zzzanza, is translated
coccel, and this rendering is followed by Wycliff, and
in other early versions of the New Testament. The
following is from the Rheims translation, published in
1582, and so strange does the rendering sound to ears
accustomed to the Authorised Version that it is worth
quoting in full. The parable is headed “The sower of
the cockle,”’ and runs thus: “The kingdom of heaven
is likened to a man that sowed good seed in his field.
But while men were asleep his enemy came and over-
sowed cockle among the wheat, and went his way.
And when the blade was sprung up and brought forth
fruit then appeared also the cockle. Then the servants
of the master of the house came and said to him:
Master, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field?
from whence then hath it cockle? And he saith to
them: An enemy hath done this. And the servants
said to him: Wilt thou then that we go and gather it
up? And he said: No; lest while ye gather up the
cockle, you root up the wheat also together with it.
Let both grow until the harvest: and in the time of
the harvest I will say to the reapers: Gather up first
the cockle, and bind it into bundles to burn; but
gather the wheat into my barn.” We get another
illustration of the same use in the quaint and vigorous
sermons of good Bishop Latimer, who exclaims: ‘Oh,
that our prelates would bee as diligent to sowe the

FLOWERS OF THE FIELD 75

corne of goode doctrine, as Sathan is to sow Cockel
and Darnel.” And so with Gower, and Spenser, and
Shakespeare. But if the poets and preachers speak
in general terms, the old herbalists were beginning
to discriminate between cockle and darnel and other
weeds. Cockle was becoming restricted to the purple
corn-cockle (Agrostemma Githago, L.), and darnel to
the wheat-like grass (Lolium temulentum, L.). Dr.
Turner notices in his Mames of Herbes, published
in 1548, this confusion of terms. ‘‘Some,” he says,
“take cockel for lolio, but thei are far decyved as I
shal declare at large if God wil, in my Latin herbal.”
A few years later the identification of darnel with
Lolium is clear; and in his famous Herbal, under a
fairly good representation of the plant, Gerarde says,
“ Among the hurtfull weeds Darnell is the first,” and
he goes on to describe accurately the species, which
he identifies, and doubtless rightly, with the ezzanza
of Gospel history.

Darnel is an annual corn-field weed, fortunately
not generally distributed, at any rate in these days,
the seeds of which bear a striking resemblance to
grains of wheat. The injurious properties of the plant
were well known to the ancients, for Virgil speaks of
it as znfelix lolium. The stem and foliage are inno-
cuous, and in some countries, as at Malta, where the
species is abundant, the plant is used as fodder: it is
the seed only that is poisonous, and many instances
are on record of its baneful effects, which are said to
resemble intoxication. This was noticed by Gerarde,
who says that “‘the new bread wherein Darnell is, eaten
hot, causeth drunkennesse; in like manner doth beere
or ale wherein the seed is fallen, or put into the malt.”
Indeed, in the Middle Ages it seems to have been a

76 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

not uncommon custom to purposely intermix the seeds
of darnel with the grain from which the malt was made,
in order to enhance the intoxicating power of the beer.
In some parts of the country, as in Dorsetshire and in
the Isle of Wight, this plant is known as ‘‘ cheat,” from
its resemblance to the wheat amongst which it grows.
The seeds of the corn-cockle were also supposed in
former days to possess qualities highly injurious to
man. This handsome plant, with its upright downy
stem and fine purple flowers, is often abundant in
corn-fields, and it is difficult to prevent its large seeds
from becoming mixed with the wheat at threshing-
time. Gerarde, who rightly identifies corn-cockle with
Githago segetum, Desf., quaintly says: ‘“‘ What hurt it
doth among corne, the spoile of bread, as well in
colour, taste, and unwholesomnesse, is better knowne
than desired.” It seems doubtful, however, if this
fine plant deserves so sweeping a condemnation.
There is yet another plant which bears a bad
reputation from the same cause. This is the purple
cow-wheat (AWelampyrum arvense, L.), “a gaudy but
most pernicious weed,” with oblong seeds like black
wheat grains, which, becoming mixed with the corn,
is said to render the flour dark and unwholesome.
This plant is very local, but usually abundant where
it occurs, as in some parts of East Anglia, especially
of Norfolk, and in the Isle of Wight. In the latter
station, from Ventnor to St. Lawrence, in the corn-
fields above the Undercliff, and inland as far as
Whitwell, this truly splendid ‘‘weed” flourishes in
extraordinary abundance. It is the characteristic
plant of the locality. Seen for the first time, one is
amazed at the sight of this strange and showy species
growing in such remarkable profusion. It flourishes

FLOWERS OF THE FIELD 77

not only among the wheat and barley, but also on the
dry banks and grassy borders of the fields; it has
invaded the bushy slopes above Pelham Woods, and
may be seen all along the upper edge of the cliff.
How the plant came to find a home in the island it
is now impossible to discover. It is not mentioned
as growing there by the early botanists, and its
presence could not possibly have been overlooked.
Its long leafy spikes of purple and yellow flowers,
with beautifully variegated tracts of a bright rose
colour, render it one of the most conspicuous plants
in the British Flora. Gerarde, who gives an illustra-
tion of it in his Herdal, speaks of the species as a
“stranger in England.” John Ray, on the authority
of one Mr. F. Sherard, gives as its only locality, “In
the corn on the right hand just before you come to
Lycham, in Norfolk.” The Flora Anglica, published
in 1798, quotes Ray’s statement, and adds a few
additional localities. But the earliest record of it as
growing in the Isle of Wight occurs in a list of island
plants published in 1823. A few years later Dr.
Bromfield, who found it in vast abundance in its
present locality, carefully investigated its history.
Local tradition asserted that the plant was imported
with wheat-seed from “foreign parts”—some said
Spain, some Jersey, others, with more probability,
from Norfolk. He learnt that it was the custom at
harvest time to pull up the weed with the greatest
care, and carry it off the fields in bags, and to burn it,
picking up the very seeds from the ground wherever
they could be perceived lying. The bread, he was
told, made from the wheat on the farms above the
Undercliff was not so dark coloured and “hot” as it
used to be, and that the “droll” plant was less plen-

78 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

tiful than formerly. Its local name was “ Poverty
weed,” with reference, no doubt, not only to the way
in which it impoverished the soil, but also to the fact
that the seeds, becoming mixed with the corn, ren-
dered the latter of small value in the market. It is
a curious fact that abundant as the weed is on the
farms it has invaded, it does not appear to have made
fresh conquests of late years. Indeed, its area was
almost exactly the same in I9QOI as it was in 1838,
when Dr. Bromfield visited the locality.

In the British Flora there are some twenty to thirty
plants which bear the specific name of arvensis, a
word derived from the Latin arvum, which denotes
a ploughed field. Of these weeds so specially asso-
ciated with agriculture the greatest pests are the thistle
and the charlock. Hooker speaks of the former as
“the commonest pest of agriculture,” and in some
districts it is extraordinarily abundant. But it is
not perhaps so generally troublesome as the charlock.
This yellow-flowered, cruciferous plant, sometimes and
rightly called ‘ wild mustard,” and known in Scotland
as “skellocks,” is truly ‘‘an odious weed in tillage land.”
The direct mischief caused by it is not only that it
overshadows the young growing corn, but, in a dry
season especially, it sucks up the moisture and good-
ness of the soil which should have gone to nourish
the wheat crop. Indirectly, too, it does harm by
encouraging the turnip ‘‘fly” or flea-beetle, and by
harbouring the slime fungus which specially attacks
cruciferous crops. Of late years an attempt has
been made by spraying the young plants with a
solution of sulphate of copper to destroy this pest in
its early state, and the experiment is regarded by
many scientific agriculturists with favour. Among

FLOWERS OF THE FIELD 79

other corn-field weeds to which the term arvensis
has been assigned, from the frequency of their occur-
rence in arable land, may be mentioned the corn-
spurry, the field-parsley, the common pimpernel or
poor-man’s weather-glass, the field forget-me-not, the
field stachys, the corn-mint, fumitory, shepherd’s
purse, and bindweed. These plants, however, with
the exception of the last, which in some places is a
most troublesome weed, are comparatively harmless
to the farmer. There is a passage in Crabbe’s V7//age
in which the poet, who found his main delight in
botany, gathers together several of these corn-field
intruders. He is doubtless thinking of the bleak,
wind-swept land above the cliffs at Aldeburgh, where—

“Rank weeds, that every art and care defy,
Reign o’er the land and rob the blighted rye;
There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar,
And to the ragged infant threaten war ;
There poppies nodding, mock the hope of toil ;
There the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil ;
Hardy and high, above the slender sheaf,
The slimy mallow waves her silky leaf;
O’er the young shoot the charlock throws a shade,
And clasping tares cling round the sickly blade ;
With mingled tints the rocky coasts abound,
And a sad splendour vainly shines around.”

It is marvellous how rapidly some plants will spread
themselves over wide stretches of land. The writer
was struck with the way in which the yellow charlock
took possession of the line when the Meon Valley rail-
way was being made a few years ago. The very next
spring after the embankments were thrown up their
sides were clothed with this rampant and conspicuous
crucifer, A line of yellow across the country marked

80 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

in many places the course of the railway. Poppies,
too, for some unknown reason, will occasionally appear
in strange and wonderful profusion. The striking in-
stance related by Lord Macaulay may be quoted by
way of illustration. After the battle of Landen the
ground, he tells us, “‘ during many months was strewn
with skulls and bones of men and horses, and with
fragments of hats and shoes, saddles and holsters.
The next summer, the soil, fertilised by twenty
thousand corpses, broke forth into millions of poppies.
The traveller who, on the road from Saint Tron to
Tirlemont, saw that vast sheet of rich scarlet spread-
ing from Landen to Neerwinden, could hardly help
fancying that the figurative prediction of the Hebrew
prophet was literally accomplished, that the earth was
disclosing her blood, and refusing to cover the slain.”
In districts where the land is poor and badly cultivated
one not infrequently comes across fields almost wholly
occupied with weeds of cultivation, such as the corn
marigold, the purple corn-cockle, or the stinking
Mayweed. Sometimes a more uncommon species has
taken possession of the soil. In a chalky upland field
in the neighbourhood of Winchester the writer once
met with the field chickweed (Cerastzum arvense, L.)
in extraordinary profusion, and it made a striking
appearance with its large white flowers. In the same
neighbourhood a grass-sown field that bordered the
high road near Bishop’s Waltham was literally purple,
to the extent of several acres, with the flowers of the
early meadow orchis. Gerarde, the herbalist, who
made many botanical excursions about England in
the latter part of the sixteenth century, speaks of the
abundance of the yellow melilot in parts of Essex.
“ About Clare and Heningham” (Castle Hedingham)

\

ee

FLOWERS OF THE FIELD 81

he saw “‘ very many acres overgrown with it, insomuch
that it doth not onely spoyle the land, but the corne
also, as cockle or darnel, and is a weed that generally
spreadeth over that corner of the shire.”

Sometimes most interesting and delicate plants are
found among the corn. The beautiful Adonzs or
pheasant’s eye will never be forgotten if once seen.
This striking little annual, with its finely-cut leaves
and bright scarlet flowers, belongs to the buttercup
tribe, and is only occasionally met with. Still, in
places it has firmly established itself, and year after
year may be found onthe same farms. In the chalky
corn-fields above the Undercliff in the Isle of Wight
it has been known for many years, and may be seen
every summer in company with lamb’s lettuce, the
dainty field madder, and the gaudy cow wheat. But
in one district in Hampshire it may be regarded, at
least in some seasons, as plentiful. More than a
century ago it was found on a farm between Alres-
ford and Winchester, and there it has remained ever
since. Year after year it comes up in the wheat and
barley fields, some summers in considerable profusion.
The writer once noticed a large bunch of it in a poor
woman’s hand who sat opposite to him in a railway
carriage. He ventured to ask her where she had
obtained it ; sure enough it came from the farm above
alluded to. ‘‘ There was a wonderful sight of it,” the
good woman said. The modest little mouse-tail is a
near relative of the pheasant’s eye, and, like it, is but
rarely seen. It is so called from the arrangement of
the carpets or seed vessels, which form a close slender
spike, sometimes two inches in length, and resembling,
says an old botanist, ‘very notably the taile of a
mouse.” It is most erratic in its habits, suddenly

F

82 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

appearing in spots where it had been unknown before.
Kingsley tells us that for fourteen years he had hunted
for it in vain at Eversley, while in the fifteenth it
appeared by dozens upon a new-made bank, which
had been for at least two hundred years a farmyard
gateway. Yet another plant of the same genus which
is occasionally met with among the corn is the beautiful
field larkspur. Ray mentions it as having been “ found
in great plenty by Mr. F. Sherard amongst the corn in
Swafham Field in Cambridge-shire” ; and in the same
district it is still in some seasons not uncommon.
It is an exceedingly pretty plant with its terminal
racemes of blue or pink or white flowers. Ray has
also chronicled several uncommon plants as growing
in the cornfields near his home at Black Notley in
Essex. Among these may be specially mentioned the
common thorow-wax, or “ thorow-leafe,” a name given
to the plant now known as Aupleurum rotundifolium, L.,
by Dr. Wm. Turner in the sixteenth century, because,
as he says, “the stalke waxeth throw the leaves” ;
and the ‘‘small narrow-leaved cudweed, very much
branched, and full of seed” (Fzlago gallica, L.), one of
the rarest of British plants, which it is satisfactory to
notice still finds a home in the Essex cornfields. One
more plant which frequents similar situations calls
for notice. This is the corn bell-flower (Specularia
hybrida, D.), known among the older botanists as
Venus’s looking-glasse or codded corn violet. It is a
distinguished-looking little annual, some eight or ten
inches in height, with dark-blue flowers. The writer
has seen it in the sandy fields between Sandown and
Shanklin in the Isle of Wight, but it is more frequently
met with in the Eastern Counties. It is not uncommon
in parts of Essex, and a few years ago it could always

a ee FE

FLOWERS OF THE FIELD 83

be found at the right season on a farm near the pic-
turesque village of Finchingfield.

But if weeds be a perennial nuisance to the farmer,
they are no less a source of constant annoyance to the
gardener. Gilbert White used to employ a “‘ weeding
woman” at Selborne, in order, as he tells us, that his
garden might be neat and tidy against the arrival of
visitors ; and, indeed, in some years daily attention is
imperative if the rampant intruders are to be held
in check. After rain the borders quickly become
smothered with groundsel and veronica, and in some
districts with the annual mercury. But more trouble-
some still, because of the difficulty of eradicating
them, are the lesser convolvulus and the gout weed,
whose long, white, creeping roots will continue to
grow if the smallest particle be left in the soil. The
former of these truly pestiferous weeds is strangely
known among the market gardeners near Portsmouth
as “lilies”; while the latter, as its name implies,
was formerly a famous remedy for the gout, and was
therefore doubtless cultivated in many gardens as a
medicinal herb.

Still now and again some interesting plants appear
as “weeds” in gardens. Canary-grass and buck-
wheat, and the caper spurge, are not uncommon
visitors. A few specimens of the very rare finger-
glass (Digitaria humifusa, Pers.) appeared one year
in the writer's herbaceous border at Portchester, and
for several years in succession the almost equally rare
bristle-grass (Sefaria viridis, Beauv.). In another
garden in the same parish the white goose foot
(Chenopodium fictfolium, Sm.) made its appearance
in 1893: this species had never been noticed in
Hampshire before; but in the following season it

84 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

was repeatedly searched for in vain. Another rare
Hampshire plant is the treacle mustard, sometimes
from its general habit of growth called wallflower
mustard. It is not infrequently met with as a corn-
field weed in parts of East Anglia, but in Hants it
had merely been noticed in one or two localities, and
then only single specimens were found. Strange to
say, it appeared a few seasons ago in abundance in
an old garden associated with memories of Izaak
Walton in the Meon Valley. In some gardens in the
South of England, especially in the Isle of Wight, the
sweet-scented coltsfoot, or, as it is sometimes called
from its time of flowering, the winter heliotrope, has
firmly established itself. It is often in blossom as
early as January, and with its fragrant flowers is not
an unwelcomed intruder, except when it strays beyond
the limits of the shrubbery. ‘In the garden at Swain-
ston,” consecrated by Tennyson’s lines beginning—

“ Nightingales warbled without,
Within was weeping for thee,”

the plant is remarkably abundant.

John Ray noted the broad-leaved spurge as “ com-
ing up spontaneously here in my own orchard at
Black Notley,” and a specimen of this uncommon
plant, gathered by his friend Dr. Dale in “Ray’s
orchard,” is preserved in Buddle’s Herbarium at the
South Kensington Museum. A few years ago the
writer visited Ray’s house ‘‘on Dewlands,” now, alas!
burnt to the ground, and searched in vain for the
broad-leaved spurge. The place has been much
altered since the great naturalist died there in 1705,
and the orchard has been mostly stubbed up. An
ancient pear-tree, however, was standing, which

FLOWERS OF THE FIELD 85

tradition alleged to have been planted by the botanist
himself. And beneath its lichen-covered branches
there was growing among the potatoes a most rare
and interesting “weed.” It was the lovely blue
pimpernel (Axagallis cerulea, Sch.). Seldom, indeed,
is this dainty little annual met with, but once seen its
beauty will never be forgotten. Old Gerarde and the
early botanists regarded it as a distinct species, and
called it ‘“‘the blew-flowred or female pimpernell,” in
distinction to “the male or scarlet pimpernell,” or poor
man’s weather-giass. Once or twice only had the
writer seen this delicate and lovely variety of the scarlet
Anagallis ; and there, in one of the most interesting
of British localities, in the garden of the “house on
Dewlands”—the home of the celebrated John Ray,
where he wrote his Synopsis of British Plants, the
first true English Flora—beneath the venerable pear-
tree which his own hands had planted, there opened
to the sunlight the exquisite blue petals of Axagallis
cerulea. The fragile little annual was carefully
secured, and afterwards no less carefully preserved,
and is now among the most valued specimens in the
dark oaken cabinet which holds the writer’s collection
of flowers of the field.

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‘

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF
PLANTS

IT cannot be doubted that the flora of Great Britain
has considerably changed during the last three hun-
dred years. On the one hand a goodly number of
plants, many of them from America, have found their
way into this country and have become completely
naturalised. Among these may be mentioned such
characteristic species as the pretty yellow balsam,
which lines the banks of the Wey near Guildford and
of other Surrey streams; the little white Claytonia,
which may now be found abundantly on the sandy
heaths of Bagshot and of Wolmer Forest; and the
Canadian pond-weed, which since 1847 has spread so
rapidly through our canals and rivers. But, on the
other hand, many interesting species of the old Eng-
lish flora have become exceedingly scarce, while a few
have altogether disappeared. Some plants, apparently
common in the days of the early botanists, must now
be reckoned among our greatest rarities, and will
never again be found in their old localities. If ‘‘ Master
Doctor’’ Turner, or Gerarde the herbalist, or the illus-
trious John Ray, could come to life again, they would
search in vain the ancient haunts of many of their
most notable species. Many causes have contributed

to this unfortunate result. The growth of towns con-
87

88 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

sequent on the vast increase of our population, the
draining of the Fens, improved methods of agriculture,
the rapacity of dealers, the collecting energy of modern
botanists—all have helped to impoverish the richness
of the British flora. Still, considering the changed
condition of the face of the country, it may be a matter
of surprise that the number of rare plants is not more
seriously reduced.

But few species, at any rate, have become absolutely
extinct in Great Britain. The Alpine cotton-grass is
gone from the bogs of Forfar, and a sedge from its
only known locality near Bath. A vetch with ‘long
white flowers,” formerly found by Ray on Glastonbury
Tor, is also gone, and a near relation, Vzcza levigata,
which once occupied the Chesil Beach near Wey-
mouth, and is now extinct, not only in England, but
in the whole world. That interesting member of the
Lily group, Szmethts bicolor, formerly to be found
near Bournemouth, was extirpated before the year
1875; and it is to be feared that the little Holosteum
umbellatum will never again be seen on the old walls
of Norwich, or Bury, or Eye.

But while few species have become entirely ex-
tinct as regards Great Britain as a whole, yet a large
number seem to be on the verge of it. Plants formerly
not uncommon, and to be found in several counties,
are now extremely rare and confined to one or two
localities. This is especially the case with some of
our orchids; and several species, such as the lizard
orchis, the coral-root, the lady’s slipper, the leafless
Epipogum, and the Fen orchis, may soon have to be
reckoned among our extinct species. The sweet-
scented sea stock, one of the most showy and beautiful
plants in our native flora, is extinct on the cliffs at

4

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF PLANTS 89

Hastings, and is now only to be found in the Isle of
Wight, where it flourishes on the perpendicular face
of the inaccessible chalk cliffs. The exquisite little
Tricomena, a dwarf member of the Iris family, exists
only in one locality in South Devon. In former years
the rugged heights of Portland were clothed with the
handsome tree-mallow, which also grew “at Hurst
Castle, over against the Isle of Wight.’’ In both
these localities, and indeed along the whole of the
southern coast, except in Devon and Cornwall, this
splendid plant, so dear to the ancient herbalists, will
now be sought for in vain.

In the Isle of Wight, to take a small and well-
known botanical district, many plants formerly existed
which must now be omitted from the Plora Vectenszs.
To judge from a statement in the works of de l’Obel, the
sea-colewort or wild cabbage, the parent of our garden
species, was formerly not uncommon on the Island
cliffs. As late as the middle of the last century it
grew plentifully on the crumbled chalk at the foot of
the Culvers. It had disappeared from that locality
by the year 1870, and is now lost to the Island.
About the year 1835 John Stuart Mill, who found his
only recreation in botany, discovered in Sandown Bay
a single specimen of the rare purple sponge. This
specimen is still carefully preserved, but the plant has
not been met with in the Island since. On the pebbly
beach of the same bay the seaside everlasting pea
formerly existed; this, too, is gone, and also the very
rare Diotts maritima, or seaside cotton-weed. In the
rough, broken ground of the Undercliff, especially in
the neighbourhood of the little church of St. Lawrence,
once celebrated as the smallest church in England,
and about the ivy-clad ruins of Wolverton, that hand-

90 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

some plant, the stinking hellebore or setterwort, for-
merly grew in some abundance. It was plentiful in
the year 1839, when the celebrated botanist, Dr.
Bromfield, visited the spot, when he pronounced it to
be, in his opinion, ‘‘most certainly wild.” Since then
the neighbourhood has been much built over, and a
good deal of the ‘rough ground” has been converted
into private gardens, and it is to be feared that this
most interesting plant has perished. Near the grand
old Jacobean manor-house of Knighton, now, alas!
pulled down, but of which we have so fine a de-
scription in Legh Richmond’s Dazryman’s Daughter,
there formerly grew the dwale, or deadly nightshade,
a striking plant both in flower and in fruit. This, like
the “large and venerable mansion,” has disappeared,
and must now, with other notable species—the proli-
ferous pink, the grass of Parnassus, the spider orchis,
the beautiful white helleborine, and the vernal squill—
be counted as extinct in the Isle of Wight.

The disappearance of some of these plants is doubt-
less due to what may be called the sporadic nature
of certain species. It is the way of some plants to
suddenly spring up in a strange locality, to remain
perhaps for a few years, and as mysteriously to dis-
appear. We have a striking illustration of this in the
case of Szsymbrium Trio, or the London rocket. The
plant, as is well known, received its English name
from the curious fact that after the Great Fire of
London in 1666 it came up plentifully “among the
rubbish in the ruines.” During the two following
summers it was abundant, Ray tells us, and even
established itself “on the Lord Cheney’s wall at
Chelsey,’’ but finally it entirely disappeared. An
equally striking instance occurred at Aldborough, in

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF PLANTS 91

Suffolk, in the case of Lathyrus maritimus, the sea-
side everlasting pea. Old Stow, in his Chrowzcle, tells
us that “in the great dearth which happened in the
year 1555 the poor people in this part of the country
maintained themselves and their children with these
Pease, which,” saith he, ‘‘to a miracle sprung up in
the autumn among the bare stones of their own accord,
and bore fruit sufficient for thousands of people.”
“That these Pease did spring up miraculously for the
relief of the poor I believe not,” adds John Ray, who
repeats the story; ‘‘neither did they owe their original
to shipwracks or Pease cast out of ships, as Camden
hints to be the opinion of the wiser; but, without
doubt, sprung up at first spontaneously.” Ray speaks
of the plant as still (1695) growing abundantly on
“the stone-baich between Orford and Alburgh, called
the shingle, especially on the further end towards
Orford.” It is now veryrare, and has not, we believe,
been met with on the Suffolk coast for many years.
This sporadic nature doubtless explains the disappear-
ance of the same plant from the beach at Sandown,
as well as of the purple spurge and of Dzotes maritima.
In former years this latter plant has been recorded
for many localities along the coast. Gerarde found
it in Mersea Isle, off the Essex shore; it grew at
Southwold in Suffolk, and near the ruins of old
Dunwich Church; it has been met with near Poole
and Bridport in Dorsetshire, and at several spots on
the Cornish coast; but in all these places it is now
probably extinct. It is well known that in some
seasons certain of our orchidaceous plants are far
more abundant than in others. This is specially the
case with those species which frequent the downs,
such as the bee orchis, the frog orchis, and the musk

92 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

orchis. In the early summer of 1898 the latter
appeared in extraordinary abundance on a small patch
of down-land in the writer’s parish. There were
literally hundreds of plants. Not content with occupy-
ing the down, they invaded the débris of an adjoining
chalk-pit, and sprang up in every possible situation.
The following season it required a good deal of
searching to find so much as a single specimen.
But if in some few instances the disappearance of
interesting plants can be thus naturally accounted for,
in the great majority of cases it is due to the inroads
of civilisation, with its building operations and scientific
methods of agriculture. It is very curious to come
across, in old books, the names of plants and wild
flowers which in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies were to be seen growing in London and its
neighbourhood. There are many such notices to be
found scattered up and down the writings of Gerarde
and Ray, and others of the early botanists. For
instance, the little wall-rue fern was to be found on
“an old stone conduit between Islington and Jack
Straw’s Castle,” and the royal Osmunda flourished
on Hampstead Heath, together with the lily-of-the-
valley. The mistletoe might be seen growing “on
some trees at Clarendon House, St. James’s.” In
Lambeth Marsh the very rare ‘‘frogge-bit” grew,
‘““where any that is disposed may see it,” and the
arrow-head in ‘‘the Tower ditch,” and also “by
Lambeth Bridge over against the Archbishop of
Canterbury’s Palace.” In the ‘moat that encom-
passes the seat of the Right Reverend the Bishop of
London at Fulham” might be seen the sweet-smelling
flag, and the yellow water-lily, and the scarce Carda-
mine tmpatiens. The sweet-scented camomile was

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF PLANTS 93

common at Westminster, and the wild clary in ‘the
fields of Holborne neere unto Grayes Inne”; in “a
lane against St. Pancras’ Church” the wild lettuce
grew, and the deadly nightshade in a ditch at
Islington, and the beautiful marsh gentian on Clapham
Common; while the rare vervaine mallow was to be
seen ‘on the ditch sides on the left hand of the place
of execution by London, called Tyborn.” Needless to
say, these plants have long since disappeared; and what
has happened in the case of the ‘‘all-devouring wen,” as
Cobbett years ago called London, has been repeated in
a lesser degree in many districts throughout the country.
But more destructive to all native flora than even
the growth of towns must be reckoned the vast system
of drainage which has been carried out in many parts
of England. In olden times, to take the most striking
illustration, the great fen district of Cambridgeshire
and Huntingdon was a grand place to the naturalist.
Kingsley has painted in glowing colours the ancient
glories of Whittlesea Mere, where ‘‘dark green alders
and pale green reeds stretched for miles round the
broad lagoon; where the coot clanked and the bittern
boomed, and the sedge-bird, not content with its own
sweet song, mocked the notes of all the birds around ;
while high overhead hung, motionless, hawk beyond
hawk, buzzard beyond buzzard, kite beyond kite, as far
as eye could see.” It is all changed now. The vast
solitude, the home of some of our rarest wild-flowers,
the haunt of the great copper butterfly, now lost to the
whole world, the breeding-place of ruffs and reeves, has
been converted into enormous cornfields, where—

** All the land in flowery squares,
Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind,
Smells of the coming summer.”

94 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

And the rare plants are gone. The fen orchis, Lzparis
Loeseltz, the glory of the fen flora, formerly to be
found in Burwell and Bottisham fens, and elsewhere
in similar situations in the Eastern counties, is now
probably extinct; and the same must be said of the
well-known rarities of the district, Sexeczo paludosus,
S. palustris, and Sonchus palustris, or the marsh
sow-thistle. It has been calculated that no less
than fifty species have been lost to the flora of
Cambridgeshire, and most of them in consequence
of the draining of the fens. The same process has
naturally produced similar results elsewhere. In the
year 1667 John Goodyer, a famous botanist, discov-
ered the marsh {snardia near the great pond on Peters-
field Heath, in Hampshire. This plant is one of our
greatest rarities, being only known to exist in one or
two localities in Great Britain. Up to the middle of
the last century it maintained its position on Peters-
field Heath, where, in the summer of 1848, it was seen
in considerable plenty by Dr. Bromfield, the author of
the flora Vectensis. Since then the marshy spots
where it flourished have been drained, and this inter-
esting plant has now entirely disappeared from the
historic locality where, in the middle of the seven-
teenth century, it was first discovered to be a British
plant.

Other changes, too, to the detriment ot our flora
have passed over the face of the country. Not only
have bogs been drained, but large tracts of heath
and downland have come under the plough, and
what was formerly open country is now enclosed and
cultivated. The roadside wastes, where in the autumn
flocks of goldfinches might be seen feeding on the
thistle-seeds, have in many districts been taken in,

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF PLANTS 95

and even the hedgerows have been stubbed up and
thrown into the fields. The Commons Inclosure Act
of 1845 has been inimical alike to the fauna and
flora of the country. In parts of Essex the thick
hedgerows, beautiful in early summer with honey-
suckle and dog-roses, have almost entirely disappeared,
and hardly a bank is left for the violet and the prim-
rose and the lesser celandine. Not so many years ago
the rare and beautiful Martagon lily might be seen
growing plentifully up a green lane, bounded by high
banks and old copse-like hedges, in the neighbour-
hood of Saffron Walden. The banks have now been
levelled and the plant is gone.

In some few instances the very beauty of a plant
tends to its destruction. The wild daffodil and the
wild snowdrop are becoming scarcer every year owing
to their eradication for purposes of sale. On some of
the Hampshire hangers, where every spring may be
seen the truly beautiful sight of

“A host of golden daffodils
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze,”

it has become necessary to have a keeper constantly
on the watch in order to save the plants from total
extinction. In one parish in the Isle of Wight, for-
merly noted for the abundance of snowdrops to be
seen in the copses and hedgerows, the plant has become
so scarce that the writer could only find a few small
patches last spring. The flowers had been trans-
planted into gardens, he was told, or sold in the
neighbouring town. The same fate has overtaken
a colony of that most rare and beautiful plant, the
fritillary, or snake’s head, which has almost entirely
disappeared from a damp meadow where fifty years

96 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

ago it was plentiful. Another rare plant which has
suffered from the same cause is the fragrant Daphne
mezereum. This beautiful shrub, which flowers in
early spring, often in the month of February, before
the leaves appear, used not to be uncommon in the
Hampshire woods, especially about Andover and in
the neighbourhood of Selborne. In Gilbert White’s
time it grew on the hanger, “among the shrubs at the
S.E. end, above the cottages.” In a former parish of
the writer’s it used often to be found when the under-
wood was cut. One old woodman remembered having
seen as many as thirty or forty plants in a single
copse. Though still frequent in cottage gardens, the
shrub is now almost extinct in our woods, owing in a
great measure, to quote a Hampshire writer of fifty
years ago, to “the avidity with which it has been
hunted out and dug up for transplanting by the cot-
tagers, either for their own use or for sale to the
nurserymen.” So, too, with the beautiful Dzanthus
cestus, or Cheddar pink, which formerly covered the
romantic limestone cliffs from which it takes its name.
It is now nearly destroyed in this, its only native
habitat in Great Britain, through the mercenary habit
of digging up the plants for sale to visitors.

And what has happened to many species of our
rarer and more beautiful flowering plants has taken
place in a still more lamentable degree in the case of
our native ferns. All over the country—in Yorkshire,
in Wales, in Devonshire, in the home counties—they
have been ruthlessly destroyed for purposes of gain.
Many of our choicest species are on the verge of
extinction from this single cause. Our very hedge-
rows are being denuded of the commoner but not less
beautiful kinds by lazy tramps, who hawk them

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF PLANTS 97

around in towns and villages. When, in January
1624, Mr. John Goodyer “rode between Rake and
Headley in Hampshire, neere Wollmer Forest,” he
saw enough maidenhair spleenwort “to lode an horse
with”; it is doubtful if a single specimen of the plant
could be found to-day. The Tunbridge fern is almost
extinct at Tunbridge, and the sea spleenwort in the
Isle of Wight. But it is needless to continue the
mournful catalogue. The fact is too patent to require
illustration. It should, however, be borne in mind
that unless persons were found ready to buy the spoil
the trade in native plants would quickly cease. The
time has surely come when all lovers of Nature and
of country life should use every endeavour to preserve
what yet remains to us of the flora of Great Britain.

SOME ADDITIONS TO OUR
NATIVE FLORA

IN our last paper we considered the question of the
disappearance of many of our rarer and more interest-
ing wild-flowers. We saw that many circumstances
had contributed to this unfortunate result. The
growth of towns; improved methods of agriculture,
especially in the way of drainage; the enclosing of
commons; the stubbing-up of hedgerows; the cultiva-
tion of downlands; the rapacity of dealers; the trans-
planting of showy species, like fritillary and Daphne
mezereum, into gardens and nurseries—all have had
their share in reducing the number of plants in our
native flora. While only a few species have, it is
true, become wholly extinct in these islands, many
have been greatly reduced in numbers, and now only
flourish in one or two localities, which in former years
were more generally distributed. And this, unfortu-
nately, is the case, not so much with our common
plants, although some, as the primrose and the hedge-
row ferns, are most grievously persecuted, as with
many of our choicer species, which seem to be be-
coming scarcer every year.

Now while this is beyond question true, yet, on the
other hand, it must be borne in mind, especially in

these days of democratic progress, that a large number
99

too THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

of foreign plants have established their claim to be
admitted within the charmed circle of British plants.
The last edition of Zhe London Catalogue reckons
no less than 1958 species as now growing wild in
Great Britain, but this large estimate includes a great
number of brambles, wild-roses, willows, and hawk-
weeds, which can only be distinguished by scientific
botanists. Moreover, it comprehends those alien
species which have become completely naturalised in
these islands, and have settled down permanently side
by side with the older flora. It is often difficult—
sometimes it is impossible—to absolutely decide
whether a given plant be really indigenous or other-
wise, so thoroughly have some of these introductions
become at home in their new surroundings. Just as
it is true of England as a nation that Saxon and
Norman and Dane are we, so is it equally true of our
flora that it comprises plants of many different types
and from many foreign lands.

Some of these introductions date back to a very
early period in our history. Several are to be as-
signed to the time of the Roman occupation, as for
instance the Roman nettle, still to be found about
towns and villages in the east of England, and pro-
bably the saffron crocus, formerly cultivated at Saffron
Walden, and occasionally to be met with in a semi-
wild state. To a still earlier period, the woad, or
Tsatis tinctorta, probably belongs—the plant of which
Pliny tells us, in the quaint translation of Philemon
Holland, that “with the juyce whereof the women of
Britain, as wel the married wives as yong maidens
their daughters, anoint and dy their bodies all over,
resembling by that tincture the color of Moores and
Ethyopians; in which manner they use at some

ADDITIONS TO OUR NATIVE FLORA 1o1

solemn feasts and sacrifices to go all naked.” ‘This
famous plant, doubtless the relic of ancient cultivation,
is still to be found in several parts of England, as in
the chalk quarries near Guildford, where now, as in
1841 when John Stuart Mill noticed it, it grows in
“ prodigious luxuriance.” Other plants doubtless owe
their existence to the old monastic herb-gardens,
among which may be mentioned the birthwort, the
masterwort, the wild hyssop, and perhaps the wild
mercury, formerly used as a pot-herb. The milk or
Virgin Mary thistle, the leaves of which are beautifully
veined with white, is supposed to have been brought
from the East by the Crusaders. The soapwort,
though known to Gerarde, who says “it groweth
wilde of itselfe neere to rivers and running brooks in
sunny places,” yet seems to have been an escape from
cultivation in gardens where, says our herbalist, ‘‘it
is planted for the flouer sake, to the decking up of
houses, for the which purpose it chiefly serveth.”
The larkspur again has no claim to be considered a
native plant, although in Ray’s time ‘‘it was to be
found in great plenty amongst the corn in Swafham
Field in Cambridgeshire.”

Many of our mural plants, though now completely
naturalised on old walls and ruins throughout the
country, cannot be regarded—as indeed their artificial
position would lead us to suspect—as indigenous
members of our British flora. The wallflower, though
known to Gerarde and Ray, and perhaps dating back
to the period of Roman occupation, is admitted by all
botanists to be an alien species. So with the splendid
red valerian, so conspicuous on the grey walls of
Winchester Cathedral, of Portchester Castle, and other
historic buildings; and the rare Dzanthus plumarius,

1o2 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

the origin of the garden pinks. The beautiful little
ivy-leaved toad-flax, now happily so abundant on
walls throughout the country, was only known to
Gerarde as a garden plant, and is supposed to have
been introduced from Italy. Among other waifs and
strays from cultivation must doubtless be reckoned
the yellow corydalis, the purple snapdragon, the
houseleek, often to be seen on the roofs of cottages,
and several kinds of sedum or stonecrop. One very
rare member of a most plain and uninteresting family,
Senecio squalidus, now to be found growing on vener-
able walls at Oxford, is said to have originally escaped
from the botanical garden.

Weeds have been well called ‘the tramps of the
vegetable world”; and it is most curious how some
plants seem to accompany man in his movements
across the globe. The common ribwort plantain is
known among the North American Indians as the
‘‘white man’s foot,” because they say it always springs
up in places where the colonists have encamped. Sir
Joseph Hooker tells us that “on one occasion, landing
on a small uninhabited island, nearly at the Antipodes,
the first evidence he met with of its having been
previously visited by man was the English chickweed ;
and this he traced to a mound that marked the grave
of a British sailor, and that was covered with the
plant, doubtless the offspring of seed that had adhered
to the spade or mattock with which the grave had
been dug.” It is well known that numbers of our
English wild-flowers are to be found in luxuriant
abundance in parts of America. The viper’s bugloss
has become a troublesome weed in Virginia; the
fields along the course of the Hudson river are in
some places overrun with the bladder campion, in

ADDITIONS TO OUR NATIVE FLORA 103

others the soapwort known as “ Bouncing Bet” grows
in extraordinary profusion; while along the streams
the beautiful purple loosestrife is abundant.

On the other hand, within comparatively recent
times several interesting species have found their way
here from America, and have comfortably established
themselves. Among these may be mentioned the
American wood-sorrel with yellow flowers, and the
little white Claytonia, now common in Wolmer Forest,
and as thoroughly at home as the English mouse-ear
chickweed. In 1822 John Stuart Mill, who delighted
in roaming over the country in search of wild-flowers,
discovered the American balsam, /wpatcens fulva,
growing abundantly on the banks of the Wey near
Guildford. ‘‘ At whatever period introduced,” he says,
writing in 1841, ‘this plant is now so thoroughly
naturalised, that it would be pedantry any longer to
refuse it a place in the English Flora. For many
miles by the side of the Wey, both above and below
Guildford, it is as abundant as the commonest river-
side plants. It is equally abundant on the banks of
the Tillingbourne, that beautiful tributary of the Wey ;
especially at Chilworth, where it grows in boundless
profusion.” Since Mill’s time the plant has consider-
ably increased, and is now frequently met with along
the banks of the Surrey streams. Another North
American plant, with ornamental yellow blossoms,
now occasionally to be met with, is the Wzmulus, or
monkey-flower. This handsome species is not un-
common in Hampshire, and the writer has met with
it near the source of the river Wey at Alton, where
it makes a splendid show, and along the course of
the Itchen, at Titchborne, Itchen Abbas, Avingdon,
Winchester, and elsewhere. Beside the tiny stream

104 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

that flows down the picturesque valley of the Lyth
at Selborne, a spot specially sacred to the memory of
Gilbert White, this plant has now completely estab-
lished itself in the most luxuriant abundance. In the
same district the Canadian fleabane or Michaelmas
daisy may now and again be met with on the grassy
wastes that border the country lanes; while in the
neighbourhood of London it is reported as a fairly
common plant.

The career of the Canadian pond-weed (Axacharis
Alsinastrum, Bab.), is interesting because of the extra-
ordinary rapidity with which it spread itself through-
out the country. It seems to have been first noticed
in Great Britain in County Down about the year
1836; in 1842 it was reported from Berwick-on-
Tweed; in 1847 it was discovered by a Miss Kirby
in the Foxton Locks, near Market Harborough, in
Leicestershire; in the same year it was found by
Mr. Borrer in the pond at Legh Park, near Havant,
in Hampshire; two years later it was reported as
growing abundantly in the river Trent at Burton-on-
Trent, and afterwards at Cambridge; and since then
it has rapidly spread through ponds, and canals, and
sluggish streams over the whole of Great Britain. Its
progress is the more remarkable from the fact that
it seldom or never seeds in this country (the male
flower having been found in the neighbourhood of
Edinburgh only), and seems to propagate itself almost
entirely by means of its floating branches. Another
American plant which has found its way to England,
and has become extraordinarily abundant in one
locality, is the many-spiked cordgrass, or Spartina
alternifiora. This stout and useful grass, which loves
the mud-flats and salt creeks of tidal rivers, is common

ADDITIONS TO OUR NATIVE FLORA 105

enough throughout America; but in Europe it is
apparently confined to two localities, both in the
neighbourhood of seaports having constant communi-
cation with the New World—namely, the salt marshes
that border the river Adour at Bayonne in France,
and on the mud-flats of the Itchen, and similar spots,
near Southampton. In the latter locality it is now
the most conspicuous plant that flourishes on the long
stretches of mud which at low tide line the banks
of the Itchen; and the most casual observer can
hardly fail to notice it as travelling on the L.S.W.
Railway he looks out of the carriage window after
passing St. Denys station. The plant seems to have
come under the notice of Dr. Bromfield about the
year 1836, and he speaks of it as then abundant, but
as having become established within the memory of
persons then living. ‘It is regularly cut down,” he
tells us, “by the poorer classes at Southampton, and
employed by them in lieu of straw or reeds for thatch-
ing outhouses, cattle-sheds, &c., and more extensively
for litter, and subsequently for manure. Horses and
pigs,” he adds, ‘‘eat it greedily; and for all those
purposes it is much sought after, so that hardly an
accessible patch is suffered to remain uncut by the
end of September.” Since the learned author of the
Flora Vectensts penned these words, the plant has
considerably increased, and is now to be seen not
only on the Itchen, and on both sides of Southamp-
ton Water, but also on the banks of the Hamble,
and as far as Hill Head at the mouth of the river
Meon, which empties itself into the Solent over against
the towers of Osborne House.

It is curious how occasionally plants will establish
themselves in a locality where formerly they were

106 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

entirely unknown. Several striking instances occur
in the historic parish of Selborne. We have already
referred to the American Mzmulus, which now almost
chokes the little stream that flows down the valley of
the Lyth. In the swampy meadow hard by another
plant may be seen, which did not figure in the flora
of Selborne in the days of Gilbert White. We mean
the bistort or snakeweed, conspicuous with its pink
flowers in the month of June, and now growing
abundantly. In the year 1848 a single specimen of
this uncommon plant was noticed by Dr. Bromfield,
and duly chronicled in the pages of The Phytologist ;
and from this solitary individual the present colony
has doubtless sprung. Further down the valley, on
a warm slope facing south, there may be seen in the
early days of spring large numbers of the common
snowdrop. Had the plants existed in White’s time
he would undoubtedly have mentioned them in his
famous botanical letter to Daines Barrington, in which
he enumerates “the more rare plants of the parish,
and the spots where they may be found”; but there
they are to-day in luxuriant profusion, a beautiful
addition to the local flora.

A practice that is not to be commended, but which
has occasionally been followed even by distinguished
naturalists, is sometimes answerable for the existence
of strange plants in unwonted places. We refer to the
habit of scattering the seeds of rare or interesting wild-
flowers in localities where the species had not before
been known to exist. No less an authority than
Gilbert White was once guilty of this misdemeanour.
“‘T wish,” he wrote to his “(dear niece Anne,” “that
we could say that we had ye Parnassia; I have
sowed seeds in our bogs several times, but to no

ADDITIONS TO OUR NATIVE FLORA 107

purpose.” This beautiful plant, common in the north
of England, and also to be found in the neighbouring
counties of Wilts, Dorset, Surrey, and Berks, is un-
known in Hampshire; but it is an interesting fact,
that the late Lord Chancellor Selborne once told the
writer that about the year 1870 he had found a speci-
men of Parnassia in the bogs of Oakhanger, which in
White’s time formed part of the parish of Selborne.
It is not impossible that Gilbert White was more suc-
cessful than he imagined, and that Lord Selborne’s
plant was a descendant of the seed scattered by the
great naturalist a hundred years before. Another
instance of a similar attempt to assist Nature occurred
in 1848, when the distinguished author of the Flora
Vectensis planted some roots of the handsome sea
spurge in the loose sand of St. Helen’s spit in the
Isle of Wight. Till then this beautiful plant, though
abundant on the other side of the Solent, had been
unknown in the island, but Dr. Bromfield’s plants
flourished and established themselves; and now
Euphorbia paralias is one of the most conspicuous
species to be seen growing on the sandy shore of
Bembridge Harbour. Once again, when last autumn
the writer visited the historic ruins of Colchester
Castle, he was surprised to find on the crumbling
walls of the ancient Norman keep a number of speci-
mens of Sz/ene Otttes, or the Spanish catch-fly. The
plant, though found in Suffolk, was not known to
exist in Essex; but there, all along the broken
masonry at the top of the tower, it was growing
abundantly. It turned out, however, upon inquiry,
that some few years ago certain local entomologists
introduced the plant in order to furnish food for their
caterpillars. It has now settled comfortably in its

108 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

new surroundings, and it is not impossible that in
years to come, when all memory of its introduction
is forgotten, the species will be included in the list of
plants indigenous to the county. Another interesting
plant, not figuring in the Essex flora, but whose pres-
ence was not to be attributed to the agency of man,
was accidentally lighted upon by the writer some ten
or twelve miles from the castle walls. Riding along
on his bicycle near the edge of the low-lying cliff that
overlooks the picturesque estuary of the Colne and the
wooded shore of Mersea Isle, he got off his machine
to admire more at ease the calm beauty of the scene,
when there at his feet, with the tire of the back-
wheel actually resting upon it, was a beautiful patch
of Vicza lutea, the single-flowered yellow vetch. He
had never seen the living plant before, and the vision
brought with it a surprise and pleasure not soon to
be forgotten.

THE FLORA OF HANTS

SOME twenty years ago a Flora of Hampshire, in-
cluding the Isle of Wight, was brought out by Mr.
Frederick Townsend, assisted by several well-known
botanists. A new edition of this work has lately
appeared, giving a more complete record of the plants
of the county, with regard both to species and to
localities. Of new species there are upwards of fifty
now given, among the most interesting of which are
the adder’s-tongue-leaved spearwort, the coral root,
the beech fern, and the yellow star of Bethlehem;
while the number of localities of the rarer species is
greatly multiplied. “It is sad to think,” says Mr.
Townsend in the Preface, “that our native flora is
suffering much, even to the extinction of species, by
building and enclosures in the neighbourhood of our
larger towns, whereby the localities of many plants
have been lost entirely. Marshes have also been
extensively drained, and much land laid out in pleasure
gardens, market gardens, and for recreation purposes.
It is the recognition of such facts which renders the
existence of local floras doubly valuable, not only as
catalogues and guides to existing localities, but as
records of the disappearance of many of our native
plants, the history of which would be lost to science
were it not for the existence of works like the pre-
sent.” We further hope that the appearance of this
109

110 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

second edition is some evidence of a growing interest
in botany, perhaps of all outdoor pursuits the most
delightful, and one open to rich and poor persons alike
who have the good fortune to live in the country.

That the flora of Hampshire is an exceedingly rich
one will be evident at once, when we say that Mr.
Townsend claims for the county no less than 1179
species of flowering plants. Or if we compare the
flora of Hampshire with those of the adjoining counties,
we learn from the comparative tables drawn up by
the editor, that while Surrey possesses 61 plants
not found in Hants, Dorset 45, Berkshire 31, and
Wiltshire 25, yet, on the other hand, Hampshire
possesses no less than 196 plants not found in
Wiltshire, 166 plants not found in Berkshire, 120
plants not found in Surrey, and 66 plants not found
in Dorset. - And this comparative wealth is no
doubt to be accounted for by the varied nature of
Hampshire soil and scenery, and the large extent
of its acreage. Hampshire ranks as the eighth
English county in respect of size, stretching from
Surrey to Dorset, a distance of over forty miles, and
from Berkshire to the English Channel, a distance of
some fifty-five miles, and comprising with the Isle of
Wight an area of about one million acres, of which,
roughly speaking, one-half consists of chalk and the
other of the various tertiary formations. While
Hampshire cannot boast of any mountain range, yet,
as Mr. Townsend says, there are few counties in
which there is more varied and picturesque scenery
of a truly English character. Its highest hills are the
well-known North and South Downs—spoken of by
Gilbert White as a “vast range of mountains ”’—
drawn in soft and flowing lines, and clothed with

THE FLORA OF HANTS III

short, smooth turf, on which the shadows fall un-
broken. These downs, of which the loftiest are
Combe Hill, in the north of the county, and Butser
Hill, near Petersfield, support a flora of their
own, which is specially rich in species of the orchid
family. Hampshire, again, according to the testimony
of old Izaak Walton, ‘exceeds all England for swift,
shallow, clear, pleasant brooks, and store of trouts,”
of which the principal are the Avon, the Test, and
the Itchen. There are, however, numerous smaller
streams, such as the Loddon, the Hamble, the Meon,
and the Wey, on the banks of which characteristic
plants will be found. There are also large stretches
of waste and forest land, the home of many rare and
interesting species. The New Forest especially is
favourite ground to the botanist. It still consists of
nearly one hundred thousand acres, and its vast
tracts of open heath and bog produce some of our
choicest English plants. Among these must be
specially mentioned /sxardia palustris, now to be
found nowhere else in England; the delicate orchid
Spiranthes estivalis, or summer Lady’s Tresses, found
only here and in Wyre Forest, in Worcestershire ;
and the elegant Gladiolus tllyricus, which is not un-
common in one or two localities. In the enclosed
parts of the forest the wild columbine and the beauti-
ful bastard balm are sometimes seen; while the woods
about Beaulieu and Boldre produce in abundance the
narrow-leaved lungwort or blue cowslip, called by the
forest children “ Joseph and Mary.” It is interesting
to notice in the new edition of our flora that the larger
long-leaved sundew (Drosera anglica, Huds.) has been
found abundantly of late years in several of the forest
bogs,

112 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

In addition to the New Forest, Hampshire possesses
several other large tracts of forest and moorland, the
happy hunting-grounds of many naturalists. The
Forest of Bere, to the north of Portsdown Hill, still
includes some eleven thousand acres, in one spot of
which, known perhaps only to the writer, the beautiful
snowflake may be seen in blossom every spring. In
Gilbert White’s time, ‘‘the royal forest of Wolmer
extended,” he tells us, “for about seven miles in
length by two and a half in breadth, and consisted
entirely of sand covered with heath and fern, without
having one standing tree in the whole extent.’”” Since
then, part of the forest has been enclosed and planted
with oak, larch, and Scotch fir, which has considerably
curtailed its former dimensions. Abutting on Wolmer,
the Forest of Alice Holt still covers over two thousand
acres; and Harewood Forest, near Andover in the
north of the county, is about the same extent. Waltham
Chase, the haunt, in the early years of the eighteenth
century, of a famous gang of poachers known as the
‘‘ Waltham Blacks,” is now enclosed, and broad acres
of strawberries and fruit-trees now flourish where once
the wild deer roamed. The county, too, is further
enriched with a large “littoral” flora, which adds con-
siderably to the number of its species. Not to include
the coast of the Isle of Wight—for in this paper we
are mainly concerned with the plants of the mainland
of Hampshire—the sea-board stretches from Emsworth
to Bournemouth, embracing the sandy shores of Hay-
ling Island, where many a rare plant is to be found;
the muddy creeks of Portsmouth Harbour, where, on
the sea-banks, especially in the neighbourhood of Port-
chester, the golden samphire will be seen; the low-
lying cliffs of Hillhead and Lea-on-the-Solent, and

THE FLORA OF HANTS 113

again, beyond the New Forest, the long reaches of
mudland on each side of Southampton Water, covered
with the stout American cord-grass, unknown else-
where in England.

When these varied conditions of soil and situation
are considered, the large total of 1179 species now
recorded for Hampshire is less remarkable. It will
not, of course, be claimed that all these plants are
indigenous to the county. Many have doubtless been
introduced by human agency. Mr. Townsend gives a
most interesting list of 258 species, “‘some of which,”
he says, “have certainly, and others possibly, been
introduced from other counties.” The greater number
have been long naturalised, and are as common, and
in some cases commoner, than many native species.
Among these plants of ancient introduction we may
mention, as interesting examples, such species as wall-
flower and the red-spur valerian. Others are known
to follow the culture of cereals throughout the globe,
as the yellow charlock, the corn pansy, and the scarlet
poppy. Others, again, are of more recent introduc-
tion, having found their way over from America and
other parts in ships and merchandise, or mixed with
foreign corn.

It is again possible that in some instances, though
not, we believe, in many, plants recorded for the county
in former years are no longer to be found in Hamp-
shire. This may be due to the species having become
extinct within the bounds of the county, or to some
mistake in identification or locality. Thus the rare
Alpine enchanter’s nightshade, a plant we should not
expect to find in a southern county, is reported to have
been once discovered ‘‘at Nested, in shady, rocky lanes
a mile from Petersfield south.” But the specimen

H

114 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

which is fortunately preserved in Sherard’s Herbarium
at Oxford turns out to be, as we learn from the new
edition of our flora, not Czvc@a alpina, but C. Lutetzana,
the common enchanter’s nightshade. In the year 1841,
John Stuart Mill reported the grass of Parnassus as
growing ‘in various parts of the New Forest.” This
plant has not been found there by other botanists.
Can it have disappeared, or, as Mr. Townsend suggests,
did Mr. Mill visit the Forest before it was in flower
and mistake the leaves of Valeriana dioica for those
of Parnassia palustris? In some few instances rare
species have no doubt become extinct within the limits
of our flora. The “lesser Burre Docke” has dis-
appeared, but John Ray tells us he “once found it
on the road from Portsmouth to London, some three
miles from Portsmouth.” The rare mountain Tway-
blade, recorded for ‘‘near Bournemouth in 1853,”
has not been seen since then. Several other choice
orchids must also, we fear, be regarded as lost to the
county. The lizard orchis is now, we notice, placed
by Mr. Townsend among the excluded species. The
early spider orchis has not been found for many years;
and the green man orchis (Aceras anthropophora, R.
Br.), reported to grow on Nore Hill, near Selborne,
has been repeatedly searched for in vain.

Still, with comparatively few exceptions, the 1179
species of British plants now recognised as forming
the flora of Hants may be seen growing at the right
season in their respective localities. A certain number,
as we have noticed, have beyond question been intro-
duced by human agency, yet the great majority may
be regarded as indigenous to the county, and though
only identified and recorded in modern times, have
doubtless flourished in their present haunts for untold

THE FLORA OF HANTS 115

centuries. When prehistoric man reared his barrows
or tumuli over the remains of his distinguished dead,
there is no reason to doubt that then, as now, the
frog-orchis blossomed on Old Winchester Hill, and
the autumnal gentian was abundant on Crawley Down.
When the Druid priest, clothed in white raiment and
bearing a golden sickle, went forth to cut the mistletoe,
the Se/ago flourished on the heath, and the Samolus
by the running stream. When the Romans made
their straight road from Portchester to Winchester,
through the dense forest of Anderida, the dogwood
and the spindle tree fell before their axes, and the
wild daffodil was trampled under their feet. When
the black boats of the Northmen made their way up
the Hamble River, the marsh sapphire covered the
muddy banks, and the sea holly blossomed on the
shore. Unnoticed and uncared for, the wild flowers,
then as now, each in their own season throughout the
changing year, “ wasted their sweetness on the desert
air.” As time went on, a knowledge of simples began
to be cultivated, and more than one Saxon herbal has
been preserved ; but we wait for long centuries before
any real record of native plants is met with. It is
not, indeed, before the revival of learning in the six-
teenth century that the true history of our flora can
be said to begin. In the year 1551, the first part of
Dr. William Turner’s Herbal appeared, and it is in
this work that we find the earliest information with
regard to the localities of British plants. It will, there-
fore, be seen that our flora, as we now possess it,
from a literary and historic standpoint, is the result
of botanical observation during the last three hundred
and fifty years.

The “first records” of British plants are naturally

116 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

of considerable interest, and it is most fascinating
work searching in old localities for rare species men-
tioned by our early botanists. The Herbal of Dr.
Turner, Dean of Wells, enumerates upwards of three
hundred plants, together with the localities of the
rarer species. These localities are, however, mainly
in the county of Northumberland, where he was
brought up; about Cambridge, where he was edu-
cated ; in the neighbourhood of Dover, which he visited
on his way to the Continent; and about Wells, in
Somerset. But one plant only, we believe, is men-
tioned as growing in Hampshire, and this entry is the
earliest record of any particular species found in the
county. It occurs in the second part of the Herbal,
published in 1562, and runs as follows: “ Rubia [z.e.
the wild madder] groweth in Germany and also in
Englande. And the moste that ever I sawe is in the
Yle of Wyght. But the farest and gretest that ewer
I sawe groweth in the lane besyde Wynchestre in the
way to Southampton.” After this solitary but inter-
esting record we pass to the well-known Herbal of
‘“Master John Gerarde,” published in 1597, before
meeting with any further information with regard to
Hampshire plants. In this work, again, but few
Hampshire localities are mentioned, but among them
we find the ‘English scurvie-grasse or spoonwort”
and the mugwort recorded as growing ‘at Ports-
mouth,” Solomon’s seal ‘in Odiham Parke,” and the
lady’s mantle, or ‘“lion’s foote,” as Gerarde calls it,
“in the towne pastures by Andover.” At the time,
however, of the publication of this work, interest in
British botany was thoroughly awakened, and with
the beginning of the seventeenth century we find
several competent observers busily engaged in search-

THE FLORA OF HANTS 117

ing after and noting Hampshire plants. To this period
belong the labours of Matthias de l’Obel, of John
Parkinson, and of Thomas Johnson, the learned editor
of Gerarde’s Herbal, which he greatly enlarged and
improved, and which contains many new records of
Hampshire plants. This distinguished botanist, who
is said to have been ‘‘no less eminent in the garrison
for his valour and conduct as a soldier than famous
through the kingdom for his excellency as a herbalist
and physician,” unfortunately lost his life in the his-
toric siege of Basing House, in the north of the county.
We are told that, ‘going with a party on September
14, 1644, to succour certain of the forces belonging to
that house, which went to the town of Basing to fetch
provisions thence, but, beaten back by the enemy,
headed by that notorious rebel, Colonel Richard
Norton, he received a shot in the shoulder, of which
he died in a fortnight after.”

Of other early botanists connected with Hampshire
in the first half of the seventeenth century, two names
deserve special mention, namely, Mr. John Goodyer
and Dr. Robert Turner, for they first discovered and
put on record many rare species of British plants.
Mr. John Goodyer, who seems to have been a person
of considerable means, and to have devoted his life te
the study of botany, lived at Maple Durham, a fine
old Tudor mansion, now, alas! destroyed, in the parish
of Buriton, some two miles from Petersfield. We
learn from the Preface to Johnson’s edition of Gerarde’s
Herbal, published in 1633, that Goodyer largely con-
tributed to that work ; and, moreover, his observations
and discoveries are so printed ‘as they may be dis-
tinguished from the rest.” Some years later, when
Merrett was preparing his Pzzax, the botanical manu-

118 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

scripts of Goodyer were placed in his hands, and it is
from this work, and from Johnson’s edition of Gerarde,
that we are enabled to estimate our indebtedness to this
keen and energetic botanist. Among the Hampshire
plants first recorded by Goodyer, many of which still
flourish in their old localities, may be mentioned the.
marsh mallow, which grew “plentifully in a close
called Aldercrofts, near Maple Durham”; the rare
round-headed rampion, which flourished then, as now,
on several of the downs near Petersfield; the narrow-
leaved lungwort, which he found, on ‘‘ May 25, Anno
1620, flowering in a wood by Holbury House in the
New Forest in Hampshire”; the maidenhair spleen-
wort, of which, “‘in January 1624, he saw enough to
lode an horse growing on the banks in a lane as
he rode between Rake and Headley, neere Wolimer
Forest”; and the Marsh Isnardia, which he discovered
in ‘‘a great ditch near the moor at Petersfield.”
Robert Turner, who belonged to the astrological
herbalists, published, in 1664, a work he called
Botanologia, in which he described ‘‘the Nature and
Vertues of English Plants,” with ‘‘the places where
they flourish.” Many of these places are in the
neighbourhood of Holshot, in the north of the county,
where his father had an estate, and where he was
doubtless brought up. About his old home Turner
found many new and interesting plants which he
duly records in his Herbal. The wild columbine,
‘‘both the white and the purple, grow wilde,” he tells
us, ‘‘in our meadows where the ground is somewhat
dry, as in a place called Gassenmead, in Holshot.”
In his ‘father’s grounds” the wild broom was
plentiful, and the couch-grass, we learn, much in-
fected the garden. “In moist, boggy ditches, as in

THE FLORA OF HANTS 119

the ditch near the well in Holshot Lane,” the Royal
osmunda fern grew, and the little adder’s-tongue in
the meadow beyond. In ‘Danemoor Wood” he
notes the buckthorn; and in the ‘‘ Mead” adjoining,
the devil’s-bit scabious and the early purple orchis.
Figwort grew by Holshot Bridge; and the white
water-lily, ‘‘very plentifully in Holshot River in
Hampshire, my native soil, all along the river by
Danmore Mead.” One most interesting plant, first
recorded by Turner as a Hampshire species, he found
some twenty miles from Holshot. “I have seen,” he
says, ‘‘the Dwale or Deadly nightshade growing in a
ditch by the highway side near Alton, in Hampshire.”

After the death of Mr. John Goodyer in 1652, and
the publication of Turner’s otanologia in 1664, a
long period of comparative silence falls on the story
of Hampshire botany. We meet, it is true, with
notices of Hampshire localities and species in the
writings of Merrett and of John Ray, but these
statements are mostly dependent on the discoveries
of de l’Obel and Goodyer. In the year 1778, however,
we meet with the famous letter of Gilbert White to
Daines Barrington, in which he gives what he calls
a ‘“‘short list of the more rare plants of Selborne
and the spots where they are to be found ’’—a list
which has already been considered in a separate
paper. One more authority belonging to the eigh-
teenth century must be mentioned. In the Annual
Hampshire Repository for 1799, there appeared what
the writer calls ‘‘the commencement only of a Hamp-
shire flora, confined at present to some of the rarer
plants, hereafter to be continued, and to be finally
extended to a complete flora Hantoniensis.”” This
paper, which was published anonymously, proved to

120 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

be the work of Thomas Garnier, of Rooksbury Park,
afterwards Dean of Winchester, assisted by the Rev.
E. Poulter, and deals largely, as we should expect,
with the plants of the Meon Valley, and those to be
found in the south of Hampshire. Unfortunately
the intention of continuing the flora was never carried
out, but the single catalogue that we possess is valu-
able as recording for the first time many species
indigenous to the county. Among these we select
for special mention the meadow rue, still growing
where Garnier found it, near Droxford Mill; the
beautiful corn-field weed <Adouzs autumnalis or
pheasant’s eye, which has maintained its position
on the same farm since its first discovery; the sea-
kale, abundant at Calshot Spit; and many of our
Hampshire orchids, including the pyramidal orchis,
the dwarf or burnt orchis, the fragrant orchis, the
fly orchis, and the musk orchis now, as then, plentiful
on the same down. A fine plate is given of what is
called ‘‘a new discovered variety”’ of the bee orchis with
white instead of pink sepals. It is interesting to know
that a good many plants of this white variety of Ophrys
apifera flowered last summer on the very spot where
Garnier first met with it over a hundred years ago.

During the last century a number of able botanists,
including Dr. Bromfield, the author of the Alora
Vectensts, have continued the work of Gerarde and
de l’Obel, of Goodyer and Turner, of Gilbert White
and Dean Garnier. The county has been well searched
in all directions, and a great many new plants, un-
known to the early botanists, have been added to
their discoveries, with the gratifying result that the
new edition of the Flora of Hampshire is perhaps
the most complete county flora in existence.

ESSEX AND THE EARLY
BOTANISTS

IT is sometimes asserted that Essex is a dull county,
and offers but few attractions to the lover of nature.
And in comparison with many parts of England it
will, of course, be admitted that the scenery is tame
and commonplace. Essex can boast of no hill of a
higher elevation than four hundred feet above the level
of the sea; its rivers—the Blackwater, the Chelmer,
the Colne, and the Roding are, it is true, the reverse of
rushing torrents; while its forests, which in Norman
times stretched from the Thames to the Stour, have
almost entirely disappeared. Except towards Walton
and Harwich the coast is remarkably flat, and bor-
dered with vast stretches of salterns and marshland
reclaimed from the sea. The soil, too, is mostly of the
same geological formation, belonging to that known as
the London clay ; and though the chalk crops up here
and there in the north of the county, yet there are no
elevated downs, such as give charm and character to
the scenery of Sussex and Hampshire. The county
is, in short, mainly an agricultural one, devoted chiefly
to wheat and barley growing, with but little grazing
land except in the marshes, and mapped out into
interminable corn-fields, divided by elms and hedge-
rows.

I2I

122 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

And yet to the naturalist and archeologist the
county is far from unattractive. There is a quiet
charm about it which those only who have lived in it
can fully appreciate. Colchester alone, not to mention
the ancient parish churches, the ruined priories, the
medizeval halls and manor-houses, will suffice to render
the county dear to the lover of antiquity. The number
of sea-fowl, which still haunt the estuaries and the
salt-marshes, is an unfailing source of interest to the
ornithologist ; while to the botanist the flora of Essex
is one of peculiar fascination. This is due not only to
the number of species to which it can lay claim, but
also, and chiefly, to the fact of its intimate association
with the early botanists and herbalists.

English botany, as we have already observed, may
be said to begin with Dr. William Turner, who was
Dean of Wells in the reign of Edward VI., and who
published the first edition of his Herbal in the year
1551. In this herbal, which is now a very scarce
book, he describes upwards of three hundred British
species; and in many instances he gives the exact
localities in which he had found the plants growing.
These entries are the earliest records of the kind in
English literature, and are therefore of exceptional
interest to the lover of country life. Essex, however,
was not one of the counties best known to ‘“ Master
Dr. Turner.” He states, however, that mistletoe and
the butcher’s broom are to be found in Essex, and
of one rare plant he gives the exact locality. The
green hellebore, or ‘‘Syterwurt,”’ grows, he says, ‘in
greate plentye in a parke besyde Colchester”; and
this, it is interesting to remember, is the earliest record
of the locality of a native plant in the Essex flora.
Whether it is still to be found in Turner’s habitat

ESSEX AND EARLY BOTANISTS 123

seems doubtful; but the plant flourishes in several
localities in the county, and may be seen in some
abundance in a small spinney not far from the village
of Roxwell, once the residence of the poet Quarles,
and where he prepared his Hmd/ems for publication.

Some thirty years after the death of Dr. Turner
Gerarde’s famous Herbal appeared. The first edition,
dedicated to his “singular good Lord and Master”
Sir William Cecil, Lord High Treasurer of England,
was published in 1597, and it is to this quaint and
curious book that the botanist must go in order to
discover—with the few exceptions already mentioned
—the earliest localities of Essex plants. This en-
gaging work, which is ‘the parent of all succeeding
books which bear the name of herbal,” will ever be
of peculiar interest to the botanist. Though in the
main a translation of Dodonzeus’s Pemptades, it yet
contains a large amount of original matter, such as the
localities of rare plants, and many quaint allusions to
places and persons now of considerable antiquarian
interest. Gerarde, who occupied the position of
“herbarist ” to James I., had a large physic-garden at
Holborn, one of the first of its kind in England, where
he cultivated, we are told, ‘“‘near eleven hundred sorts
of plants’’; he also appears to have made frequent
expeditions into various parts of the country, on what
were then termed “ simpling-voyages,” with a view of
enlarging his knowledge of British plants, and of
marking the localities of the rarer species.

Now Essex being nigh unto Holborn, this good
“Master in Chirurgerie,” in company with other
friends “skillful in herbary,” made many excursions
into the county. From the entries scattered up and
down the sixteen hundred folio pages of his Herbal

124 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

it would appear that he was well acquainted with the
district north of the Thames, from Ilford to Leigh; he
was also familiar with Mersea Isle, and the salt-
marshes about Walton and Dovercourt; while inland
we find him at Chelmsford and Colchester, in the
neighbourhood of Dunmow and Braintree, and further
north at Pebmarsh and Castle Hedingham. It is most
interesting to note the plants which attracted the atten-
tion of the old herbalist as he went on his “simpling-
voyages” about the county. Over seventy species he
mentions as occurring in Essex; some, as the wild
clematis, the saw-wort, and the butcher’s broom, as
found ‘in divers places” ; others, with exact reference
to the spots where they may be found. The curious
mousetail, so called because of the arrangement of its
carpels “resembling very notably the taile of a mouse,”
he found “in Woodford Row, in Waltham Forrest,
and in the orchard belonging to Mr. Francis Whetstone
in Essex.” The Burnet or Scotch rose he notes as
growing “very plentifully in a field as you go from a
village in Essex called Graies (upon the brinke of the
river Thames) unto Horndon on the hill, insomuch that
the field is full fraught therewith all over.’ ‘Upon
the church walls of Railey” the little wall-rue fern
(Asplentum Ruta-muraria, L.) was abundant in
Gerarde’s days; and in “a wood hard by a gentle-
man’s house called Mr. Leonard, dwelling upon Dawes
heath,” the golden rod was in flower, and the tutsan
or parke-leaves, ‘‘out of which is pressed a juice,
not like blacke bloud, but Claret or Gascoigne wine.”
““Neere to Lee in Essex,” over against Canvey Island,
our herbalist found the lily of the valley, and in the
woods thereabouts the yellow dead-nettle ; while ‘in
the greene places by the sea side at Lee among the

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ESSEX AND EARLY BOTANISTS 125

rushes and in sundry other places thereabouts” the
beautiful meadow saxifrage grew then, as now, abun-
dantly. On the sea-shore and in the salt-marshes
which here stretch away for many a mile he noticed
a number of maritime plants, such as the marsh
mallow, the sea lavender, and the sea spurge.

On his herbarising expeditions inland Gerarde came
across many interesting species, some of them never
before recorded as British plants, others already
noticed by ‘‘that excellent, painefull and diligent Phy-
sition Mr. Doctor Turner of late memorie in his
Herbal.” In many parts of Essex he found the curi-
ous herb-paris, with its “foure leaves set directly one
against another in manner of a Burgundian crosse or
True-love knot,” in Chalkney Wood, “ neare to wakes
Coulne seven miles from Colchester,” in the parsonage
orchard at Radwinter, in Bocking parke by Braintree.
In the latter neighbourhood he noticed the small teasel,
then apparently a rare plant, for he adds that he never
found it “in any other place except here and there
a plant upon the highway from Much-Dunmow to
London.” In the same district, and perhaps on the
same occasion, he lighted upon a plant which he calls
Gentiana minor cruciata, or ‘“‘Crossewoort Gentian,”
growing ‘in a pasture at the west end of Little Rayne
on the North side of the way leading from Braintree
to Much-Dunmow and in the horse way by the same
close.” This entry is of unusual interest, not simply
on account of the precise manner in which Gerarde
particularises the locality, but also because of the diffi-
culty in identifying his species. For what is now
known as the crosswort gentian is not a British plant,
and Gerarde’s record has never been confirmed. At
the same time it may be taken as beyond question that

1276 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

at the spot indicated he found a plant which he con-
sidered worthy of notice and which he took to be an
unusual form of gentian. Many explanations of the
difficulty have been offered. It is the writer’s belief
that the plant was Gentzana Amarella, L., the autumn
gentian. At any rate, when searching for simples at
“little Rayne,” and bearing in mind the entry in the
old Herbal, he once came across, in a green lane or
“horse-way,’ not far from, if not actually identical
with, Gerarde’s locality, a small but flourishing colony
of this pretty plant. Now the autumn gentian is very
rarely met with in this part of Essex, but there, on
one spot in the grassy lane, beneath the tall and over-
hanging hedgerow—for the lane is no longer used
even as a ‘“‘horse-way”’—were clustered together
some twenty or thirty plants. It is not impossible
that these were the descendants of the gentian with
“flowres of a light blue colour,” which attracted the
notice of Gerarde in the sixteenth century. Con-
tinuing his journey along Rayne “ Street,” as the road
through the village is still termed, recalling the fact
that here the Roman-way once ran, our herbalist in
due course arrived at Much-Dunmow, then, as now,
famous for a curious custom, ‘‘that whoever did not
repent of his marriage, nor quarrell’d with his wife
within a year and a day, should go to Dunmow and
have a gamon of Bacon. But the Party was to swear
to the truth of it, kneeling upon two hard-pointed
stones set in the Priory Churchyard for that purpose,
before the Prior and Convent and the whole Town.”
But this, as old Camden says, by the way. In the
woods thereabouts several interesting plants were to
be found. Gerarde noticed two species of orchids,
the common tway-blade, and what he calls the ‘ wilde

ESSEX AND EARLY BOTANISTS 127

white Hellebor” or helleborine. He also met with
the rare liquorice vetch, which he terms the liquorice
hatchet fetch, “the leaves whereof hath the taste of
Liquorice root”; and this, he adds, he also found in
other parts of Essex, as “in the townes called Clare
and Henningham.” A few years later, the distin-
guished botanist, Thomas Johnson, who published
an enlarged edition of Gerarde’s Herédal, found this
plant at Purfleet, “about the foot of the hill whereon
the winde-mill stands.”

But a greater name than that of Gerarde is asso-
ciated with the flora of the county. We refer to the
illustrious John Ray, the foremost naturalist of his
age, and the founder of modern scientific botany. He
was born at Black Notley, near Braintree, some twelve
years after the death of Gerarde. The entry of his
baptism may still be made out in the church register
stained brown with age, and runs in almost illegible
writing: ‘John son of Roger and Eliz. Wray bapt.
June 29, 1628.” In later life John Ray (as he came
afterwards to spell his name) returned to his native
village and built himself a house ‘on Dewlands,”
where he died in the year 1705. A melancholy
interest attaches to this house on Dewlands, which
was standing till recently in almost exactly the same
condition as when Ray lived and diedthere. During
the afternoon of Wednesday, September 19, 1900, it
was swiftly and totally destroyed by fire. Its dis-
appearance will be deeply regretted by all botanists.
Black Notley has been well called the Mecca of Essex
naturalists, and now its main object of interest is
gone. Ray’s stately tomb, a pyramidal monument
some ten feet in height and bearing a lengthy Latin
inscription, may still be visited in the churchyard, but

128 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

the old house in which the great naturalist lived for
five-and-twenty years is now only a memory. There
was nothing in its outward appearance specially to
distinguish it from other farmhouses in the neighbour-
hood. A long, low, narrow building, made of lath
and plaster set in oaken frames, the great red brick
chimney-stack standing against the south wall was
the chief indication of its age. The old seventeenth
century lattice-windows had been removed from the
front side of the house some years ago, and this toa
certain extent had modernised the appearance of the
building. But inside the arrangement of the house
was most characteristic of its builder. Cupboards
were to be met with in every conceivable situation,
in the parlours and bedrooms, on the landings and
under the stairs, some as large as pantries, others
only a few feet square with small openings in the.
walls of the passages and rooms. These cupboards
were doubtless contrived by the illustrious naturalist
with a view to the safe custody of his botanical and
zoological specimens. The woodwork of the cottage
was entirely of oak, massive oak doors and doorways,
wide planks of oak flooring, black beams of oak across
the low ceilings. Ray’s study was upstairs, situated
at the back of the house, over the scullery where the
fatal fire broke out, and looking across the garden
towards the west. This seems to have been the one
warm room of the house, which Ray speaks of in one
of his letters as ‘exposed to the north and north-east
winds,” and as “inconvenient to one who is subject to
colds and whose lungs are apt to be affected.” And
that unpretending chamber, with its sloping ceilings,
its wide oaken boards, its ancient lattice windows, was
haunted by the most interesting associations. There

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ESSEX AND EARLY BOTANISTS 129

the illustrious naturalist accomplished what Linnzeus
rightly called “(his immense labours”; there he exa-
mined and arranged his specimens; there he received
his scientific friends; there he wrote his numerous
works, including the Symopszs of British plants,
which may fairly be regarded as the foundation of
every succeeding English flora.

During his residence at Notley Ray was fortunate
in the intimate friendship of his disciple and near
neighbour, Samuel Dale, an apothecary of Braintree
and a botanist of very considerable attainments. The
two friends worked in the closest harmony at their
favourite pursuit ; and to Dr. Dale Ray was indebted
for many of the localities of Essex plants mentioned in
his Synopszs. Other distinguished men of science,
like Sir Hans Sloane, and Compton, Bishop of London,
sometimes visited the great naturalist; and in 1699
we find Mr. Petiver and the Rev. Adam Buddle,
afterwards vicar of North Fambridge, near Maldon,
at Black Notley. Buddle was the great authority on
grasses and mosses; and his herbarium, now in the
South Kensington Museum, is, with Dr. Dale’s, among
the earliest collections of British plants in existence.
Most fascinating is the task of examining these early
specimens, still in a state of excellent preservation,
and labelled with the utmost care and accuracy. In
Buddle’s collection it is interesting to find a plant of
the broad-leaved spurge (Euphorbia platyphylla, Koch.),
gathered by Dr. Dale in ‘Ray’s orchard at Black
Notley.” Of this uncommon plant Ray makes the
following note: “It grows spontaneously in mine own
Orchard here, coming up yearly of its own sowing, for
it is an annual plant.”

Very interesting, too, is a walk about the parish of
I

130 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

Black Notley, the general features of which have but
little changed since Ray lived there. The medizeval
church with its low shingle-spire; the churchyard
surrounded by rugged elms; the blacksmith’s forge;
the wayside inn; the osier-bed where Ray found ‘the
Almone-leaved Willow that casts its bark”; the ponds
at the Hall where, as in the seventeenth century, the
great cat’s-tail grows; the little stream below Dew-
lands, still full of watercress as when the aged natura-
list gathered it, together with brooklime and plantain,
to make a “‘diet-drink” for the benefit of his broken
health; the grass lane towards the ancient Priory
down which he loved to wander—all may be visited ;
the very plants in the hedgerows remain, with a few
exceptions, the same as in the seventeenth century.
Butcher’s broom may still be noticed in the thick
tangled hedges of “ Leez Lane,” and the linden tree
“called hereabouts Pry,” and herb-paris in a copse
hard by; but the writer failed to find “the wild Gar-
lick in a field called Westfield adjoining to Leez Lane,”
and the musk-orchis “in the greens of a field belong-
ing to the hall called Wair-field.” Here and there on
the roadside wastes the beautiful crimson grass vetch-
ling will attract notice; and the “ Stinking Gladdon or
Gladwyn” (/rzs fetzdissima, L.) is abundant “in the
Hedges by the Road, not far from the Parsonage
towards Braintree”; but unfortunately the wild black
currant, or ‘‘squinancy-berries,” so called because of
its use in cases of quinsey and sore throat, has dis-
appeared from its ancient habitat “by the river-side
near the bridge called the Hoppet-bridge.” Another
interesting plant which Ray came across in the neigh-
bourhood of Notley was the London Rocket, which, as
he says, “after the great Fire of London, in the years

ESSEX AND EARLY BOTANISTS 131

1667-68, came up abundantly among the rubbish in
the Ruines.” This he found a few years later, some
five miles from Dewlands, on the way to Witham,
“about the house of his honoured friend, Edward
Bullock, Esqre., at Faulkbourn Hall.” From _ the
sporadic nature of this rare plant it is not surprising
that it has now entirely disappeared, but the record
is an interesting one.

Ray tells us that in his day the Crocus sativus, or
saffron, was cultivated in the fields about Walden,
thence denominated Saffron Walden. ‘Of the cul-
ture whereof,” he adds, ‘‘I shall say nothing, re-
ferring the reader to what is written by Camden.”
Turning to Camden’s 4riZannia we find the passage
of sufficient interest to quote in full. ‘The fields all
about,” he says, “look very pleasant with saffron.
For in the month of July every third year, when the
roots have been taken up, and after twenty days put
under the turf again, about the end of September they
shoot forth a bluish flower, out of the midst whereof
hang three yellow chives of saffron, which are gathered
in the morning before sunrise, and being taken out of
the flower are dried by a gentle fire. And so wonder-
ful is the increase, that from every acre of ground they
gather eighty or an hundred pounds of wet saffron,
which, when it is dry, makes about twenty pounds.
And what is more to be admired, that ground that
hath born saffron three years together, will bear
Barley very plentifully eighteen years without dung-
ing, and then will bear Saffron again.” The origin
of the cultivation of saffron in England is unknown.
It is commonly said, and the statement is repeated by
one writer after another, that it was introduced by one
Sir Thomas Smith into the neighbourhood of Walden

132 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

in the time of Edward III. Old Hakluyt, writing in
1582, says, ‘It is reported at Saffron Walden that a
pilgrim, proposing to do good to his countrey, stole
a head of Saffron, and hid the same in his Palmer’s
staffe, which he had made hollow before of purpose,
and so he brought the root into this realme with ven-
ture of his life, for if he had bene taken, by the law of
the countrey from whence it came, he had died for the
fact.” It is evident from this story that even in the
sixteenth century saffron had been so long cultivated
at Walden that the true history of its introduction had
been lost ; and perhaps the theory of Cole in his Adam
7m Eden, published in 1657, may not be so very far
wrong when he suggested that for this plant, as for so
many others, we are indebted to the Romans. The
cultivation of saffron “about Walden and other places
thereabouts, as corne in the fields,” has long since
ceased; but even now, in certain seasons, a few plants
will occasionally appear. This discontinuance is the
more to be regretted if we may believe our old friend
Gerarde, that “‘the moderate use thereof is good for
the head, and maketh the sences move quicke and
lively, shaketh off heavy and drowsie sleepe, and
maketh a man merry.”

Here and there, along the roadside wastes, which of
late years have been considerably curtailed, some rare
and interesting plants may occasionally be met with.
As Gerarde rode along “Colchester highway from
Londonward” he noticed ‘‘very plentifully by the
wayes side between Esterford and Wittam” the small
‘“‘oreene-leaved Hounds’ Tongue.” Now Esterford
was the medizeval name of the parish of Kelvedon;
and there, one hundred years later, “‘on the London
road between Kelvedon and Witham, but more plenti-

ESSEX AND EARLY BOTANISTS 133

fully about Braxted by the wayes-side,” John Ray
noticed the same species. It is a rare plant with dull
purple flowers, and but seldom met with in Essex;
but until quite recently, and perhaps even now, a few
specimens might be found in their ancient habitat.
Another local plant which attracted the notice of Ray
‘(on the banks by the High-wayside, as you go up the
hill from Lexden to Colchester,” was the smooth-tower
mustard, and one is glad to know that this very
uncommon plant is still occasionally seen in its old
locality.

In Essex, as in many other parts of England, ferns
seem to have become scarcer of late years, far scarcer,
at any rate, than when Gerarde noticed the wall-rue
“upon the church-walls of Railey,” and found the
adder’s tongue “in the fields in Waltham Forest.”
The noble royal or flowering-fern grew, he tells us,
“upon divers bogges on a heath or a common neere
unto Brentwood, especially neere unto a place there
that some have digged, to the end to finde a nest or
mine of gold, but the birds were over fledge and flowne
away before their wings could be clipped.” He even
found the rare moonwort—never since observed in
Essex—“in the ruines of an old bricke-kilne by Col-
chester, in the ground of Mr. George Sayer, called
Miles’ end.” The ancient walls of Colchester do not
appear to support many rare species. Wallflowers,
of course, blossom in abundance as in the days of
Gerarde and of Ray. Pellitory-of-the-wall, too, will
be noticed in considerable plenty on the Castle keep,
together with the beautiful ivy-leaved linaria, and a
few plants of the viper’s bugloss. Not far from the
Castle will be found the stately remains of the once
famous Priory of St. Botolph. Vast masses of ivy

134 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

cling about the splendid ruin; on the crumbling walls,
as on the Castle keep, the wild wallflowers grow in
lavish abundance; but in still greater profusion will
be noticed the lesser calamint (C. Vepfeta), conspicuous
in autumn with its delicate lilac flowers; while nest-
ling here and there among the fallen masonry a few
plants of the rare soapwort will be seen.

THE ESSEX MARSHES

ALL along the low-lying coast of Essex, from the
mouth of the Thames at Tilbury Fort to the towns
of Harwich and Dovercourt, there stretch thousands
of acres of salt-marshes, the haunt in former days
of myriads of wild-fowl, and still of considerable in-
terest to the naturalist. A glance at the ordnance
map of the county will show the great extent of these
‘“‘marshes” and “salterns,” especially near the estu-
aries of the larger rivers, the Crouch, the Blackwater,
and the Colne. A “marsh,” it should be noted, differs
from a “‘saltern,” in being a tract of land reclaimed
from the sea, and protected against the inroads of the
tide by an artificial bank or sea-wall. These marshes,
which make valuable grazing-land, are intersected by
numerous dikes or ditches, known locally as “ fleets,”
bordered in many places with dense jungles of reeds
and rushes. ‘‘Saltings,” on the other hand, are those
stretches of marsh and mud land which have not been
enclosed by a sea-wall, but are more or less flooded
during the period of high tide.

To most persons this vast region of marsh-land
would doubtless seem desolate enough, especially in
the dreary days of winter when the wind is sighing
among the reed-beds, and the peewit is uttering its
mournful cry. But to the lover of nature these same

marshes, in winter and summer alike, are of the deepest
135

136 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

interest and fascination. The tread of civilisation has
hardly touched them, and as one wanders along the
sea-banks, clothed with silver Artemisia and the wild
spinach, it is easy to imagine the days when the early
botanists went gathering “simples” along the Essex
shore, when large colonies of black-headed gulls bred
in the salt-marshes, when kites and buzzards soared
overhead, and when the raven wasacommon bird. In
former years immense numbers of wild-fowl were annu-
ally taken in the “decoys,” of which there were many
along the coast. During the winter of 1799 no less than
ten thousand head of widgeon, teal, and wild-duck
were captured in a single decoy at Tillingham. About
the same time, at the famous Goldhanger decoy, “as
many pochards were taken at one drop as filled a
wagon, so as to require four stout horses to carry
them away.” Even now there are several decoys
regularly worked in the Essex marshes, and a goodly
number of birds are annually taken. Widgeon, teal,
and wild-duck still abound along the coast in winter-
time, and the rarer sorts of wild-fowl are not uncommon.
The handsome pintail may occasionally be met with,
and the pochard and the shoveller are far from rare,
A few of the latter always remain to breed in the
marshes, and the nest of the sheldrake may be found
most seasons in the sand-hills near Dovercourt. Large
numbers of coots still exist—in former years the gunners
used to reckon them by the “ acre ”—and a custard made
of coots’ eggs has only recently ceased to be a regular
dish at village festivals. A few small colonies of the
black-headed gull, also known as the peewit gull and
the cob, may be visited by those who know their haunts,
but the eggs are no longer collected, nor the young
birds fatted for the London market.

_——

THE ESSEX MARSHES 137

And if those vast stretches of lonely marsh-land,
where the peregrine and the raven may still occa-
sionally be seen, have a strong fascination for the
ornithologist, they are no less dear to the botanist.
The flora has but little changed since the days of the
early herbalists, and most of the plants noticed by
Gerarde and Merrett and John Ray and Adam Buddle
may be found in their ancient habitats. Now, as then,
the wild celery is plentiful in the marshes; the rarer
form of sea-lavender continues to flourish at Walton,
and the beautiful marsh-mallow, with its stem and
leaves thickly clothed with starry down, puts forth
its pale, rose-coloured flowers every autumn, as when
in the sixteenth century old Gerarde found it ‘ very
abundantly” in the salterns ‘ by Tilbury blockhouse.”
There is the same hoary growth of orache and worm-
wood, the wild beetroot grows as rankly as ever on the
sea-banks, and the twin-spiked cord-grass (Sfartena
stricta) remains the characteristic plant of the muddy
salterns as in the year 1667 when Merrett first recorded
it as growing at “‘Crixey Ferry in Essex.” A speci-
men of this plant, gathered “in August 1703 in the
marshes about the river Wallfleet, near Fambridge
Ferry in Dengey-hundred in Essex,” may be seen in
the Buddle herbarium, now preserved in the British
Museum at South Kensington, which is one of the
earliest collections of British plants in existence.

The stretch of country between the beautiful estuary
of the Blackwater and the mouth of the river Colne is
one of special interest to the naturalist. In this district
at least fourteen decoys formerly existed, and one,
occasionally used in hard winters, remains. In Ray’s
famous Synopsis of British Plants there are many
references to these marshes, only some twelve miles

138 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

distant from his home at Notley, where the great
naturalist found, among other notable plants, the broad-
leaved pepperwort, the golden samphire, and the deli-
cate sea-heath. In his day the sea scurvy-grass, “ of
great use in the curing of scurvy,” grew so plentifully
in the marshes about Maldon that the common people,
he tells us, ‘‘ gather it and send it about to the markets
above ten miles distance, where it is sold by measure.”
But, strange to say, one scarce and striking plant, which
to-day grows on the Essex shore, was overlooked both
by Gerarde and Ray. This is the shrubby sea-blite,
or Su@eda fruticosa, which the writer has found in
abundance at Maldon, St. Osyth, and in Mersea Isle.
In the last locality the plants were as large as gorse-
bushes, and could be seen for a considerable distance.
Ray, indeed, mentions the plant as growing in the Isle
of Portland, where it still flourishes on the pebble
beach ; but he is silent as to its existence in Essex.
It was found, however, a few years after his death by
his disciple, Samuel Dale ; and it is interesting to know
that a specimen gathered by him is preserved in the
South Kensington Museum, and labelled in Dale’s
handwriting, “‘ Western end of marsh bank, Harwich,
plentifully.”

The Isle of Mersea, situated at the junction of the
Colne and the Blackwater, is still linked to the main-
land by the old Roman causeway called the Strood, —
which crosses Pyefleet Creek, and is covered by the
sea at high water. An additional interest is given
to this locality as being the scene of Baring-Gould’s
powerful story Mehalah. Standing on the sea-bank
over against Mersea ‘‘ city,” as a cluster of old wooden
houses and an ancient inn are somewhat pretentiously
called, one can see in the distance the cluster of thorn-

THE ESSEX MARSHES 139

trees on the “ Ray,” which sheltered Glory’s cottage,
built of tarred wreckage timber and roofed with pantiles.
Beyond the “ fleet ” stretch the salt-marshes of Salcot
and Virley, where stood until recently the ruffian
Rebow’s lonely farmhouse, built in 1636, and known
from its appearance as Red Hall. This district, in the
early days of the last century, was a centre of the
smuggling trade, and deeds of violence were far from
rare. According to one story, a whole boat’s crew
were found on Sunken Island, off Mersea, with their
throats cut, from whence they were transported to the
churchyard and buried, and their boat turned keel
upwards over them. It was difficult to realise such
lawless deeds amid surroundings so calm and peaceful
as presented themselves to the writer last September.
Cattle and a few sheep were grazing in the ‘ Ray”
marshes, and a kestrel hawk was hovering over the
thorn-trees. On the sea-bank the golden samphire was
in flower, and hard by the rare dittander ; a couple of
wild-duck were lazily floating down the Rhyn; the
rippling waters of the estuary were dotted here and
there with the picturesque red sails of tiny fishing-
craft ; and no sound was to be heard save the rustling
of the wind among the tall reeds and bulrushes that
edged the “ fleet,” and the cry of the sea-birds as they
settled on the mud-flats left bare by the receding tide.
It was in Mersea Isle that many interesting plants were
found by our early herbalists, and most of them still
grow there. There are several specimens of the sea-
wormwood, showing its various forms, now preserved
in the British Museum, which were gathered by Samuel
Dale in Mersea Isle two hundred years ago. Adam
Buddle, vicar of North Fambridge, found the rare sea-
trefoil in “‘ the salt-marshes by the Strood.” John Ray

1440 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

noticed the glaucous form of the bulrush in the “ sea-
ditches at Mersea.” Earlier still Gerarde gathered the
beautiful sea-convolvulus, with its large, pale, rose-
coloured flowers striped with red, on the sandy shore,
and the very rare sea-cottonweed or Dvzotzs mart-
tima. ‘This latter, he says, “ groweth at a place called
Merezey, six miles from Colchester, neere unto the
sea-side.” Unfortunately this exceedingly rare plant,
which is thickly clothed with white cotton and bears
small terminal heads of yellow flowers, is now lost on
Mersea, and is no longer to be found in the county
of Essex.

Another locality in the marshes intimately asso-
ciated with the early history of the Essex flora is
“Landermere Lading,” at the head of Hamford Water.
The spot, especially at high water, is a very pictur-
esque one, with its ancient wharf and storehouses of
black boarding roofed with deep-red tiles, and its
group of fishermen’s cottages, in one of which the
famous physician Sir William Gull passed his early
years. Even at low tide the vast stretch of mud-flats
has a quiet beauty of its own, especially when the sea-
lavender is in flower. On the sea-banks about Lander-
mere a rare and striking plant, remarkable for its large
umbels of yellow flowers, and found only in one or
two localities in England, is still as plentiful as when
Gerarde first discovered it in the sixteenth century.
It is known as sulphurwort, the reason whereof is
thus given by our famous herbalist: “I have digged
up roots thereof,” he says, ‘“‘as big as a man’s thigh,
blacke without and white within, of a strong and
grievous smell, and full of yellow sap or liquor, which
quickly waxeth hard or dry, smelling not much unlike
brimstone, called sulpher, which hath induced some to

THE ESSEX MARSHES 141

call it sulphurwort.” He found it ‘‘very plentifully on
the south side of a wood, belonging to Walton, at the
Naze in Essex, by the highway side.” About a hun-
dred years later Ray noticed it “in the salt ditches
near Walton”; and there it flourishes to-day, the most
distinguished plant of the Essex marshes. But sul-
phurwort was not the only plant that attracted the
notice of John Gerarde at “ Landamar Lading.” In
a meadow adjoining ‘‘a mill beyond a village called
Thorp, at a place called Bandamar Lading ”—evidently
the same locality as the above—he found “in great
plentie” the wild asparagus or sperage, corrupted in
the language of the marshmen into “ sparrow-grass.”
The writer searched in vain last autumn for this ex-
ceedingly rare plant in the vicinity of ‘“‘ Bandamar
Lading”; but it is interesting to know that it still
exists in the Essex marshes. Another handsome and
important plant seen by the great herbalist at Lander-
mere was the sea-holly or Eryngo. Ray thus refers to
it in his list of rare Essex plants, published in 1695:
“ This being a plant common enough on sandy shores
I should not have mentioned, but that Colchester is
noted for the first inventing and practising the candy-
ing or conditing of its roots, the manner whereof may
be seen in Gerarde’s Herbal.” The extract from
Gerarde is too lengthy for quotation, but it is worthy
of notice that a considerable trade in candied Eryngo-
roots, as a remedy in pulmonary diseases, was at that
time carried on at Colchester. The chamberlain’s ac-
counts for the borough in the early years of the seven-
teenth century contain frequent entries with regard to
the payment for ‘‘ Eryngoes,” which seem to have been
valued at about four shillings a pound. The trade
was continued until comparatively recent years, when

142 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

it appears to have ceased in consequence of the
difficulty of obtaining a sufficient supply of roots.

In those days several native plants found in the
salt-marshes were regularly gathered by the people
and used as vegetables. In his scarce book on The
Antiquities of Harwich, Samuel Dale tells us that
the sea-beet or sea-spinach, so abundant along the
coast, was commonly used “as a boiled sallet and in
broths and soups.” This good and sensible custom
has not yet died out, and many a dish of wild spinach
is gathered every spring in the salt-marshes along the
coast. One of the commonest plants to be found on
the mud of the salterns is Salicornia or glasswort, and
this in the olden times was regularly gathered for pur-
poses of pickling. It served as a substitute for the
true samphire, which was not to be met with in the
Essex marshes. But, strange to say, within the last
few years a single patch of this species, Crithmum
maritimum, a plant immortalised by Shakespeare, and
still to be seen in luxuriant profusion in its historic
locality on the chalk-cliffs of Dover, has been dis-
covered in the salt-marshes not far from the Lander-
mere Lading. Never before had the plant been
recorded for the county, or, indeed, for the east coast
of England. But there, on one solitary spot in the
vast stretch of salterns, it was flourishing in lonely
splendour. How it came there must be left to others
to decide.

MARY RICH, COUNTESS OF
WARWICK

SOME two or three miles from Felstead Church in
the county of Essex, hidden away in a wooded hollow,
and only to be approached by winding and narrow
lanes, stands the still beautiful ruin of Leighs Priory.
The magnificent gateway-tower of rich red brickwork,
with noble Tudor windows and spiral chimneys of
curious design, rises in lonely splendour from the
ancient courtyard, now overgrown with grass and
herbage. Other remains, dating back to the sixteenth
century, and including the porter’s lodge and a spacious
hall, may still be seen, clothed with luxuriant ivy, in
picturesque decay; but of the finer residential parts
of the mansion not one stone is now left upon another.

It was here, in this quiet and sequestered spot, past
which the tiny river Ter winds its way, that early in
the thirteenth century a little community of Augustine
canons settled themselves. Around the monastic build-
ings stretched a well-wooded park or forest in which
the wild deer roamed. There was grand hunting, we
are told, in the “ Forest of Felstead” in those days.
Down the valley, along the course of the little stream,
the situation of the monastic fishponds may easily be
traced, and one fine piece of water, the haunt of moor-

hens and other wild-fowl, still remains, For more than
143

144 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

three hundred years the good monks served God and
man in peace, looking after their rich estate, meditating
amid their beautiful surroundings, and succouring the
sick and needy in the villages around. But at the
time of the dissolution of the monasteries the priory
shared the fate of similar establishments, and was
granted by Henry VIII., together with one hundred
other manors in the neighbourhood, to Robert Rich,
at that time his Solicitor-General, and afterwards
Lord Chancellor of England.

Of Lord Chancellor Rich, old Fuller quaintly says,
“he was a lesser hammer under Cromwell to knock
down abbeys; most of the grants of which going
through his hands, no wonder if some stuck to his
fingers.” But whatever his character and career as a
politician, he will be gratefully remembered in Essex
as the founder of Felstead School and of the Rich
almshouses ; while the Tudor mansion which he built
on the site of the Augustine priory must have been one
of the most magnificent in the county. But a more
interesting figure than that of the great Lord Chan-
cellor, whose stately tomb in the south aisle of Felstead
Church has been a familiar object to successive gene-
rations of Felstead boys, is associated with the pic-
turesque ruin of the once splendid home. We refer
to Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick, wife of Charles
Rich, fifth baron of that name.

The father of Mary Rich was the celebrated
“gentleman adventurer,” Richard Boyle, who made
a huge fortune in Ireland, was created Earl of Cork
by James I., and lived to see no fewer than four of
his sons made peers. For Mary, ‘the great earl”
designed, as for his other daughters, a brilliant match,
but the Mr. Hamilton selected, only son of Lord

MARY RICH, COUNTESS OF WARWICK 145

Clandeboye, found no favour in Mary’s sight, and
in spite of her father’s displeasure she refused to
marry him. Her heart, it appears, was set on Charles
Rich, a younger son of the Earl of Warwick and
Baron of Leeze (as the name was spelt in those days),
and with small prospect of succeeding to the title.
Her father’s opposition to the match was at length
“by my Lord Warwick’s and my Lord Goreing’s
intercession” overcome, and he told me, writes Mary,
“that I should be suddenly married.” A _ splendid
ceremony in London was desired by the great Earl
for his loving, if wayward, daughter, but this again
was sorely against Mary’s inclinations. She could
“not endure to be Mrs. Bride in a public wedding.”
And so, she goes on to say, “I was, by that fear and
Mr. Rich’s earnest solicitation, prevailed with, with-
out my father’s knowledge, to be privately married
at a little village near Hampton Court on July
21, 1641, called Shepertone; which, when my father
knew he was again something displeased at me for
it, but after I had begged his pardon, and assured
him I did it only to avoid a public wedding, which
he knew I had always declared against, his great
indulgence to me made him forgive me that fault
also; and within a few days after I was carried
down to Lees, my Lord of Warwick’s house in the
country, where I received as kind a welcome as was
possible from that family, and particularly from my
good father-in-law.”

And so the youthful bride, ‘‘ being but fifteen years
old, and as much as between the 8th of November
and 21st July,” settled down at Leighs Priory, which,
with the exception of one brief interval, and of occa-

sional visits to London, was to be her home for seven-
K

146 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

and-thirty years. Little did she then dream of what
the vicissitudes of fortune had in store for her. The
wife of a younger son, and with only the most distant
prospect of succeeding to the title, it so came about,
in those days of premature death, that eighteen years
later, at the age of thirty-three, she found herself
Countess of Warwick, and mistress of the Tudor
mansion and vast estates of Leighs Priory. Though
married to the man of her choice, her domestic life
was for many years one of patient endurance, some-
times of bitter sorrow. For twenty years before his
death her husband was grievously afflicted with the
gout, which rendered more ungovernable his pas-
sionate temper. Her “ dear and only” son died of the
small-pox within a few months of his coming of age;
and when fourteen years later the Countess herself
followed him to the tomb in Felstead Chapel, the
beautiful priory passed to owners of another name.

When Mary Rich was about twenty-one that change
occurred which she was wont to regard as her con-
version, or awakening to spiritual life. Her diary
indicates very clearly the conflict through which she
was passing. She is constantly reproaching herself
for her former love of ‘‘curious dressing and fine and
rich clothes, and spending her precious time in nothing
else but reading romances, and seeing plays, and in
going to court and Hyde Parke and Spring Garden.”
She makes promises to God of a new life, but her
good resolutions are often broken. She fears that
God will, some way or other, punish her. “At last,”
she says, ‘‘it pleased God to send a sudden sickness
upon my only son, who I then doated on with great
fondness. My conscience told me it was for my back-
sliding. Upon this conviction I presently retired to

OF WARWICK

NTESS

MARKY RICH, COl

+5

MARY RICH, COUNTESS OF WARWICK 147

God, and by earnest prayer begged of Him to restore
my child, and did then solemnly promise to God, if
He would hear my prayer, I would become a new
creature. This prayer of mine God was so gracious
as to grant; and of a sudden began to restore my
child, which made the doctor himself wonder at the
sudden amendment he saw in him, and filled me then
with grateful thoughts. After my child’s recovery I
began to find in myself a great desire to go into the
country, which I never remember before to have had,
thinking it always the saddest thing that could be
when we were to remove.” When Mary was again
at Leighs she found great consolation in conversing
with the household chaplain, Dr. Walker; and it
pleased God, she tells us, “by his ministry to work
exceedingly upon me, he preaching very awakingly
and warmly the two texts which were, by God’s
mercy, set home to me, ‘The wicked shall be
turned into hell, and all the nations that forget
God’; and the other was, ‘Acquaint now thyself
with Him and be at peace.’ By the first,” she adds,
“T was much terrified, but by the last I was much
allured to come unto God, and to taste of the sweet-
ness of religion, which he told me was very sweet,
and which | afterwards experienced to be true.”
Henceforth a life of gaiety and social excitement had
lost its attraction for Mary Rich, and though she still
moved in the world of rank and fashion, and after
the Restoration was not infrequently at Court, she
yet found her chief stay and happiness in religious
exercises and in quiet meditation in her beloved
“wilderness” at Leighs.

The ‘“ wilderness,” or wild garden, the most sacred
spot in connection with the life of Mary Rich, may

148 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

still be traced on the farther side of the little stream
which runs past the priory ruins. Here she was
accustomed, summer and winter alike, to spend two
hours every morning, aS soon as she was up, in
prayer and meditation. Many are the references in
her diary to this pious habit, which invests with a
deep interest the few ancient thorn bushes which
remain, and the dark clumps of Jr¢s fetzdisstma which
mark the site of the monastic garden. The “ wilder-
ness” was to this Puritan saint as an oratory, where
she gained strength and consolation in the trials and
difficulties of life. “If,” says Dr. Walker, her “soul
father,” ‘‘she exceeded herself in anything as much
as she excelled others in most things, it was in medita-
tion. This was her masterpiece.” To be alone with
God, and alone with God in the “wilderness,” this
was the desire and the secret of her life. ‘‘The way
not to be alone,” she wrote to a friend, “‘is to be
alone, and you will find yourself never less alone
than when you are so. For certainly the God that
makes all others good company must needs be best
Himself.” And so, morning by morning, she retired
alone into the ‘ wilderness” to meditate. Some-
times she is “weary and distracted,” and grieves
over her ‘‘amazing dulness and wandering thoughts.”
“My mind,” she writes, ‘was discomposed, and I
had upon me a great lightness and vanity of spirit,
and could not for a long time bring my mind into any

serious frame.” At other times she rejoices in the
Lord, and her mind is radiant with ‘ white celestial
thoughts.” “My meditation of God was sweet,” she

enters in her diary; “I had large meditations of the
great mercy of God in sending the Holy Ghost, and
found my heart much affected with it.” After the

MARY RICH, COUNTESS OF WARWICK 149

manner of Puritan theology, her mind is much occu-
pied with thoughts of death and eternity. ‘I was
much comforted,” she says, ‘with thoughts of my
eternal rest;” or “God was pleased to awaken my
heart with the serious thoughts of death and of
eternity and of the day of judgment.”

Among the volumes of Lady Warwick’s manuscripts
in the British Museum are no less than twelve little
books of what she calls Occastonal Meditations. ‘The
titles or themes of these compositions, of which nearly
two hundred remain, reveal in a striking manner her
appreciation of nature. The sights and sounds of
country life are to her allegories of things unseen and
eternal. They furnish her with subjects from which
she draws the most telling spiritual analogies. A
“sudden surprising storm,” a lark singing, a snail on
the garden path, a bank of anemones, a hen flying
undauntedly at a kite, then common in Essex, “ that
came to get the chickens from her”; the decoy pond
in the Park, still remaining; her “little bitch” after a
rabbit, her pet linnets, a dead fish floating down the
stream, ‘‘ My Lady Essex Rich’s pet hen,”—these and
similar subjects form the texts of her meditations.
The most pathetic of these compositions, suggested
by the cutting down of her beloved “ wilderness,”
deserves to be quoted, revealing as it does the great
sorrow of her life: ‘‘This sweet place that I have
seen ye first sprouting, growth, and flourishing of for
above twenty years together, and almost daily taken
delight in, I have also now to my trouble seen by my
Lord’s command ye cutting down of, in order to its
after growing again thicker and better, tho’ I have
often interceded with him to have it spared longer.
This brought to my remembrance afresh ye death of

150 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

my only son, whom I had also seen ye first growth of
in his childhood and ye flourishing of to my unspeak-
able satisfaction for almost twenty-one years; and in
a short space of time, to my unspeakable grief, by
my great Lord’s command cut down by death that
he might rise again in a better and more flourishing
condition ; though I often implored, if it were agree-
able to the Divine will, he might be longer continued
to; ime,”

When Mary Rich had so unexpectedly become
Countess of Warwick she came to Lees, she tells us,
with “‘a design to glorify God what I could, and to
do what good I could to all my neighbours.” This
noble determination, so faithfully fulfilled, gives the
keynote of her life. In addition to her morning’s
meditation, it was her constant habit to read several
times a day in some pious book, of which St. Augus-
tine’s Confessions, Baxter’s Saint’s Rest, and Foxe’s
Book of Martyrs were among the favourites. She
would also, her chaplain tells us, scatter good books
in all the common rooms and places of waiting,
that those who waited might not lose their time, but
have a bait laid to catch them. MHousehold affairs
occupied a large share of her attention. Many are the
entries in her diary, which show how faithfully those
duties were performed. One or two may be quoted:
“Having this morning heard of some disorders that
were in my house, I set myself to reprove for them,
after I had first prayed to God to let me rebuke
without passion, and by God’s blessing I was enabled
to do my duty without any transporting passion.”
“Spent some time with my servant, Harry Smith,
who was ill.” A few days after he dies, and the
Countess goes to see his widow. Or Joyce Ceeley,

MARY RICH, COUNTESS OF WARWICK 151

the still-house woman, is sick, and requires attention.
Then “one of the men-cookes” has fits, and though
it is “‘a ghastly mortifying sight,” the mistress goes
herself to see what can be done for him. When
Lawrence the footman is to receive the Sacrament,
a long time is spent in preparing him. Later on is
the entry: ‘Gave counsel to Leonard the coachman ;”’
and again: “Spent a deal of time giving good
counsel to Boeke, who is going from my Lord’s
service.” Nor are the poor women who worked in
the garden forgotten: ‘‘I spent some time of this
morning in catechising some of the poor weeding-
women, and in stirring them up to look after their
souls.” Neither are the cottagers neglected. The sick
and suffering are carefully provided for; old Betty
Knightbridge and Goody Crow, and other feeble folk,
are visited in their humble homes; and a dame’s
school is established in the village. Moreover, the
affairs of the ejected ministers receive her careful
attention. After the passing of the Act of Uniformity
in 1662, a member of Puritan ministers found a true
friend and protector in Lady Warwick. We find
them constantly staying at Leighs Priory, and sup-
ported to a large extent by her bounty. The diary
has many allusions to the deep and edifying dis-
courses of these good ministers delivered in the
private chapel of Leighs. Of sermons our devout
Countess seems never to weary; and not satisfied
with the ministrations of her own chaplains, she was
wont to attend the services in many of the village
churches around.

But engaged as she frequently was in religious
exercises and in deeds of charity, the Countess was
no recluse, and seems never to have shunned the

152 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

duties of society. Indeed, she appears rather to have
been famed for hospitality, and for ‘‘ noble and splendid
way of living.” Her funeral sermon, in the high-flown
language of the day, tells us that ‘“‘as a neighbour she
was so kind and courteous it advanced the rent of the
adjacent houses to be situated near her”; “and not
only her house and table, but her countenance and
very heart was open to all persons of quality in a
considerable circuit.” When at Warwick House in
London she mixed constantly in the highest society,
and was in familiar intercourse with the most distin-
guished persons in the political and the scientific
world. At Leighs she moved freely among her Essex
neighbours, and appears to have devoted nearly every
afternoon to receiving or paying visits. Within a
radius of ten or twelve miles of Leighs Priory a large
number of stately houses were to be seen, and the
Warwick coach seems to have been for ever on the
roads, There was “my Lady Everard” of Langleys,
and old Lady Vere of Kirby Hall. At Little Easton
Lodge, of which parish the saintly Ken was minister,
lived my Lord and Lady Maynard, the best beloved of
Mary’s friends. Once, on her way thither, an accident
befell her, which may be tola in her own language:
“1661, July the 23rd. I was going from Lees to
Easton to visit my Lady Maynard, and had in my
coach with me my Lady Anne and my Lady Essex
Rich; and when I was just out of Dunmow town the
horses ran with us, and flung out the coachman and
overthrew us in the coach, in which fall the Lady
Essex escaped being hurt; but I was much so, having
a great blow on my head, and a great and dangerous
cut in one of my knees. I was, by the great blow in
my head, so disordered, that for a long time I knew

MARY RICH, COUNTESS OF WARWICK 153

not anything; and by the great cut I had in my knee
I was a long time so very lame that I could not go out
at all, and had like to have been always so if God had
not mercifully, by His blessing on the use of means,
restored me to my legs again.” Then at Mark’s Hall
lived ‘‘my Lady Honeywood,” and Sir John Dawes at
Bocking. Some twelve miles away, in the parish of
Finchingfield, stood the Tudor mansion of Spains Hall,
and thither the Countess would sometimes travel to
pay her compliments to Mistress Kempe. She would
see the seven fishponds in the well-wooded park which
commemorated the strange vow of silence which only
fifty years before ‘‘Mr. William Kempe Esqre” had
imposed upon himself, and she would doubtless visit
his tomb in the chapel of the grand old Norman
church, and read with wonder the unique epitaph
which tells us he was “ Pious, just, hospitable, master
of himself so much that what others scarce doe by
force and penalties, He did by a voluntary constancy,
Hold his peace for seven years.” And so, troubled
and perplexed, she would turn home again to her
beloved Leeze.

For some years after her husband’s death the
widowed Countess remained mistress of the beautiful
priory. She had often prayed, ‘Grant that in the
evening of life 1 may have the most serene and quiet
times, that so I may undisturbedly prepare for my
change.” And after the settlement of her lord’s
affairs, which for a time took her constantly up to
London, she settled down to the quiet seclusion of her
Essex home. The old life of peaceful meditation in
her much-loved ‘‘ wilderness” went on, together with
her acts of charity to the poor around. She had often
expressed the wish ‘to die praying,” and so suddenly

154 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

and unexpectedly it came about. For some days she
had been suffering from an “aguish distemper,” a
complaint not uncommon in the damp neighbourhood
of the priory fishponds, but her condition excited no
alarm, and she was able to sit up and to discourse
cheerfully and piously with those around her. ‘“ Well,
ladies,” she said, “if I were one hour in heaven, I
would not be again with you, as well as I love you.”
Then, in the narrative of Dr. Walker, the aged minister
who three-and-thirty years before had guided her feet
into the way of peace, and who was with her at the
end, “having received a kind visit from a neigh-
bouring lady, she said she would go into her bed, but
first would desire one of the ministers then in the
house to go to prayer with her; and asking the
company which they would have, presently resolved
herself to have him who was going away, because
the other would stay and pray with her daily; and
immediately he (Dr. Walker) being called, and come,
her ladyship, sitting in her chair, by reason of her
weakness—for otherwise she always kneeled—holding
an orange in her hand, to which she smelt, almost at
the beginning of her prayer she was heard to fetch a
sigh or groan, which was esteemed devotional, as she
used to do at other times. But a lady looking up,
who kneeled by her, saw her look pale, and her hand
hang down, at which she started up affrighted, and all
applied themselves to help; and the most afflictively
distressed of them all, if I may so speak, when all
our sorrows were superlative, catched her right hand,
which then had lost its pulse and never recovered it
again.” It was on Friday, April 12, 1678, at the
comparatively early age of fifty-two, that Mary Rich
died. A few days later the mournful but magnificent

MARY RICH, COUNTESS OF WARWICK 155

funeral procession passed beneath the Tudor tower,
to which the swallows were just returning, and over
the red-brick bridge which spanned the tiny stream,
and winding its way past the ‘wilderness,’ then
starred with primroses and anemones, and beside the
old monastic ponds, it followed the grassy lanes to
Felstead Church, where, amid the genuine sorrow of
the simple villagers, the coffin of their good benefac-
tress was lowered into the family vault beneath the
imposing effigy of Lord Chancellor Rich.

No monument to her memory is to be found in
Felstead Church, and only a few dim and uncertain
traditions linger in the neighbourhood of the ruined
priory. A large room in the solitary gateway tower,
lighted at either end with a noble Tudor window, and
reached by a winding staircase in the south-east turret,
is believed to be the one in which the Countess inter-
viewed her tenants and transacted the business of her
estate; and “a little white flower” that grows by the
river is said to be known among the cottage folk as
“Lady Rich’s flower.” But the wooded dell beyond
the stream, with its gnarled and stunted thorns, its
shining clumps of Iris and Alexander, and its sweet
forget-me-nots—the site of the beloved “ wilderness”
—is hallowed ground, the most sacred spot in connec-
tion with the memory of the pious Puritan lady, whose
one aim and object in life was to “ glorify God”’ and
to do what good she could to her neighbours in the
parishes around.

IZAAK WALTON AT DROXFORD

THE interest in Izaak Walton continues among cul-
tured people ; indeed, of late years it seems to have
increased rather than diminished. Books dealing with
his life are still published, and new editions of Zhe
Compleat Angler are issued from the Press. Among
other evidences that ‘meek Walton’s heavenly
memory” is still cherished may be mentioned the
proposal to fill with stained glass the window in
Prior Silkstede’s chapel above his grave in Win-
chester Cathedral. Recently, too, a volume entitled
Izaak Walton and his Friends has been published, in
which the writer, Mr. Stapleton Martin, endeavours to
bring out the spiritual side of Walton’s character.

And this interest in “the best of fishermen and
men” is not to be wondered at. In days of hurry and
excitement, when “the world is too much with us,” it
is refreshing to turn to the pages of The Compleat
Angler, which breathes in every line the spirit of
contentment and peace. It is not that the book is of
any special value as a treatise on fishing or natural
history, for it is full of the quaintest and most anti-
quated conceits ; rather it is the repose and tranquillity
displayed throughout it that renders the little volume
of such enduring value to so many readers. ‘ Among
all your readings,” wrote Charles Lamb to Coleridge,
“did you ever light upon Wadton’s Compleat Angler ?

157

158 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

It breathes the very spirit of innocence, purity, and
simplicity of heart. There are many choice old
verses interspersed in it; it would sweeten a man’s
temper at any time to read it; it would Christianise
every discordant, angry passion; pray make your-
self acquainted with it.” And this quality of serenity
is the more remarkable when we remember the tur-
bulent age in which it appeared. The King and the
Archbishop had perished on the scaffold only a few
years before; the Long Parliament had just been dis-
solved by Cromwell with the significant words, ‘‘The
Lord has done with you;” many of the most devoted
of the clergy had recently been turned out of their
livings; episcopacy was abolished; and a Royalist,
such as Walton was, must have felt that his lot had
indeed fallen on evil days. And yet his writings
betray no resentment; not a harsh word, not an un-
charitable judgment is met with; only gladness and
purity and singleness of heart. It is to this aspect
of his work that Keble refers when, in a well-known
stanza of The Christian Year, he exclaims:

“O who can tell how calm and sweet,
Meek Walton ! shews thy green retreat,
When, wearied with the tale thy times disclose,
The eye first finds thee out in thy secure repose?”

The good man, as Wordsworth wrote of him upon a
blank leaf in The Compleat Angler, was ‘nobly versed
in simple discipline,” and he could thank God for the
smell of lavender, and the songs of birds, and a
‘‘sood day’s fishing”; for “health and a competence
and a quiet conscience.” ‘Every misery that I miss
is a new mercy,” he says to his honest scholar, as they
walk towards Tottenham High Cross, “and therefore

IZAAK WALTON AT DROXFORD © 159

let us be thankful. What would a blind man give to
see the pleasant rivers and meadows and flowers that
we have met with since we met together ; and this,
and many other like blessings we enjoy daily.”

And The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative
Man's Recreation is a mirror of Izaak Walton’s life.
“Tt is a picture,” as he says to the reader, “of my
own disposition.” And it was doubtless this spirit of
“gladsome piety,” this love of ‘innocent, harmless
mirth,” coupled with a deep vein of ‘seriousness at
seasonable times,’ this power of detachment from the
noisy movements of the world, this delight in the
beauties of nature, this quality of “ meekness,” that
enabled him to “ possess the earth,” which endeared
the “honest fisherman” to the hearts of so many dis-
tinguished men. Walton, it has been well said, had
a genius for friendship. Although of comparatively
humble birth and occupation, he was on terms of the
closest intimacy with many of the most learned men
of his day. His circle of friends included such men as
Archbishops Ussher and Sheldon, as Bishops Morley
of Winchester, Ward of Sarum, King of Chichester,
and Sanderson of Lincoln; as Sir Henry Wotton,
Provost of Eton, Dr. Donne, the famous Dean of St.
Paul’s, Fuller the historian, the ‘‘ever memorable”
Hales, Dr. Hammond, and William Chillingworth.

It is therefore all the more disappointing that a man
of so many and distinguished friendships, who himself
recorded with considerable detail the lives of no fewer
than five of his contemporaries, should have left so
little record of hisowncareer. The details of Walton’s
life, especially of certain periods of it, are exceedingly
meagre. Though he lived “ full ninety years and past,”
the story of the greater portion of his life is an almost

160 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

total blank. For purposes of convenience we may be
allowed to divide his long life into four periods—his
early life up to the time of his residence in London;
the business period of twenty years, during which he
lived in Fleet Street, at the corner of Chancery Lane;
the period of his second marriage, marked by the pub-
lication of Zhe Compleat Angler; and the period of
his old age, from the death of his second wife in 1662,
when Walton was seventy, to his own death twenty
years later. We may briefly glance, by way of leading
up to the special purpose of this paper, at these succes-
sive periods of his life.

He was born at Stafford on August 9, 1593, and
baptized in St. Mary’s Church on the 21st of the
following month, when he received the name of
“Izaak,” perhaps, as Dean Stanley suggested, after
the learned Isaac Casaubon, who appears to have been
a friend of the family. Of his childhood and youth
nothing whatever is known. In 1613, when he was
twenty years of age, there appeared a poem, “ The
Love of Amos and Laura,” which is dedicated by the
writer, ‘“To my approved and much respected friend,
Iz. Wa.,” which seems to indicate that his mind was
already drawn towards literature. From 1624 to 1644
he resided in Fleet Street, where he appears to have
carried on business as a ‘‘sempster” or linen-draper.
Here he became intimate with Dr. Donne, who was
rector of the parish and who introduced Walton to
many distinguished men. His twenty years’ residence
at St. Dunstan’s was marked by many a sorrow,
including the death of his first wife, who was a
descendant of Archbishop Cranmer’s, of both his
children, and of his intimate friends Wotton and
Donne. To this period belongs the publication of his

IZAAK WALTON AT DROXFORD | 161

first work, of which Hales of Eton is reported to have
said that “he had not seen a Life written with more
advantage to the subject, or more reputation to the
writer, than that of Dr. Donne.”

In 1644, at the age of fifty, Walton retired from
business, and deeming London “a dangerous place
for honest men to live in,” returned, it seems, at any
rate for a time, to his native town of Stafford. It is
difficult, however, to trace with any certainty his
movements during this the third period of his life.
In 1646 he married his second wife, Anne Ken, half-
sister to Thomas Ken, afterwards Bishop of Bath and
Wells, and this happy union doubtless brought him
into still closer connection with the ecclesiastical
world. A few years later appeared his Lzfe of Sir
Henry Wotton, followed in 1653 by The Compleat
Angler, the work by which he is now most generally
known. During this period we may think of him as
residing for a time at Stafford, and afterwards, it
appears, at Clerkenwell; as spending his time partly
in literary work and partly in fishing, sometimes with
his friend, Charles Cotton, in Dovedale; and as visit-
ing his numerous friends in various parts of the
country. In 1662, probably when on a visit to Bishop
Morley, who had recently been appointed to Wor-
cester, the great calamity of Walton’s life occurred.
His second wife died, leaving him a widower at the
age of seventy, with two children—Anne, aged fifteen,
who was to be the stay and comfort of his old age, and
Izaak, aged eleven, afterwards Rector of Poulshot, in
Wiltshire, and Canon of Salisbury Cathedral. She
was buried in the Lady Chapel of Worcester Cathe-
dral, and her epitaph, written by Walton, speaks of

her as being “A woman of remarkable prudence and
L

162 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

primitive piety, her great and general knowledge being
adorned with such true humility, and blest with so
much Christian meekness, as made her worthy of a
more memorable monument.”

We now come to what we have ventured to call the
fourth or last period of Walton’s life, and of this
period, especially of the last seven years of it, little
beyond conjecture, more or less probable, is to be
found in his biographies; and even Mr. Stapleton
Martin, the latest of his eulogists, has no fresh light
whatever to throw upon it. It is usually supposed
that the old man spent most of his time with Bishop
Morley at Farnham or Winchester, and the belief
seems to be based on a statement by Dr. Zouch that
“Walton and his daughter had apartments constantly
reserved for them in the houses of Dr. Morley, the
Bishop of Winchester, and of Dr. Ward, Bishop of
Salisbury.” This assertion need not be disputed;
there can be little doubt that after the death of his
wife in 1662 the aged fisherman and his youthful
daughter frequently visited their friends, especially
Bishop Morley at Farnham Castle, where he wrote
his Lzves of ‘“Mr. Richard Hooker” and of “Mr.
George Herbert,” and Bishop Ward at Sarum, and
doubtless Charles Cotton, on the banks of the Dove.
But in the year 1676, when Izaak Walton had attained
the great age of eighty-three, his daughter Anne, the
inseparable companion and comfort of his old age, was
married to Dr. William Hawkins, usually described as
a Prebendary of Winchester Cathedral. Now this
event cannot but have greatly influenced the conditions
and surroundings of the old man’s life, which had still
some seven years to run. But of these seven years
his biographers have nothing to tell us. His last visit

q

IZAAK WALTON AT DROXFORD 163

to Charles Cotton seems to have taken place in the
year of his daughter’s marriage, probably in her com-
pany, shortly before the ceremony took place. He
was now becoming too old for his beloved occupation of
fishing, except in fine weather; and the fatigues of
travelling were great in those days. The only event
of any importance which breaks the silence of those
seven years was the publication of his Lzfe of Dr.
Robert Sanderson, which appeared in 1678, and was
dedicated to his old friend Bishop Morley of Win-
chester; but there is nothing to show where the book
was written. In the concluding paragraph of the
Life the aged author says: “’Tis now too late to
wish that my life may be like his, for I am in the
eighty-fifth year of my age: but I humbly beseech
Almighty God that my death may; and do as earnestly
beg of every Reader to say, ‘Amen.’” Even of his
death no particulars remain. We only know that he
passed away on December 15, 1683, during the great
frost of that year, at the house of his son-in-law, Dr.
Hawkins, in the Close at Winchester.

But it has long seemed to the writer that with re-
gard to these closing years of Walton’s life sufficient
use has not been made by his biographers of the
details contained in his will. This most interesting
document, well known to all his admirers, was begun
by the old man on his birthday, a few months before
his death, “being,” he says, ‘in the ninetyeth year
of my age, and in perfect memory, for which praised
be God.” Now the respect and affection with which,
in his will, Walton speaks of Dr. Hawkins, ‘‘ whom,”
he says, “I love as my own son,” is most noticeable,
and lends some support to the contention of the writer
that these last years were spent, not, as is usually

164 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

supposed, in the houses of various friends, but under
the loving care of his daughter and son-in-law, in
whose house at Winchester, as we have seen, he
eventually died. And this surmise, which is obviously
the natural one, is not without confirmation in other
directions. The passage in his will will be remem-
bered—‘‘I also give unto my daughter all my books
at Winchester and Droxford, and whatever in those
two places are or I can call mine. To my son
Isaak I give all my books at Farnham Castell, and
a deske of prints and pictures, also a cabinett near
my bed’s head, in which are some little things that
he will value, though of no great worth.” It is
evident from this passage that Izaak Walton in his
last years had some close connection, not only with
Farnham and Winchester, but also with Droxford,
a village in the Meon Valley some fourteen miles
from the Cathedral city. At Farnham, it is clear,
he still had his own chamber at the ‘‘ Castell,” where
he had written the Lzves of Hooker and of Her-
bert, and where he was always sure of a warm
welcome from his old friend of forty years’ standing.
At Winchester there was the Canon’s house in the
venerable Close, near to the one occupied by Dr. Ken,
at that time a Prebendary of the cathedral, where he
lived peacefully with his daughter and Dr, Hawkins,
and not, as his biographers have imagined, with
Bishop Morley, for Wolvesey Palace, on the build-
ing of which the good bishop was engaged, was not
finished at the time of Walton’s death. But what
was his connection with Droxford? To discover
this connection at once became the object of the
writer when he was appointed Rector of Droxford
a few years ago. From the ordinary sources of in-

IZAAK WALTON AT DROXFORD 165

formation he could learn nothing. The biographers
of Izaak Walton, so far as he is aware, pass over
this mention of Droxford in almost total silence.
Even Mr. Stapleton Martin makes no reference to
it. The word “ Droxford” does not so much as
occur in his index. Sir Harris Nicolas does indeed
suggest that perhaps Walton had a house or apart-
ments in the village, which from the passage already
quoted in the will is abundantly evident. Mr. Dewar,
in his Winchester edition of Zhe Compleat Angler,
is the first to hint at the true solution, although he
admits that he had ‘not succeeded in finding out
anything about Walton at Droxford.” He states,
however, that Dr. Hawkins, besides being Prebendary
of Winchester, was also Rector of Droxford. The
writer had already met with this bare statement in
Bowles’s Lzfe of Bishop Ken, published about the
year 1830, but had entirely failed to substantiate it.
Repeated searches in the episcopal register, alike at
Winchester and at the Record Office, produced no
evidence that William Hawkins was ever Rector of
Droxford. The matter, however, was happily set at
rest by the writer’s discovery in one of the Com-
position Books at the Record Office of the entry of
the payments made by ‘William Hawkins, S.T-.P.,
in November 1664,” on his institution to the living.
He followed, it appears, one Dr. Nicholas Preston,
who had been deprived during the time of the
Commonwealth, but had been restored to his rights
on the accession of Charles II., and died in Sep-
tember 1664. The living of Droxford Dr. Hawkins
continued to hold, in conjunction with his canonry,
to which he had been appointed two years previously,
until the time of his death, which occurred in 1691.

166 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

The fact, then, now fully established, of his son-in-
law holding preferment at Droxford as well as at
Winchester may be taken as the undoubted expla-
nation of the connection of these two places in the
will of Izaak Walton. With the exception of an
occasional visit to Farnham, he passed his closing
years—

“‘ serene and bright,
And calm as is a Lapland night,”

in the loving care of his daughter and her husband,
sometimes in the Close at Winchester, and sometimes
in the rambling old rectory on the banks of the Meon
stream.

And that these visits to Droxford were of more
than a mere passing nature may be inferred, not only
from the way in which he speaks of his library and
belongings, but also from the fact, lately discovered
by the writer, that he had more than one intimate
friend among the residents there. His books, as
already has been noticed, Walton divided between
his son and daughter, mentioning, however, one or
two volumes for which evidently he had a personal
affection. Thus to Dr. Hawkins he gives Dr. Donne's
Sermons, which, he adds, ‘‘I have heard preacht and
read with much content.” To his son Izaak he gives
“Dr. Sibbs his Soul's Conflict,” and to his daughter
The Bruised Reed, ‘desiring them to read them so
as to be well acquainted with them.” One other
individual shares with his children this special mark
of Walton’s esteem. “I give,” we read, ‘to Mr.
John Darbyshire the Sermons of Mr. Anthony Far-
ringdon or of Dr. Sanderson, which my executor
thinks fit.” Moreover, among the friends mentioned

IZAAK WALTON AT DROXFORD 167

in his will, to whom Walton bequeaths a ring, with
the motto ‘‘A friend’s farewell. I. W., obiit,” we
also find the name of ‘‘ Mr. John Darbyshire.” The
identity, therefore, of this individual, for whom Walton
evidently had a great regard, becomes a question of
distinct interest as throwing light on the friendships
of his last years. The feeling, therefore, of satisfac-
tion which the writer experienced when he discovered
that “Mr. John Darbyshire” was Dr. Hawkins’s
curate at Droxford will easily be imagined. He was
evidently a person of some position, for though at
Droxford he was only curate, yet after the manner
of the age he held preferment elsewhere. From a
mural tablet in the north chapel of the church, to
the memory of his first wife, who died the year
before his aged friend, we learn that ‘Mr. John
Darbyshire was Rector of Portland and Curate of ©
Droxford.”’ At Droxford, as seems to be clear from
the registers, he resided, and the chief events in his
family history were connected with the place. Walton,
we may be sure, regularly attended his ministrations
in the parish church, and took a deep interest in his
personal affairs, which had been darkened, as the
burial register reveals, by much sorrow. It must
therefore have been with feelings of pleasure that, a
few weeks before his death, the aged fisherman heard
of his friend’s second marriage in Droxford church
to “Mrs. Frances Uvedale,” youngest daughter of
Sir Richard Uvedale, Kt., whose family, from the
time of William of Wykeham, had exercised a wide
influence in the Meon Valley.

Among the other friends mentioned in his will to
whom Walton leaves a ring as “a friend’s farewell”
will also be noticed the name of ‘‘ Mr. Francis Morley.”

168 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

He too, the writer has discovered, was a resident of
Droxford, and lies buried in a vault in the north-west
corner of Droxford church, beneath the floor of the
baptistery. The Jacobean manor-house in which he
lived, with its quaint gables and legends of secret
passages, is still standing over against the rectory,
and the gateway in the massive red-brick garden wall
still opens into the orchard, through which “old
Izaak” and his comparatively youthful friend must
have often passed together. Francis Morley, as we
learn from his marble tablet in the church, was a
nephew of the Bishop of Winchester, and this fact
doubtless deepened the intimacy between the two
men. He was also a warm friend of Thomas Ken,
and when, two years after Walton’s death, Ken was
made Bishop of Bath and Wells, Francis Morley
supplied him with the necessary cash in hand to
meet the expenses of his consecration. A most in-
teresting relic of this Droxford friend of our “honest
fisherman” is still preserved in the rectory garden.
In the middle of the undulating lawn, near the lofty
tulip-tree, at the moment of writing covered with
thousands of exquisite blossoms, there stands a stone
pedestal, which supports a sundial, of stately propor-
tions and design on which is carved two heraldic
devices. The one coat-of-arms represents the armorial
bearings of the Morley family impaled with those of
the Tancreds ; and the other the Morley arms impaled
with those of the Herberts. The stone pedestal, then,
it is clear, commemorates the marriages of father and
son—of Walton’s friend, Francis Morley, with Jane
Tancred, which took place in the year 1652; and of
Francis Morley’s eldest son, Charles, who married
Magdalene, daughter of Sir Henry Herbert and niece

IZAAK WALTON AT DROXFORD | 169

of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. The exact date of this
latter marriage the writer has been unable to discover ;
but inasmuch as Charles Morley died in 1697 at the
age of forty-five, and Magdalene in 1737 at the age
of eighty-two—they are both buried in Droxford
church—they would have been respectively thirty-one
and twenty-eight at the time of Walton’s death. It
is not, therefore, unreasonable to suppose that they
were married before that event took place; and if
so, it is permissible to believe that the family sun-
dial was erected in the lifetime, perhaps at the
instigation, of the old fisherman.

The old rectory is still standing, although somewhat
enlarged since the days of Izaak Walton. Part of it,
however, remains in exactly the same condition as in
the closing years of the seventeenth century. The
floors are still boarded with wide planks of oak, and
the leaden lattice casements remain. One or two rooms
facing south, for the old man was nearing ninety and
doubtless felt the cold mists arising from the river, may
not unnaturally be associated with our friend. On the
walls would hang one or two “prints and pictures,”
which recalled happy memories of bygone days, There
he would keep his books, at any rate some of his
favourites, such as Dr. Donne's Sermons, or The
Returning Backslider, by Dr. Sibbs (now in the
Cathedral Library at Salisbury), or the works of
“holy Mr. Herbert” or of Dr. Sanderson. A copy
of The Compleat Angler, doubtless of the first
edition, was, we may be sure, upon the shelves, and
a collected edition of Zhe Lives. Perhaps in a
corner of the room stood his fishing-rod and tackle,
for though age prevented him from visiting his friend
Cotton in Dovedale, yet in fine weather he would stroll

170 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

down the glebe meadows where the bee-orchis grows
and try his hand at “catching trouts” in “the swift,
shallow, clear, pleasant brook” of the Meon. Some-
times in cold weather, when the elements kept the old
man indoors, Mr. John Darbyshire or Squire Morley
would come over to the rectory for a chat by the fire-
side. Walton would relate to his friends many anec-
dotes of the great Churchmen he had known in former
years, of Sir Henry Wotton, and Hales, and Chilling-
worth. He would tell, in tones of awe, of ‘‘ the dread-
ful vision’? which once appeared to Dr. Donne; or he
would show the gold signet ring his friend had left
him, and with which he afterwards signed his will, in
which was set a bloodstone with the figure of the
Crucified, not on the cross, but on an anchor, as the
emblem of hope; or, in a lighter vein, he would tell of
the pleasant days long gone by when he “had laid
aside business, and gone a-fishing with honest Nat
and R. Roe”; or perhaps he would play a “ game at
shovel-board ” with his friends. Mr. John Darbyshire,
on his part, would have much to tell of the way in
which, a few years before he came, the quiet village
of Droxford was affected by the great rebellion. He
would repeat the story learnt from the parishioners,
how ‘the learned Dr. Preston,” “for his eminent
loyalty,” had been shamefully entreated, and how
grievously the Church had suffered from the icono-
clasm of the age. He would not forget to speak of the
stately altar tomb which for four centuries had stood
in the south chapel to the memory of the mother of
John de Drokenford, the famous Bishop of Bath and
Wells and Chancellor of England in the troubled days
of Edward II., and which had been utterly destroyed,
and her monumental effigy of Purbeck marble thrust
out of the church, and buried somewhere in the meadows

IZAAK WALTON AT DROXFORD 171

below. Then he would tell of the return of “the
beloved minister,” and how he set himself to repair the
mischief which had been wrought, panelling the sanc-
tuary with oak, and fencing it off with stately altar
rails. These Jacobean altar rails have lately been
restored to the church, and it is pleasant to think that
the aged author of 7he Compleat Angler must have
often leaned against them when he received the Holy
Communion from the hands of Dr. Hawkins or of
Mr. John Darbyshire.

Thus the days of the old man at Droxford would
pass quietly and uneventfully by. In the month of
May he would listen to the ‘ sweet loud music” of the
nightingale, which returns every year to the rectory
garden. Or he would take “a gentle walk to the
river,” perhaps in company with his little grand-
daughter Anne, and point out to her ‘the lilies and
lady-smocks ” in the glebe meadows. Beneath “ the
cool shade of the honeysuckle hedge” he would rest
awhile, and watch the moorhens in “the gliding
stream,” or listen to the notes of the sedge-warbler.
The old mill is still standing, on the bridge of which
the aged angler must have often lingered as he watched
the rush of water making pleasant music beneath his
feet. Indeed, the village is but little changed since
the days, now over two hundred years ago, when Dr.
Hawkins was rector and Mr. John Darbyshire looked
after the spiritual welfare of the people, and Squire
Morley presided at the parish meetings. The even
tenour of life went quietly on, broken only now and
again by some domestic affliction, or some family
rejoicing as when, it may be, in the presence of the
rector and Mr. John Darbyshire, and of the revered
and venerable fisherman, the Morley sundial was
placed in position on the lawn.

AN “ANCIENT MARKET-TOWNE”
TITCHFIELD

SOME two miles from the mouth of the river
Meon in Hampshire, a low bridge of ancient work-
manship spans the narrow stream. It is a stone
structure, dating back to the fourteenth century, and
with nothing particular to distinguish it save its
curious triangular ‘ quartering-place,” which affords
safe shelter to the traveller from the wheels of passing
vehicles. A few plants of the interesting little fern,
the Ruta-muraria or wall-rue spleenwort, are growing
between the interstices of the stones, which are
coloured here and there with the stains of centuries.
Sitting on the low parapet of the bridge, in the shelter
of the ancient “quartering - place,” one views the
picturesque remains of what in 1540 Leland described as
“Mr. Wriothesley’s righte statelie house embatayled,
and having a goodlie gate, and a conducte castelid in
the middle of the court of yt, in the very place where
the late monastery of the Premostratenses stood, called
Tichefelde.”’

The ‘‘righte statelie house ” is now in ruins, tenanted
only by owls and jackdaws, and covered by dense
masses of ivy in picturesque confusion. The lofty
grey turrets of the gatehouse still rise from among
the surrounding trees, together with one or two

columnar chimneys of red brick, and around these
173

174 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

the swifts are sailing and shrieking, as they sailed
and shrieked of old when the house stood in all its
ancient glory. For the Mr. Wriothesley who built
this stately house was the famous Lord Chancellor
of England in the reign of Henry VIII., best known
perhaps to the majority of English readers as the
Lord Chancellor who, with infamous cruelty, racked
with his own hands the Lady Anne Ascue “till she
was nigh dead.” About half a mile down the stream
stands the “ancient market-towne of Tytchfyelde,” as
the Lord Chancellor names it in his will, a market-
town even in the days of the Conqueror, in the parish
church of which repose the ashes of Wriothesley and
of his successors, one of whom will be for ever famous
as the friend and patron of Shakespeare.

An “ancient towne” indeed, the name of which is
doubtless of Celtic origin, and carries us back to the
far-off period when the Meonwaras peopled the fertile
valley, and fished with bone hooks in the tidal haven,
and hunted deer and wild boars in the forest around.
The stone implements of these early inhabitants are
scattered all along the valley, and are sometimes
picked up by carters and plough-boys when working
in the fields. Later on the Romans settled in the
valley, and left their trace in the form of thin red
tiles, some of which were utilised ages afterwards
by Norman builders when erecting the tower of the
parish church. Then after the Romans came the
Saxon invasion, when for a time civilisation perished,
and the neighbouring city of Portchester was reduced
to ashes. The Jutes settled along the stream, once
the home of the stone-men and of the bronze-men,
and in their turn were harassed and plundered by the
fierce Northmen, whose black boats must have often

AN “ANCIENT MARKET-TOWNE” 175

sailed up the tidal haven. In spite, however, of
the incursions of the Danes the Jutes managed to
hold their own, and at the time of the Conquest
“Tichefelde” was one of the very few places in
Hampshire where markets were regularly held.

The Premonstratensian Abbey mentioned by John
Leland was founded by Henry III. for the sake of the
souls of the royal house; and for many years the
good monks said masses and served God in peace.
The ghost-like figures of the brethren, in their white
caps and long white cloaks, were for many generations
a familiar object to the villagers, as they moved about
the Abbey grounds, and looked after the fish-ponds,
which may still, after so many centuries, be traced,
or hawked up and down the river for herons and
other wild-fowl. The good abbot too was a man of
considerable importance; and more than once royal
persons were entertained with due hospitality. In
August, 1415, Henry V. stayed at the abbey on his
way to Portchester, where he embarked for France and
fought the famous battle of Agincourt. Thirty years
later a more interesting event took place, for Henry VI.
and Margaret of Anjou passed in royal state over the
stone bridge, and were married by the abbot in the
priory chapel. Thus for three hundred years the
quiet life of the white canons went evenly on, with
just now and then an event of more importance to
break the monotony of existence, till the changing
times of the Reformation, when Henry VIII. swept
the priory away.

A great change must have passed over the lives and
fortunes of the simple villagers when their white-robed
friends were to be no more seen. ‘The long reign of
quiet monotony was broken, and bustle and activity

176 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

became the order of the day. For the abbey, with
all its revenues, was granted to Thomas Wriothesley,
Lord Chancellor of England, and, after the fall of
Cromwell, the chief minister of the realm. And
Wriothesley, Catholic though he was, began at once
to convert the monastic buildings into the “righte
statelie house’”’ seen by Leland: even the sanctity of
the priory chapel was not respected, but seems to
have been turned either into the banqueting-hall,
or into the range of stables of which the ruins may
still be seen.

But Thomas Wriothesley, now created Earl of
Southampton, was not destined long to enjoy the
spoils of the priory. On the accession of the Pro-
testant party to power under Edward VI. he was
deprived of the chancellorship and imprisoned. On
his liberation he retired into obscurity, perhaps to
“Tytchfylde” ; and died soon afterwards of a broken
heart. His magnificent tomb stands in the south -
chapel of the village church, where, carved in alabaster,
his life-size figure is represented in his robes of state
as Lord Chancellor of England, and with the collar
of the Order of the Garter about his neck, and with
hands uplifted across his breast in prayer. The
splendour of the Wriothesley altar tomb may in
some measure be gathered from the fact that a
sum equivalent to £12,000 of our money is said to
have been expended upon its erection.

But the main interest of the tomb centres, not in its
costly magnificence, or in the exquisite workmanship
of its details, or even in the recumbent figure of the
Lord Chancellor who played so large a part in the
days of the Reformation, but in the fact that in the
spacious vault beneath repose the ashes of Henry the

AN “ANCIENT MARKET-TOWNE” 177

third Earl, and of Elizabeth Vernon his wife—the true
“begetters,” as some think, of the earlier sonnets of
Shakespeare, and in some sense the originals of Romeo
and Juliet. Moreover, it is well within the range of
probability that Shakespeare may have visited his
friend at ‘‘Tytchfylde,” and wandered in the old
garden “circummered with brick,” and across the
ancient bridge, and down the stately avenue of elms
which led to the village church, where he may have
gazed upon the reclining effigy of the Lord Chancellor
upon the lordly tomb.

Now to enter fully into the vexed question of the
sonnets would be a task far beyond the scope of the
present paper ; but the theory advanced by Mr. Gerald
Massey some forty years ago, that the interpretation
of the earlier series is to be found in the story of the
courtship of Henry Wriothesley and Elizabeth Vernon,
has perhaps as much to recommend it as any other;
and indications are not wanting that the same lovers
were in Shakespeare’s mind when he wrote the tragedy
of Romeo and Juliet. For that Shakespeare was on
terms of the warmest intimacy with Southampton is
a fact resting on the poet’s own testimony. ‘To
the Right Honourable Henry Wriothesley, Earl of
Southampton, and Baron of Tichfield,” Shakespeare
dedicates ‘‘the first heir of his invention”— Venus
and Adonis. This was in the year 1593, when the
poet was twenty-nine, and the earl about twenty. In
the following year he again dedicates to the “ Baron
of Tichfield,” with “love without end,” Zhe Rape
of Lucrece in a short and graceful letter which is
among the few personal relics of Shakespeare that we
possess.

It may have been about this time, when the earlier
M

178 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

sonnets were also written, that the poet received from
his friend and patron the munificent sum of 41000,
which he is said to have required in order to complete
some intended purchase. The sonnets, it is true, were
not published as a whole before 1609; but we learn
from one Francis Meres that Shakespeare was already
known as a sonnet-writer some years earlier. In a
book entitled Palladis Tamia, and published in 1598,
he speaks of ‘“hony-tongued Shakespeare,” and of
his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, and his ‘“sugred
sonnets among his private friends.” And at that
time, as the dedication to Lucrece sufficiently testifies,
Southampton was certainly a foremost figure in that
privileged circle, and may therefore reasonably be
supposed to have been one of the “ private friends”
for whom the sonnets were intended, and to whom the
allusions would be clear which have since puzzled the
students of Shakespeare. Now if Mr. Massey be
right, and his theory is at least full of interest, the
key to the interpretation of those allusions is to
be found in the romantic story of the courtship of
Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon.

The story is soon told. The Earl, whose father
had died when he was a boy of twelve, had not
been long at Court before he fell in love with
‘(faire Mistress Vernon,” a beautiful maid-of-honour
to Queen Elizabeth. The lady was cousin to the
Earl of Essex, and daughter of Sir John Vernon
of Hodnet, near Shrewsbury. It is possible that
Shakespeare was really thinking of his young friend
when in the Shrewsbury camp scene in 1 Henry IV.
he puts the following lines into the mouth of a Sir
Richard Vernon :-—

AN “ANCIENT MARKET-TOWNE” 179

“IT saw young Harry, with his beaver on,
His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm’d,
Rise from the ground like feather’'d Mercury,
And vaulted with such ease into his seat
As if an angel dropp’d down from the clouds,
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,
And witch the world with noble horsemanship.”

But Southampton’s love for his “ faire Elizabeth,”
whom he is reported to have “courted with too much
familiarity,” cost him the favour of the Queen, who,
after her usual manner, bitterly opposed the marriage.
At length one Sunday afternoon the lovers waited
on the Queen to know her resolution in the matter,
who, after the space of two hours, sent out the curt
message that she was “sufficiently resolved.” The
Earl was further ordered to leave the Court, and the
lovers parted in grief and indignation. ‘My Lord
of Southampton,” writes a Court gossip, ‘is much
troubled at her Majesty’s strangest usage of him.
Mr. Secretary hath procured him licence to travel.
His fair mistress doth wash her fairest face with too
many tears.” After a few years’ absence the Earl
returned, and finding the Queen still implacable, the
lovers were married secretly, without her Majesty’s
consent. On hearing the news, about a week after
the event, the Queen, it is needless to add, was furious,
and threatened them both with the Tower, and even
appears to have carried her threat into execution.

Now, turning to the earlier sonnets of Shakespeare,
we find, first of all, the poet advising his young friend
to marry :—

“ Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
Which husbandry in honour might uphold,”

180 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

alluding at the same time to the fact that his father
was dead :—
“ Dear my love, you know
You had a father : let your son say so.”—xiii.

Then the ‘‘faire Elizabeth” comes across Southamp-
ton’s vision, and the vicissitudes of true love begin.
The lovers, owing partly to the Earl’s imprudence in
“courting with too much familiarity,” but chiefly to

the enmity of the Queen, are forced to part, and South-
ampton cries :—

“ Farewell ! thou art too dear for my possessing.”
—I]xxxvil.
And again :—
“ Let me confess that we two must be twain,
Although our undivided loves are one.”—xxxvi.

He keenly feels his banishment from Court :—

“ When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state.”

—XxIX.
He hastens to bed, seeking rest and finding none :—

“But then begins a journey in my head,

To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired ;

For then my thoughts...

Present thy shadow to my sightless view,

Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,

Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee and for myself no quiet find.”—xxvii.

He travels on the Continent with a heavy heart :-—

“ How teased do I aa on i Rie

The Hesse that hears me, deed with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me.”—l.

AN “ANCIENT MARKET-TOWNE” 181

And once again :—

“ For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
From me far off, with others all too near.”—1xi.

At length, in the late autumn of the year 1598, the
lovers are married, and Shakespeare celebrates the
glad event in the words of the hundred and sixteenth
sonnet :—

“ Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments.”

And bearing in mind the interpretation of the earlier
sonnets an unexpected light is shed upon several
passages in Romeo and Juliet, which seem unmis-
takably to show that the story of his friend’s courtship
was in Shakespeare’s mind when he wrote the tragedy.
The striking simile employed in the twenty-seventh
sonnet, where Elizabeth Vernon’s beauty is compared
to “a jewel hung in ghastly night,” which “makes
black night beauteous,” is again used in the tragedy,
where Romeo, on first seeing Juliet, exclaims :-—
“It seems she hangs upon the cheeks of night

Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear ;
Beauty too rich for use.”

And remembering that Southampton’s mother was the
daughter of “fair Viscount Montague,” the question
of Juliet becomes at once significantly suggestive :—

“Art thou not Romeo and a Montague?”

Again, on the supposition that Southampton is the
original of Romeo, the following passage, which has
greatly perplexed commentators, becomes evident :—

“ Nurse. Doth not rosemary and Romeo begin both with
a letter?”

Romeo. Ay, nurse; what of that? Both with an R.

182 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

Nurse. Ah,mocker! that’s the dog’s name. R. is for the
dog. No; I know it begins with some other letter; and she
hath the prettiest sententious of it, of you and rosemary, that
it would do you good to hear it.

Romeo. Commend me to thy lady.”

,

The “some other letter,’ which Juliet plays with
to the confusion of the garrulous old lady, is evidently
—if our theory be correct—W., and the “name’”’ is
Wriothesley. And these allusions, like those in the
sonnets, would be at once understood and appreciated
among the ‘private friends” of the ‘“hony-tongued
Shakespeare.”

These considerations cannot but give lasting in-
terest, not only to the magnificent shrine in\which the
ashes of Romeo and Juliet repose, but also to the
remains of the “right statelie house” to which, after
so many vicissitudes, the young Earl brought his
beautiful bride. Across the ancient bridge the caval-
cade must have wended its way in single file, and up
the noble avenue till it entered the precincts of the
old monastic garden, and passed under the ‘“‘ goodly
gate” into the “court” beyond, where the “ conducte
castelid’’ stood; above, over the mullioned window of
the gateway, the grinning face of a corbel (still re-
maining) looked approvingly down, while the “ faire
Elizabeth”’ was led by Southampton into her stately
home, which was to be to her, alas! the scene of
many Sorrows.

For the Countess was not destined to “‘feed on the
roses and to lie in the lilies of life.” Within three
years of her marriage the Earl was arrested and flung
into the Tower on the charge of high treason in con-
nection with the rising of Essex. He was even con-
demned to death, and for some weeks his head was in

AN “ANCIENT MARKET-TOWNE” 183

danger. At length the pleading of his friends was so
far successful that the Queen was induced to commute
the sentence to imprisonment for life. So in the
Tower the Earl languished, while his Countess re-
mained at Titchfield, until the death of Elizabeth,
when, on the order of James I., Southampton was
pardoned and liberated. The poets hastened to con-
gratulate the great patron of literature, while Shake-
speare greeted his ‘(dear boy” in the words of the
hundred and seventh sonnet.

Then a few years later, on “ Januarye 5, 1615,”
the Countess lost her fourth daughter, “ye Ladie
Mayre Wryotheslie,” at the tender age of four years
and four months, and the parents laid ‘ye bodie”
in the spacious vault beside the coffin of the Lord
Chancellor, and placed in the south wall of the chapel
an effigy of their little one, who is represented as
sleeping the sleep of death. As Shakespeare said of
Juliet :-—

** Death lies on her like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.”

Another sorrow befell the ‘‘ faire Elizabeth” in 1621,
when in consequence of his opposition to the Court,
and especially to the Duke of Buckingham, Southamp-
ton was again imprisoned, when we are told that “ the
Countess of Southampton, assisted by some two more
countesses, got up a petition to the King, that her
lord might answer before himself, which they say His
Majesty granted.” But the cruellest blow of all fell
upon the beautiful Countess three years later, when
her husband and his eldest son both died in Holland
—poisoned, it was said, by order of the infamous
Buckingham. Their bodies were embalmed, or per-

184 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

haps, as local tradition has it, preserved in some
spirituous liquor, and brought in a small boat to
England, and landed at Southampton. Then the
remains were taken by road to Titchfield, about ten
miles distant, and received by the broken-hearted
Countess beneath the stately gate-house, where, not
twenty-five years before, the grinning corbel had
welcomed her as a bride. A few days later, on Inno-
cents’ Day, December 28, the two coffins, covered,
it is believed, with crimson cloth, were laid in the
family vault beneath the splendid monument.

The Countess survived her lord for many years,
and continued to reside at Titchfield, where, in 1637,
a granddaughter was born, and christened ‘ Rachel.”
The child was brought up probably under the care of
her grandmother at Place House, and played in the old
walled garden and about the monastic fish-ponds, and
on Sundays gazed in wonderment at the magnificent
monument of her ancestors in the parish church, and
learnt her lessons, it may be, at the knee of the “ faire
Countess,” whose face now showed the traces of
sorrow and of years. This little girl, the grand-
daughter of Romeo and Juliet, became famous in
after years as the noble and devoted wife of Lord
William Russell who was executed by Charles II.
It is interesting to notice that her celebrated Letters
contain several allusions to her early home.

When Rachel was about ten years old an event
happened which must have engraved itself deeply
upon her memory. Towards evening one dull Nov-
ember afternoon, when the fog lay heavily along the
course of the river Meon, and the drive beneath the
avenue was thickly strewn with fallen leaves, two
horsemen were seen to cross the bridge, and to ride

AN “ANCIENT MARKET-TOWNE” 185

up to the entrance of the hall. The Earl was away
from home, but the visitors were immediately ad-
mitted, and one of them proved to be none other than
Charles I.

The King, it appeared, fearing danger, had secretly
left Hampton Court by a back staircase the evening
before, and accompanied only by Mr. Ashburnham,
Sir John Berkley, and Mr. Legge, had ridden through-
out the stormy night as far as the village of Sutton
in Hampshire, where at daybreak a relay of horses
awaited them. Setting off again immediately, for a
Committee of Roundheads was assembled in the very
inn at which they alighted, the party proceeded towards
the coast, till when near Southampton the King called
a halt to consider the situation. It was finally decided
that Mr. Ashburnham%and Sir John Berkley should
take boat for the Isle of Wight in order to sound
Colonel Hammond the Governor, while Charles, ac-
companied by Mr. Legge, should proceed to Titchfield,
and there await the result of the negotiations. Un-
fortunately for the King, his friends performed their
mission unskilfully. They agreed to Hammond’s
“Engagement,” that if the King ‘pleased to put
himself into his hands, what he could expect from
a person of honour and honestie, His Majesty should
have it made good by him,” and even allowed the
Governor, together with the “Captaine of Cowes
Castle and their two servants” to “‘embarque” with
them for the mainland.

The party landed at the mouth of the river Meon,
and passing over a bridge, still known as Hammond’s
bridge, ‘‘we were together,” says Ashburnham, “till
we came to Titchfield Towne, when I desired to go
before to the Lord of Southampton’s, and acquaint

186 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

His Majesty with what had happened.” In one of
the lofty rooms of Place House, Charles was anxiously
awaiting his arrival, and when Ashburnham had told
his story, the King, ‘‘ with a very severe and reserved
countenance, the first of that kinde to me, said that
notwithstanding the engagement, Hee verily believed
the Governor would make him a prisoner.” At length,
after ‘“ walkeing some few turnes in the Roome,” and
recognising the hopelessness of the situation, he com-
manded that the Governor should be called up. When
Hammond appeared, His Majesty accepted the Engage-
ment, but added that he desired him to remember that
““Hee was to be judge of what was honourable and
honest.” “After two houres stay more,” says Ash-
burnham, ‘‘ His Majesty took boate and went to the
Isle of Wight.”

It was asad going-away that little Rachel Wriothesley
witnessed that November day, when Charles I., accom-
panied by Colonel Hammond and the ‘ Captaine of
Cowes Castle,” passed beneath the grinning corbel of
the gate-house, and down the leafless avenue of elms,
to the lonely spot at the mouth of the Titchfield Haven
where he “ tooke boate for the Isle of Wight.” For
on leaving Titchfield the King was virtually a prisoner,
and the last act of the long tragedy had begun, which
ended just fourteen months later, when in the Chapel
of St. George’s, Windsor, the decapitated body of
Charles I. was secretly laid to rest, in the presence
of Rachel’s father and of three other noblemen.

In more modern times, after the Southampton family
had become extinct, Place House passed into the
possession of strangers; and in the last century Fox
and Pitt were more than once entertained there by
the beautiful Lady Betty Delmé, whose celebrated

RUINS OF PLACE HOUSE, TITCHFIELD

ay
Tie > pane
ih

AN “ANCIENT MARKET-TOWNE” 187

portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds was sold a few
years ago for the large sum of eleven thousand
guineas.

The “ righte statelie house,” as we have said, is now
in ruins; but the gate-house remains, and the other
parts of the mansion can quite easily be traced. ‘Two
sundials still stand forth from the lofty turrets, as in
the days of Lord Chancellor Wriothesley. Across
several of the mullioned windows the old iron bars
remain, and afford resting-places to the multitude of
starlings and jackdaws which make the ruin their
home. The garden is still “ cireummured with brick,”
as Shakespeare has it, but the paths and “alleys”
and “knots” are gone. It is no longer a “ curious-
knotted garden”; not a single flower-bed remains.
But within those garden walls Edward VI. must have
walked, when at Place House he tried to recruit his
ruined health in the summer of 1552. Here, too,
Queen Elizabeth must have strolled when she visited
the second Earl in days before Henry Wriothesley
was born. Within these walls the children and
grandchildren of Romeo and Juliet played; and
Shakespeare, it may be, wandered with his friend
through the ‘“thick-pleached alleys,” and watched
the woodpeckers at work in the rotten trees, and
noticed the ‘‘ crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long-
purples” blooming in the meadow beyond. Up and
down the garden Charles I. may have paced on that
fateful November day when he waited in an agony
of suspense for the return of Ashburnham from the
Isle of Wight. All is changed now; purple snap-
dragons are growing on the crumbling garden walls,
with yellow stonecrop, and here and there a tuft of
polypody fern; while owls and kestrels lay their eggs

188 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

in the ivy-mantled towers, and sparrows chirp merrily
in the ruined hall.

Such are some of the changes which have passed
over the “ Ancient Market-Towne” in the course of
centuries. The ‘heathy ground mixt with ferne,”
mentioned by Leland in 1540, when he visited Mr.
Wriothesley’s house, and of which the greater part of
the parish then consisted, remained in pretty much the
same condition as he saw it till within recent years,
when the soil was discovered to be good for the culti-
vation of strawberries. And now most of the “heathy
ground” has been broken up and measured out into
garden-plots ; and where the Royal fern—Osmunda
Regalis—once abounded, and black game might be
seen, are acres of strawberry plants. Still much
rough ground and wild stretches of country remain,
especially towards the sea, and rare wild-flowers and
uncommon birds may occasionally be met with.

In the dense reed-beds that fringe the river the
beautiful nests of the reed-warbler may be found, sus-
pended between three or four tall stems, and waving
in the wind. Numbers of gulls visit the haven, and
several species of wild-duck, and the common cormo-
rant, and other sea-fowl. Even the redshank occa-
sionally lays its eggs in the thick tussocks of grass
which abound in the marshes; while on the seashore,
among the stones of the beach, the ringed dotterel
deposits her eggs, and difficult indeed are they to find,
so exactly do they resemble the pebbles around. Near
Hammond’s Bridge, built, as tradition affirms, with
materials from the old monastery, a few plants of the
beautiful ‘‘summer snowflake” still remain. Some
years ago, before people took to transplanting it into
their gardens, this rare plant was not uncommon along

AN “ANCIENT MARKET-TOWNE” 189

the river-banks as far as the priory garden, from which
possibly it originally escaped. Now it is confined to
this one spot, where it maintains a precarious existence, |
and will doubtless soon be gone. In this manner our
rarer and more beautiful wild-flowers become extinct,
and civilisation converts our “commons” into straw-
berry beds and potato plots, and drives away the black
game from the “ heathy ground” ; while the haunts of
the wild-fowl are yearly becoming more encroached
upon, and before long it may be the weird cry of the
peewit will be heard no more in the desolate marshes
which skirt the haven by the sea.

Lind i, Ui ee a irate eek any,
r > Lee, As ‘| Al ALR
ange f

i

A VILLAGE BY THE SEA
PORTCHESTER

THE parish consists of nearly three thousand acres, of
which about one-half is land and the other half mud or
water, according to the condition of the tide. The land
portion is of a strangely diversified character. Sur-
rounded on three sides by the mud flats of the harbour,
most of the land lies low, and is only protected from
inundation during the spring tides by means of artificial
chalk banks raised some five or six feet above the level
of the shore. On the east, where the banks are highest
and where, in spite of every precaution, the marshy pas-
ture is more or less under water, salterns once ranged,
and formed a considerable source of profit to the
villagers. The arable portion of the parish, with the
exception of two or three small farms, is now divided
into market-gardens, which produce an immense quan-
tity of vegetables for the neighbouring town.

An extensive chalk down, locally known as “the
hill,” rises at the back of the village to the height of
three hundred feet, and shields the gardens from the
keen north winds. In the harbour are two small
islands, Horsea and Pewty, which form part of the
parish. The parish is also proud in the possession
of an ancient castle, dating back to Roman times,
which affords a famous shelter to various kinds of
birds. The mighty Norman keep, rising one hundred

1QI

192 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

feet above the low marshy ground, is a conspicuous
object in the landscape, and throws its spell over the
whole neighbourhood.

In olden days the appearance of the parish was
entirely different from what it is now. At the time of
the Domesday “ record” about three hundred acres only
were under some rough sort of cultivation. As late
as the sixteenth century the larger part of the parish
was covered with oak and beech and brushwood,
where the peasants had free pasture and “ pannage”
for swine. Open marshes, covered with water at
every high tide, skirted the shore, and sheltered
thousands of wild-fowl which, in bad weather, con-
gregated in the harbour. A number of widgeon, called
‘‘wygones” in an old document, and so many quarters
of salt from the village salt-pits, were the regular pay-
ments to the king’s treasury. Red-deer roamed in the
forest, and often descended from the long chalk ridge,
then covered with gorse and dotted here and there
with yew-trees, to drink at the clear spring of fresh
water which still rises in the meadow below. The
timber has now all disappeared ; not a copse, hardly
a clump of trees, remains ; the marshes are converted
into rough pasture; the wild-fowl, except in very
severe weather, are seldom seen; the last of the red-
deer was killed by the ‘Waltham Blacks” at the
beginning of the eighteenth century ; and the poetry
and romance of the ancient ruin, with its stories of
royal visitors, of unhappy captives pining in the
Norman dungeons, of tournaments and falconry, of
French prisoners and of military deserters, has almost
entirely disappeared.

Yet for all lovers of country life, for the botanist
and the naturalist, the parish is still full of interest.

A VILLAGE BY THE SEA 193

A severe winter brings to the shelter of the harbour,
and the reed-beds and sedges of the marsh, a number
of strange visitors. The beautiful snow bunting will
be seen in small flocks along the shore, and bramb-
lings mix with the sparrows and finches in the farm-
yard. The harbour will be full of gulls, the common
gull, the kittiwake, the herring-gull, the greater and
the lesser black-backed gull, in vast numbers. Flocks
of duck, becoming wilder and wilder as the gunners
continue to harass them, will congregate in the harbour;
and wild geese and perhaps a few wild swans may
pass over. In addition to the commoner kinds of
wild-fowl, such as the mallard and the widgeon and
the beautiful little teal, rarer sorts are occasionally
met with. Pochards and scoters and tufted ducks
will be brought in, and perhaps a few sheldrakes and
golden-eyes. It is not unlikely that a great northern
diver may visit the harbour, and both the merganser
and the smew have been seen. In the hard winter of
1890-91 a splendid specimen of an osprey was shot off
Horsea Island, in the act of plunging into the water
after a fish; and a bittern which had taken refuge in
the reed-bed of the marsh was unfortunately put up
and killed.

During a prolonged frost, especially if there be
much snow on the ground, the smaller birds suffer
severely. Hundreds of birds perished during the
long spell of frost which occurred a few winters
ago. Within the castle enclosure, among the ruins,
in crevices of the walls, among the ivy and rank
herbage, their dead bodies, stiff and frozen, were
found. In one hole of the Roman masonry six dead
birds—two starlings, three thrushes, and a redwing
—lay huddled together. Close by, in another crevice,

N

194 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

lay a dead linnet; and in the coarse grass below, a
skylark and a hedge-sparrow were picked up, together
with a wren, and some dozen thrushes and starlings,
All along under the Roman wall dead birds were
found, lying in holes and crannies into which they had
crept for shelter from the icy wind outside. Alto-
gether more than fifty birds, chiefly thrushes and
starlings and redwings, were picked up about the
ancient ruins.

Many years ago a colony of black-headed gulls had
their breeding-place in our parish. The spot is still
known as Peewit or Pewty Island, “ peewit” being
the old name for this species of gull. It appears from
an old document that the sale of the young birds, then
accounted a great delicacy, realised as large a sum
as forty pounds per annum. The “gullery” has of
course been long since deserted, but it is interesting
to remember that the parish once numbered among
its inhabitants a colony of ‘ peewits.” On the spot
where the gulls nested, and along the shore of Horsea
Island, the eggs of the ringed plover are occasionally
found. In the coarse herbage that covers the sea-
banks the grasshopper warbler and the shore-pipit
build their nests, and every year a pair of red-backed
shrikes bravely endeavour to rear their young in a tall
quickset hedge, almost the only one now left in the
parish. The entire destruction of all hedgerows and
the uprooting of every tree, which marks the progress
of market-gardening, is of itself sufficient to explain
the scarcity of our songsters and smaller birds.

The number of wild-flowers to be found in the
parish is remarkable. The chalk down, the gardens,
the salt marshes, the shore, the “ cribs’’ covered with
water at every high tide, all yield a separate flora of

A VILLAGE BY THE SEA 195

their own. Even the old ruins of the castle produce
plants which would be sought for in vain elsewhere.
Every spring the grey walls are gay with the pale
yellow blossoms of the wild wallflower, which grows
in profusion all over the Roman masonry. Later on
the deep red flowers of the spur valerian make a fine
show on the top of the broken battlements. A few
noble spikes of the great yellow mullein will also be
seen here and there among the ruins. The dark
sword-shaped leaves of the /r7zs feetidisstma shoot up
abundantly beneath the shelter of the Roman wall,
and in winter the beautiful scarlet seeds are very
conspicuous. A few plants of the common balm may
perhaps be noticed on one spot, survivals of the old
monastic herb-garden. For a monastery once existed
within the castle walls. The buildings have dis-
appeared, but the priory church remains, and the
cloisters may yet be traced. Moreover, one plant still
flourishes which is probably to be attributed to the
days of the Austin canons. A large patch of “common
alexanders” puts up year by year its smooth, shining,
pale green foliage. The plant was formerly a famous
pot-herb, known from the colour of its roots as the “black
pot-herb,” and is still found beneath old priory walls.
It is curious how some plants seem to love the
neighbourhood of churchyards. Such a species is the
wild sage or clary, a labiate plant, from one to two feet
high, and carrying in a spike whorls of dark blue
flowers. It is common in our churchyard, but not
a plant is to be found outside the walls. In former
years it appears to have been the custom to plant
the wild sage, which was supposed to possess many
virtues, in churchyards. At any rate, it is worthy of
notice that Pepys, when on his travels in this part

196 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

of the country, “observed a little churchyard, where
the graves are accustomed to be all sowen with sage.”

In the meadow on the other side of the Roman wall
a host of golden daffodils dance and flutter in the
breeze every spring, having perhaps originally escaped
from some cottage garden. Such, however, was not
the case with a colony of wild tulips which still con-
tinues to flourish in the parish. The wild plant is
quite distinct from the garden varieties, and possesses
a delicious fragrance which may be detected at some
distance. Almost extinct in the south of England, it
may still be found in one or two localities. In the
“park” or meadow below Gilbert White’s old house
at Selborne, the long narrow leaves come up sparingly
every year, but the bulbs seldom put forth a flower.
In a chalk-pit not far from Selborne a few flowers
may be gathered at the right season; while in our
parish the bulbs blossom abundantly every year.

A stroll along the sea-banks in summer, with the
tide on one hand and the salt marshes on the other,
is interesting to the naturalist. Wheatears frequent
the banks, and perhaps a kingfisher may be seen.
The chatter of the sedgebird will be heard in the
reed beds, and at any rate some noteworthy plant
will be met with. Wild beet is abundant all along
the shore. This plant, known among the villagers as
wild spinach, is the origin of our garden beetroot and
of the mangel-wurzel of our fields. The young shoots
and leaves are often gathered in spring and used as
a substitute for spinach. On one spot in the parish
a considerable quantity of the real samphire may be
found, growing, not, as is usually the case, on rocks
or cliffs, but among the shingle on the shore just out
of reach of the flowing tide,

A VILLAGE BY THE SEA 197

In the marshes, at certain seasons of the year bright
with the beautiful flowers of the sea lavender, not far
from a dark reedy pool, which in winter-time is a
favourite haunt of wild-duck, several interesting plants
have their home. In the swampy pasture beside the
pool, if diligent search be made exactly at the right
season, the uncommon little fern known as the adder’s-
tongue will be found. This curious and delicate plant,
with its simple egg-shaped frond and solitary fruit-
spike shoots up every year among the rank herbage
of the marsh, and after a brief sojourn again dis-
appears. Later on, especially in wet summers, two
handsome and conspicuous grasses, nearly related to
each other, appear in considerable plenty beside the
pool. Their family name is Polypogon or beard grass,
so called from the nature of their spike-like panicles,
which are long and silky. And the plants are as rare
as they are beautiful. Only in our parish, and in a
salt marsh just beyond its borders, are they found
within the area of the county. But there on the same
spot, beside the same sedgy pool, have those two
grasses flourished for centuries. On the chalk hill
several species of orchids may be found. In some
seasons the beautiful bee-orchis is abundant; and on
one spot the fly-orchis comes up every May. The
down in places is covered with the curious trailing
root-parasite, the bastard toad-flax; while in a chalk
pit hard by several noble plants of the dwale or deadly
nightshade come up every year.

From the hill a fine view of the parish is obtained.
How peaceful it looks, with the smoke of cottage
chimneys rising up between the trees! The long
village street is as old as the days of the Romans,
whose legions must have often traversed it. Then

198 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

the Saxons came, and destroyed every vestige of
civilisation; not a stone of the Christian basilica was
left standing, not a square yard of tessellated pavement
was left intact. Later, the black boats of the North-
men appeared in the tidal haven, bringing death and
destruction with them. Later still, Duke Robert
landed with his Norman knights beside the Roman
ruin and passed up the village street, and over the
hill, and through the forest beyond, towards the gates
of Winchester. And after Duke Robert came other
Normans, masons and artificers, hewers of timber and
stone, who built that lofty keep, which for many a
century overawed the neighbourhood.

Then, for a brief period, a company of Norman
monks, with a good prior at their head, said Mass
daily in the church below for the sinful soul of the
Red King, and ministered to the sick and dying in
the mud huts and hovels around. But heartsick at
the riot and wickedness around them, they built them-
selves another home over the hill, in the midst of a
silent wood, beside the murmur of a gentle stream,
where they could perform their devotions, and catch
their fish in gladness and singleness of heart. Then
came the awful days of King Stephen, when, in the
words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Castle was
“‘ filled with devils and evil men”; after this it became
a royal residence and was frequently “defiled” by
the presence of King John.

In the month of August, 1415, all the chivalry of
England passed down our village street when Henry
V. embarked at the Roman watergate for France,
where three months later he gained the victory of
Agincourt. On the same spot, some thirty years
afterwards, landed the masterful Margaret of Anjou,

A VILLAGE BY THE SEA 19y

and with her splendid retinue passed to the Priory
of Titchfield, where in the chapel, now in ruins, she
was married by the Prior to King Henry VI. It is
possible, as tradition asserts, that on one of her royal]
progresses Queen Elizabeth honoured the Castle with
her presence, and feasted with her courtiers in the
stately banqueting hall, while minstrels played in the
gallery, as in the old days when the good Philippa
was queen.

But with the last strains of the minstrels’ music
a silence falls upon the Castle for many a year, broken
again in the days of the great war by the arrival of
hundreds of Dutch and French prisoners. At one
time several thousand prisoners of war were confined
there. The village was full of soldiers; and the
monotony of country life was broken. Attempts at
escape on the part of the prisoners were frequent,
and now and then a public execution took place.
With the declaration of peace after the battle of
Waterloo, the prisoners returned to their own country,
and owls and jackdaws visited the deserted ruin.

As the great town enlarges its borders it draws
nearer and nearer to our parish. In another fifty
years it will probably have reached us. And then
much of the interest of the old place will be gone.
The walls of Roman masonry will doubtless be left
standing, and the Norman keep will tower for perhaps
another century or two above the mud flats and the
flowing tide. But the glory of the parish will have
departed. The wild-fowl will no more visit the har-
bour-shore. In very hard winters when the ponds
and lakes are ice-bound they will again seek, as their
ancestors have done for centuries, the open salt water
of the harbour, but they will only look and pass on.

200 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

Choice wild-flowers will be searched for in vain; the
so-called improvements of town life will drain the last
patch of marshland where once the teal and widgeon
congregated in countless numbers, and the beautiful
beard-grass will be gone. The samphire will go with
it, and the adder’s-tongue; and Dzanthus armeria,
the Deptford pink, will no longer open its beautiful
crimson petals on the rough stretch of marshy waste
which borders the vicar’s glebe beside the ancient
mill.

FRENCH PRISONERS AT
PORTCHESTER

IN the early part of the last century, when England
was engaged in a deadly struggle with Napoleon, an
immense number of French prisoners of war were
incarcerated in various parts of the country. In the
year 1811 it is calculated that not less than fifty
thousand Frenchmen were prisoners in England. Of
this enormous number the prison at Dartmoor, built
by the Government in 1809 for their reception, held as
many as ten thousand unfortunate men, who pined in
vain for the sunnier climes of France. ‘‘ For seven
months in the year,” wrote one of them, ‘‘it is a vraie
Sibérie, covered with unmelting snow. When the
snows go away, the mists appear. Imagine the
tyranny of perfide Albion in sending human beings
to such a place.” Others were lodged in Mill Bay
Prison, near Plymouth, and on board prison-ships
moored in Hamoaze. Other prison-ships lay in the
Medway off Chatham, and at other convenient stations
along the coast. But Hampshire appears to have re-
ceived the greater number of the foreigners. French
officers on parole were scattered throughout the
smaller country towns, such as Odiham, Whitchurch,
Bishop’s Waltham, Andover, and Alresford where in
the churchyard several tombstones erected to the

201

202 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

memory of those who died in captivity may be seen.
In the neighbourhood of Portsmouth at least twenty
thousand French prisoners were confined, some at
Forton, near Gosport, and some, from eight to ten
thousand, in Portchester Castle; while a number of
old hulks, originally warships captured from the
enemy, and made to accommodate some five or six
hundred prisoners each, were moored in Portchester
creek, between the castle walls and the mouth of the
harbour.

It is of the French prisoners at Portchester that we
propose mainly to speak in the present paper. The
outlines of the ancient castle, as seen from the train
between Fareham and Cosham, are well known to
travellers on the London and South-Western Railway.
The mighty Norman keep, rising one hundred feet
from the water’s edge at high tide, is an imposing
feature in the prospect. But the extent and grandeur
of the ruins can only be estimated by a nearer inspec-
tion. The outside walls, varying from twenty to forty
feet in height, are beyond question of Roman con-
struction, and enclose an area of about nine acres.
In the north-west corner of this enclosure stands the
lofty keep, around which cluster the remains of Nor-
man, Plantagenet, and Tudor buildings. In the days
of its glory the royal castle of Portchester was a place
of considerable importance. Here kings and queens
held their court with much feasting, and tilting tour-
naments took place in the great square, and hawking
parties rode forth beneath the Norman gateway.
Here, for a time, dwelt a community of monks whose
duty it was to say mass daily for the soul of the Red
King in the priory church, which is still standing
within its walls. Here, too, in the damp dungeons of

PRISONERS AT PORTCHESTER — 203

the keep, many a political prisoner lay in darkness
and despair, and not a few executions took place on
the green outside. But after the days of Queen
Elizabeth the castle, being no longer required as a
military fortress, passed into the hands of private
owners, and quickly fell into a state of ruinous dilapi-
dation. It appears to have been entirely unoccupied,
and for a considerable period an almost total silence
rests upon the ruins.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century the
castle again emerges into the light of history as a
depot for the safe keeping of prisoners of war. For
this purpose it possessed many and peculiar advan-
tages. The investing Roman walls completely en-
closed the square within, together with the Norman
and Tudor buildings, and thereby rendered escape
almost impossible. This square, moreover, was of
considerable size, consisting, as we have said, of some
nine acres, while the keep and other buildings could
easily be made to accommodate a large number of
men. Situated, too, at the head of Portsmouth har-
bour, and surrounded on two sides by the flowing
tide, prisoners could be carried up at high water to
the very walls of the castle, into which admittance
was gained through the ancient Roman water-gate.

The castle was accordingly taken over by the War
Office, and preparations were hurried forward for the
reception of French prisoners. Fortunately, there are
in the writer’s possession a collection of old engrav-
ings which clearly indicate the work done for the
accommodation of the unhappy captives. Several
prints, under date “ April 1733,” depict the castle in
a state of silent desolation—a solitary horse is feeding
in the great enclosure, where the rank herbage almost

204 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

hides from view great blocks of fallen masonry. The
Norman keep appears in almost exactly the same
condition as we see it to-day, but the buildings around
are in a more perfect state of preservation. Turrets
are standing which have now entirely disappeared,
while the mullions of several of the decorated windows
remain. Later prints, engraved respectively in 1761
and 1782, show the castle in the same deserted con-
dition, but the buildings are in a state of greater
decay, and large trees, probably elders, are growing
from the summit of the broken battlements. Two
years later, however, a small engraving, dated June
30, 1784, showing a sentinel on guard outside the
Roman walls, records the fact that the castle had
again become a centre of military occupation.

It was about this time that the Government deter-
mined to convert the ancient ruin into a military depot
for prisoners of war. The silence which had long
settled upon it was now rudely broken. Large quaint-
looking wooden barracks, as shown in another old
print, with staircases outside and covered balconies,
were quickly run up in the great square of the castle ;
and the Norman keep was converted into sleeping
quarters for the prisoners. This lofty tower was
divided into five stories, connected with a wooden
staircase which ran up one side of it. Until quite
lately part of the framework in some of these compart-
ments was remaining, to which the hammocks of
eighteen hundred prisoners were suspended. ‘It may
be understood,” says an eye-witness, “that the men’s
sleeping-quarters were not luxurious. Some of them
had hammocks, but when the press grew thicker straw
was thrown upon the floor for those to sleep upon for
whom hammock room could not be found. But hard

CASTLE

PORTCHESTER

(1799)

PRISONERS AT PORTCHESTER — 205

as was the lot of the Portchester prisoners, it was
comfort compared with that of the men immured at
Forton, where there was hardly room to stand in the
exercise ground, and they lay at night as thick
as herrings in a barrel; or with those who were
confined on the hulks, which were chiefly used as
punishment ships, where the refractory and desperate
were sent, and where half-rations brought them to
reason and obedience. At Portchester the prisoners
got at least plenty of fresh air, sunshine, and room to
walk about.” Outside the castle walls, the ancient
moat, which during long years of neglect had become
choked with rubbish, was cleared out and filled with
water, beyond which other barracks were erected for
the militia regiments on guard.

The ordinary number of prisoners confined in the
castle during the French war was about eight thousand,
while the hulks in the harbour—the Prothée, San
Damaso, Sultan, Captivity, Vigilant, Fortanée, and
others, were crowded with them. In the castle were
confined, among other prisoners, the French and negro
garrisons of St. Vincent; those captured in Lord
Howe’s celebrated victory of “the First of June”;
eighteen hundred Dutch seamen taken at the battle
of Camperdown; the French galley-slaves who, with
General Tate, were captured at Fishguard in Wales;
together with hundreds of soldiers and seamen captured
by our cruisers on the coast of Ireland, in the West
Indies, and elsewhere. A few notable prisoners were
among them. Tallien, who played so infamous a part
in the bloody orgies of the French Revolution, was at
Portchester for a short time; and General d’Hilliers,
an officer in high favour with Napoleon ; and Fongaret,
the daring leader of Charette’s vanguard ; while among

206 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

the unfortunate captives were the youthful son of the
Duke de Montmorency, and the French painter, Louis
Garneray, who spent eight weary years on board the
prison-ship Prothée before he was released on parole.

Many were the devices resorted to by the unfortu-
nate captives in order to while away the tedious time.
A large number of French names carved on the stone
walls of the Norman keep still bear eloquent witness
to the irksomeness of their captivity. Some of the
prisoners were very expert carvers, and fashioned out
of beef and mutton bones the most beautiful toys.
Some of these trinkets, carved only with a penknife,
are still in existence in the neighbourhood—models
of ships, even of three-deckers with sails and colours
flying, windmills, tops, dolls, spinning-wheels, small
bone playing-cards in bone boxes, dominoes, and
chessmen, of which the writer has some fine speci-
mens. Others would make out of the straw supplied
for their bedding beautiful little boxes and watch-
cases, and straw mats of geometrical design. Occa-
sionally, once or twice a week perhaps, a portion of
the castle enclosure would be thrown open to visitors,
many of whom were eager to purchase from the
prisoners their toys and trinkets. On these occasions
kindly disposed people would bring with them large
bones and other material for carving, which they
would pass to these skilful mechanics through the
wooden palisade which fenced off their quarters.
Some of the prisoners, too, made large quantities of
most delicate lace, for which they found a ready
market among the fair visitors to the castle. Owing,
however, to some trade jealousy, the authorities en-
deavoured to stop its manufacture, and issued an
order that within fourteen days all lace-making imple-

PRISONERS AT PORTCHESTER = 207

ments were to be given up. It appears, however, that
the cunning Frenchmen still continued to make it
clandestinely, either at night after the curfew had
sounded, or in some secret spot in the great tower,
which afforded many tempting places of concealment.
Here, too, as at Forton and Plymouth, forged bank-
notes may have been manufactured, large numbers of
which, and of counterfeit seven-shilling pieces, were
circulated in the neighbourhood, through the medium,
it was supposed, of soldiers on guard acting in col-
lusion with the prisoners. One Frenchman, named
Francois Dutard, was sentenced to death for forging
notes, but his sentence was commuted to two years’
imprisonment at Winchester.

The days when the castle court was thrown open
to the public were indeed red-letter days in the
monotonous lives of the prisoners. Many, as we have
seen, embraced the opportunity of selling their handi-
work ; others endeavoured, by songs and music and
juggling exhibitions, to make a few honest pence in
order to purchase eggs or butter or other luxuries,
which on these occasions were brought to the castle
by the country folk around. The presence of visitors
was, further, a break in the dreary monotony of life,
hours of which were spent daily by the prisoners in
draughts and dominoes and backgammon, and some-
times in more exciting games of chance. Many of the
Frenchmen were inveterate gamblers, and would even
stake their food and clothing. One man at least is
reported to have died of starvation, having gambled
away eight days’ provisions in advance. Theatrical
entertainments were also occasionally arranged by the
prisoners, and one Borchiampe, formerly a sergeant-
major in General Dupont’s corps, whose hand had

208 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

been disabled in battle, greatly distinguished himself
in this direction.

In spite of the precautions taken to prevent the
escape of the prisoners, such incidents were not
unknown. We have already pointed out that the
position of the castle rendered escape exceptionally
difficult. Then at least one hundred sentries were
posted every night in and around the castle, while at
a certain hour the curfew was sounded, when the
prisoners had to retire to their sleeping quarters,
and when all lights had to be extinguished. The
prisoners, moreover, by way of identification, wore
conspicuous yellow jackets with grey and yellow caps.
And yet occasionally escapes were effected, as the
following extracts will show. One Sunday morning,
just as service had begun in Portchester church, the
sentry on duty at the water-gate noticed three naval
officers, in full uniform, coming towards him from the
churchyard. He naturally concluded that, having
seen their men safely into church, they were about to
take a morning walk. So he ‘‘presented arms,” and
let them pass through the water-gate to the shore
outside the castle walls. On the following morning
three dashing privateer captains, who had been taken
while cruising against our West Indian trade, were
found to be missing! There was one French seaman
“confined” in the castle, who, for a mere frolic or a
trifling wager, would scale the walls within a few
feet of the sentries, and make his way into the
woodlands to the north of Portsdown Hill, where he
would ramble at large, until his depredations among
the cottagers provoked their anger and led to his
recapture and return to prison. This man’s name
was Francois Dufresne. His term of captivity was

PRISONERS AT PORTCHESTER — 209

in all about five years; but, says one who was living
in the village at the time, ‘he was often prowling
about in the forests around when supposed by his
keepers to be quietly lodged in the castle. His
custom when at large was to approach a cottage in
the morning when its .nale inmates would be in the
fields ; if he happened to find them at home he would
ask, with all due humility, for a crust and a drink of
water; but if the dame only was within, he would
dash into her larder, pounce upon her bread, cheese,
and bacon, and scamper off with his prey into the
cover of the forest. These pranks filled the neighbour-
hood with a thousand tales of his doings. Provoked
at last by his predatory larcenies, the peasants would
assemble in numbers near his haunts, a general hunt
would ensue, and Dufresne would be brought back
to the castle maimed with stones, or lacerated with
buckshot from the guns of his pursuers.” The same
writer tells a story of the attempted escape of eighteen
Spanish seamen. Beneath one of the towers in the
inner court a large low irregular vault may still be
seen. Here on a certain night the desperadoes had
assembled, armed with sharp daggers, which they
had made out of horseshoe files, intending in due
season to sally forth, assassinate the sentries, and
make their escape over the wall. But, as often hap-
pened, treachery had been busy among the captives,
and full in‘u..aation had been given to the authorities.
So, “about midnight, a strong body of prison police,
bearing lighted torches, and supported by a guard
with fixed bayonets, crawled on hands and knees into
the dungeon (which was the only mode of entering it)
and there discovered the desperadoes in perfect readi-
ness for the attempt. At sight of their daggers, which
O

210 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

they endeavoured to conceal among the rubbish, it
was with difficulty that the soldiers were restrained
from putting them to the bayonet. They were im-
mediately put in irons and sent on board a prison-
ship, there to atone on half-rations for their intended
mischief.” From these hulks in the harbour attempts
to escape were, we learn, much more frequent. In
the year 1806 ‘‘seven French prisoners cut a hole in
the side of the Cvowz prison-ship at Portsmouth. Six
of them were taken at once; the other supposed
drowned.” On October 8, 1818, “two French prisoners
escaped from a prison-ship at Portsmouth at night:
one was drowned; the other was found in the mud
and sent back to the ship from whence he had
escaped.” The last extract is specially interesting,
as the unfortunate captive was the marine painter,
Louis Garneray, whose name we have already men-
tioned, and who was afterwards released on parole,
and lived for some years at Bishop’s Waltham.

It will be easily understood that among the large
number of captives confined in the castle and in the
hulks were many men of dangerous character, and
acts of savagery were only too frequent among them.
An informer being discovered on board the Pvothée
in Portsmouth harbour, he was seized by his fellow-
prisoners, and tattooed on the face with the terrible
sentence, ‘‘ This villain betrayed his brethren to the
English.” Maddened with agony and shame, the poor
wretch, when released by his tormentors, rushed on
deck and tried to leap overboard, but fell and broke his
leg. He afterwards entered the English service, being
afraid to return to his own country. Here is another
extract. ‘‘In November 1796, the prisoners on board
the Hero prison-ship detected a thief in their midst.

PRISONERS AT PORTCHESTER air

They accordingly tied him down to a ring on the
deck, and flogged him most unmercifully. They then
trampled upon him, and the man actually expired
under their barbarous treatment.”

Duels, as may well be imagined, were not of un-
common occurrence, and several, with fatal results,
are known to have taken place within the castle of
Portchester. The weapons used were of the most
nondescript character. Nails, or knives, or scissor-
blades fastened with string to sticks a few feet long,
or even a wooden foil with a sharpened point, were
made to serve the purpose with deadly effect. Several
executions, too, took place within the castle walls. In
July 1796, a young French seaman, named Vallérie
Coffré, only twenty-two years of age, was condemned
to death at Winchester for stabbing a fellow-country-
man with a large cook’s-knife. He is said to have
heard without concern the dreadful sentence, “that on
the following Monday morning he was to be taken at
4 o'clock in a post-chaise to Portchester, and there to
be executed about 6 A.M., and his body to be afterwards
dissected.”

Sickness at times was terribly rife among the pri-
soners. We find, for instance, that at Forton in 1794
nearly two hundred died in a single month; while in
November 1810, no less than eight hundred men were
reported as sick. It was the same at Portchester.
The negroes captured in the West Indies suffered
the most severely. The winter which followed their
arrival at the castle proved to be an exceptionally hard
one, and some hundreds of them perished from the
cold, while not a few of the survivors were crippled
for life. It is difficult, however, to estimate the num-
ber of deaths among the prisoners, as no register of

7

212 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

their burials appears to have been kept ; and the parish
churchyard, situated within the castle walls, was not
used as their place of interment. The corpses of
French prisoners seem to have been buried in any
waste corner of the parish, chiefly—so tradition as-
serts—on the strip of shore outside the castle walls,
which is covered at high water by the tide. Skeletons,
however, have been discovered in various parts of the
parish, sometimes in considerable numbers, and gene-
rally without any indication of a coffin. These burials
were done by contract, and the same coffin, so again
tradition has it, served to carry numberless bodies to
their burial. But while the prisoners were buried
anyhow and anywhere, in the roughest possible
fashion, and with the least trouble and expense, the
soldiers on guard who died at Portchester were in-
terred in the parish churchyard. And among them
the mortality was great. |
The majority of the prisoners are said to have been
atheists, and to have openly scoffed at all forms of
religious belief. It is pleasant, however, to be able to
add that two French priests, who had taken refuge in
England from the horrors of the Reign of Terror, and
who were allowed by the British Government to reside
at Portchester, succeeded in winning the respect and
affection of all within the castle walls. Their names
were respectively Le Bail and Le Lait, and they were
ever ready, not only to give spiritual help and con-
solation to those who would accept their ministrations,
but also to share with the more destitute prisoners
their miserable pittance of fourteen shillings a week.
The enormous cost of clothing and feeding the
French prisoners fell almost entirely, owing to the
neglect of Napoleon, upon the British Government,

PRISONERS AT PORTCHESTER 213

and doubtless the food was not always of the choicest
description. The Frenchmen are said to have shown
a great partiality for soup, which they would occa-
sionally make out of the most unsavoury ingredients.
An old resident, then drawing near his century, who
well remembered as a boy the stirring times of the
French prisoners, once told the writer that some of
the prisoners would catch with baited hooks the rats
which swarmed among the old buildings of the castle,
and boil them down into soup for supper! In the
year 1796 an alarming inundation occurred at Port-
chester, which swept away an immense quantity of
provisions which had come down from London for
the use of the prisoners. The account of it is thus
given in The London Chronicle for February 9-11,
1796. ‘At Portchester, on the 26th ult., the wind
blew a hurricane, and gave such power to the tide
that it rose to a prodigious height, and having driven
away the great bank between the sea and the marshes,
it completely deluged the whole village, wherein the
water stood at the height of many feet, forced open
the doors of almost all the houses, and carried away
every article of furniture that floated. The greatest
sufferers were Mr. Clemmence and Mr. Hubbard, two
gentlemen belonging to the castle, whose houses, from
the lowness of their situations, were almost covered
with water. Moreover, a large quantity of articles,
which the latter had that morning received from
London for the use of the French prisoners, were
totally spoiled. In short, the inundation was such
as exceeded everything of the kind that had before
happened at that place.”

After the battle of Waterloo and the abdication of
Napoleon, the English Ministry, in conjunction with

214 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

the French Government, agreed to restore the
prisoners to their country, on the sole condition that
they would first declare their adherence to the
Bourbon dynasty, in token of which they were to
hoist the white’ flag of France on the summit of
the castle tower. This proposal was extremely un-
palatable to the majority of the French officers,
who, in fact, absolutely refused to agree to it. The
commissioners who represented the French Embassy
waited the event with some anxiety from morning
to evening of a long summer’s day. “ During that
period,” says an eye-witness, from whose narrative
we have gathered several interesting incidents, “the
prisoners in the castle appeared like a vast hive of
bees about to swarm. Knots of Frenchmen, in their
short yellow jackets and grey caps, covered the entire
area of the castle, and argued the question of sub-
mission with all the vehemence and _ gesticulation
common to their nation. At length, as evening ap-
proached, principle gave place to prudence. The
Bonapartists made a virtue of necessity, and gave
way. A loud shout of ‘Vive le Roi!’ proclaimed
the allegiance of the prisoners to the House of
Bourbon, and at the same moment the white flag
of old France rose and floated over the Norman
keep of Portchester.”

Arrangements were at once hurried forward for
the liberation of the prisoners, who a few days later
embarked at the water-gate, amid loud rejoicings, for
the shores of France, and by the end of June not a
single Frenchman was left within the walls of Port-
chester Castle. For twenty years, with the exception
of a short period which followed the peace of Amiens
in 1802, the castle had been occupied by prisoners

PRISONERS AT PORTCHESTER 215

of war, while at least two thousand men belonging
to the various regiments on guard had been quartered
in the village. But with the departure of the prisoners
in the summer of 1815 the village quickly returned to
its former condition of quiet and repose. The militia
regiments were disbanded, and the barracks which
they occupied, together with the military hospital,
were pulled down. The wooden buildings inside the
castle walls were cleared away, and before long the
ruin reverted to its former state of silence and de-
solation. Once more the jackdaws returned to their
ancient haunts, and owls again occupied the ivy-
mantled tower, while a pair of kestrels took up
their quarters in the lofty keep. Once more the
grass grew rank in the great enclosure, and not a
sign of the sojourn of the French prisoners remained,
except the names of some of them carved on the stone
walls near the summit of the Norman keep.

OLD PARISH DOCUMENTS
PORTCHESTER

AN examination of church registers and old parish
documents—vestry books, churchwardens’ accounts,
and ancient maps—often yields much interesting in-
formation, and throws a flood of light upon the ways
and doings of our forefathers in the olden times. We
propose in the present paper to lay before our readers
the result of much careful and diligent searching
among a mass of old parish documents stowed away in
an ancient oak chest in the vestry of a Norman church.
The church itself originally belonged to a priory of
Austin canons founded at the beginning of the twelfth
century. The priory has disappeared, but the cloisters
against the south wall of the long and lofty nave of
the church may still be traced, and the foundations of
the monastic buildings often trouble the old sexton
when digging graves in the churchyard.

The oldest document in the chest dates back to the
reign of Queen Elizabeth, and is a survey of the parish
in the year 1567. Great have been the changes since
then; the very names of the village streets are different.
In the good old times a large part of the parish was
forest and common land, where the tenants had “ free
pasture” for “all sorts of animals,” and pannage for
their swine, ‘whether it be mast season or not.” A

certain oak tree, “anciently called Portchester oak,”
217

218 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

was the boundary of the common land in one direction,
while a spot “‘ where once a cross stood” marked it
in another. The cross had disappeared in the days
of Queen Elizabeth, but the ancient oak was a well-
known landmark, and was doubtless some giant of the
forest.

The parish registers date from the year 1608, but
throughout the whole of the seventeenth century they
are very fragmentary, though here and there items
of interest may be picked up. The early marriage
formula is usually the quaint phrase ‘ were marry’d
together”’; while in the case of baptisms the hour of
birth is always carefully inserted. But the most
noticeable point in these early registers—of the time
of James I.—is the strange custom of burying persons
on the same day as that on which they died. Over
and over again the entry occurs—‘“‘ burryed ye same
day,” or ‘day following.” The exact hour of death
is always stated, and according as it occurred before
or after midnight, so did the burial take place the day
following or the same day. If, for instance, a death
occurred in the evening the corpse would of necessity
be buried on the following day, but otherwise the
entry is invariably, ‘‘burryed ye same day.” There
is no mention of any plague or sickness, such as we
sometimes find, ‘‘dy’d of the small pox” or “ feaver” :
it was evidently the usual custom. The question
suggests itself, what about the use of coffins in those
days of hasty burial? The answer probably is that
no coffins were used, but that the corpse was buried
simply in a winding-sheet. In the rubrics of our
Burial Service a total silence will be observed as
regards coffins ; they speak of the “corpse” and the
“ body,” but never of the coffin; and when the rubrics

OLD PARISH DOCUMENTS 219

were written it is probable that coffins were not
generally in use. This probability is greatly streng-
thened by the fact that in some ancient registers the
entry occurs, ‘ burryed in a coffin,” which, had coffins
been general, would have been a superfluous remark ;
and further by an old comment on the rubric, ‘ while
the corpse is made ready to be laid into the earth,”
which is explained as meaning while the body is
stripped of the outer shroud or winding-sheet. And
this doubtless was the usual custom in pre-Reforma-
tion days, and even as late—as the above entries seem
to indicate—as the time of James I. In the days of
ignorance, when aged people seldom knew their exact
age, our burial register often has the following entry—
“an ancient man.” When death had been due to
misadventure, the nature of the accident is mostly
stated. Thus: “ William Diddemas was kill’d by
the Timber carriage;” and Thomas Deadman “by
falling under the wheels of a wagon”; and ‘“ Edmund
Maggrige, a sojourner here, receiv'd his death’s wound
by overstraining himself in lifting a piece of timber for
a foolish wager”; and “Nathaniel Miller fell under
the wheels of a loaded waggon and Broak Boath
his legs.”

The large oak chest in the vestry also contained
several odd volumes of churchwardens’ accounts in
the days when those officials managed the parochial
as well as the ecclesiastical affairs; and they reveal,
in a vivid manner, the complete change which has
passed over this country since the introduction of the
modern Poor Law system. In the olden time each
parish had its own “poor-house” where the very
aged and helpless were cared for. Each parish, more-
over, provided for its own paupers, clothed them, made

220 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

them a small weekly allowance, and gave them little
extras in time of sickness. Hence in these “ accounts ”
of the eighteenth century we often meet with such

entries as these :—“ Leather breeches, 2s. 6d.;” “a
pair of pattens;” ‘a handkerchief for Geo. Glinn,
Is. ;” “ bodying a gown;” “round frocks;” “ caps for

Sundays ;” ‘stays and hat for ye Wd. White.” But
the most frequent entry, in the way of clothing for the
paupers, is of stuff called “ Dowlas,” which in 1764
cost Is. 2d. an ell. We imagine that few people will
know what ‘‘dowlas” is, and yet the word occurs in
Shakespeare. Inthe scene at the Boar’s Head Tavern,
Eastcheap (1 Henry IV., iii. 3), between Sir John
Falstaff and Mistress Quickly, the latter says, “I
know you, Sir John; you owe me money, Sir John;
and now you pick a quarrel to beguile me of it; I
bought you a dozen of shirts to your back.” ‘‘Dowlas,”
cries Falstaff, “filthy dowlas; I have given them away |
to bakers’ wives, and they have made them bolters
(sieves) of them.” ‘ Now, as I am a true woman,”
replies the hostess, “holland of eight shillings an ell.”
This dowlas was a coarse sort of sacking, and was
bought in large quantities by the churchwardens to
make “shifts” and underclothing for the paupers
under their care.

In times of sickness the paupers seem to have been
treated with every consideration. Such entries as
the following frequently occur: ‘‘ Wine and beer for
Dydemus when ill;” “a fowl in her sickness;” “a
piece of veal ;” “wine and spirits for Clery when sick ;”
‘‘a fowl for sick paupers;” “tea and sugar for the
sick in Poorhouse.” In the early part of the eighteenth
century we find among the paupers an aged French-
man, who, in all probability, was originally a prisoner

OLD PARISH DOCUMENTS 221

of war, and who remained behind, when, after the Peace
of Amiens, his countrymen returned to France. He
first appears in the “ Accounts ” as “ John the French-
man,” but is afterwards always spoken of as “ French
John.” The parish treated him with great kindness
and consideration. Besides granting him a liberal
weekly allowance he had many small luxuries in his
sickness. “Honey for French John,” and ‘“ gin for
French John,” frequently occur, and sometimes the
quaint entry, “English gin for French John.” But
even “English gin” could not keep ‘“‘ French John”
alive; after about a year’s sickness, we come across
the final entry, ‘‘ For the laying out of French John,
4s. 6d.”

The expenses for pauper funerals contain one or
two curious items. In the latter half of the eighteenth
century a parish coffin cost 9s.; but this was by no
means the only, or the most serious, expenditure. A
shroud, probably a survival or the times when no coffin
was used, was always bought, and cost four or five
shillings. The “oath” or “affedevy” was Is.; the
clerk’s fee, 2s. 6d.; and the black cloth, 1s.; while the
women’s expenses were considerable. For “ washing
old master Clery and laying him out, 6s.”; to say
nothing of the “ bred, chees, and beer,” or “ vine and
brandy,” which sometimes came to six shillings more.
But though the wardens and overseers were willing
to pay for ‘‘shroudes” and “ black cloths,” and were
liberal in the way of beer and brandy for the good
woman who laid the paupers out, yet with practical
good sense they were not going to be imposed upon.
If the parish helped the paupers, the paupers must
help one another. On one occasion we read of ‘ the
improper conduct of some of the paupers in refusing to

222 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

attend on some of their fellow paupers in sickness and
distress.” The matter was reported to the vestry,
which quickly brought the refractory paupers to their
senses by stopping their pay. On another occasion
the following resolution was unanimously passed by
the Vestry: ‘‘It was decidedly resolved that in future
all description of relief whatever should be withheld
and refused to be granted to all persons who may
stand in need of parish relief, when the party so apply-
ing for assistance shall be in the habit of frequenting
public houses, or maintaining any description or sort
of dog whatever.”

In the year that followed the close of the great
French war, the country thickly swarmed with desti-
tute persons, passing along the high roads from village
to village. The relief of these crowds of paupers, many
of them discharged soldiers and mariners, was a serious
drain on many parishes. Some of these indigent
persons were provided with “passes,” which entitled
them to some small relief, usually twopence, from the
various parishes through which they passed on their
way to their “place of settlement.” Some idea of the
number of these people may be gathered from the
entries in the Churchwardens’ Book, which reveal the
fact that in the month of May, 1816, over 150 persons
with passes were thus relieved. Later on, one winter’s
night near Christmas, “88 people with and without
passes” were relieved, “some very badly off,” and
“some with sickness,’ to whom the churchwardens
gave 5s. Id. During the winter months of 1817-18,
more than six hundred persons “ with passes” passed
through the village and were relieved by the church-
wardens, who added the remark—“ a great many more
than ought to be.”

OLD PARISH DOCUMENTS 223

In addition to the care of the poor, and the super-
vision of church affairs, various other duties devolved
upon the churchwardens in the olden times. They
had the care of the village stocks, and were bound
to keep them in repair. In 1774, we learn from our
documents in the oak chest that new stocks were
required, and were duly erected at a cost of £2, 6s.
for the woodwork, and 12s, 2d. for the ironwork.
These stocks lasted for fifty years, when in 1819 one
“ Joseph Crimble was paid for putting up new stocks,
45, ts. 7d. The handwork of Joseph Crimble has
now entirely disappeared, but the spot where the
stocks stood is pointed out, and in one or two parishes
in Hampshire, as at Odiham, and at Brading in the
Isle of Wight, they are still remaining, to remind a
weaker generation of the manner in which a sterner
age treated its rogues and vagabonds. In addition to
taking an interest in the stocks, the churchwardens
kept a watchful eye on the vermin in the parish.
Foxes they paid for at the rate of a shilling a head,
and sparrows at threepence a dozen; and once we
find a single entry of no less than “113 dozen of
sparrow heads.” One thousand three hundred and
fifty-six sparrow heads! This, of course, included
all kinds of small birds, which were caught in nets,
and slaughtered indiscriminately by the lads and
loafers of the village. A molecatcher—one William
Broncher — was also employed by the Vestry, at a
yearly salary of 13s., to be paid at Easter. Hedge-
hogs, too, were included in the list of vermin, and
were duly paid for as late as the beginning of the
last century. But in the Vestry Book, under date
“24 Ap., 1832,” we find this resolution: “It was
agreed that in future no Hedge Hogs are to be

224 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

purchased by the succeeding churchwardens.” Hence-
forth we may hope that not only the hedgehogs but
also the small birds were free from such short-sighted
and ignorant persecution.

In these days of ecclesiastical decency and order,
when every corner of God’s house is reverently
cared for, it is difficult to realise the condition of
some of the country churches in the olden times.
When Queen Anne came to the throne our old Norman
fabric was in such a deplorable and dilapidated con-
dition, that she issued a Treasury Warrant for its
restoration, and £400 seems to have been raised for
the purpose by the sale of timber in Windsor Forest.
An account of this expenditure is to be found in the
ancient chest, from which it appears that the re-
opening of the church was celebrated amid much
rejoicing. The preacher received £2 for his “ exelent
sermon”; the Queen’s own organist composed the
‘‘misick,”’ and received, together with ‘eleven
musitians, vocal and instrumental,’ the handsome
sum of £20; while the villagers had a “hogshead
of strong beer in which to drink the Queen’s health,”
at the cost of £3, Ios. In the early part of the last
century, the Vestry Book often reveals the current
ideas as to church decoration and improvement. In
1812, at a special meeting of the parishioners, it was
ordered that “‘ the churchwardens do immediately cause
the church walls to be cleaned and whitewashed ”;
and the rich Norman mouldings on the arches and
capitals were accordingly buried beneath a thick coat-
ing of lime! Shortly afterwards a gallery was erected
at the west end of the church, when portions of the
splendid Norman arch were chipped away by the
workmen! This gallery was to consist of “thirteen

OLD PARISH DOCUMENTS 225

pews, and each party subscribing, to have one, to be
determined by lot.” The next entry is as follows:
“The pews and pulpit to be painted; and that the
churchwardens be requested to get it done in the
cheapest way in their power.” This they accordingly
did, by employing some of the French prisoners of
war, at that time confined in the castle, who painted
the framework of the pews white and the panels blue.
In 1824 another gallery was erected, this time at the
east end of the nave, for the use of the choir, who,
with fiddle and flute, led the singing of a Sunday.
It was not uncommon in those happy days for one
parishioner to make over to another his pew in the
parish church, and the Vestry Book, when recording
such transactions, usually adds, ‘‘for a certain con-
sideration, mutually agreed upon” !

Such are some of the items of interest contained in
the old parish documents stowed away in the vestry-
chest. The documents, many of them, are ancient;
the chest, doubtless, is more ancient still. It is
believed to have been carved in the time of King
Edward VI., and the original key, of curious design,
is stillin use. But what are three hundred and fifty
years amid such old-world surroundings! The church
has stood for over seven centuries; and the church is
modern in comparison with the Roman walls outside.
Still, the term “old” is, after all, a relative one, and a
glance at the ways of our forefathers during recent
centuries should not be without interest to students of
parochial history.

JANE AUSTEN AT LYME

THE love of beautiful scenery was not so general a
hundred years ago as it is now. Indeed, it is true,
as the great Humboldt has pointed out, that what
is known as “the sentimental love of Nature,” is a
modern rather than an ancient feeling. Socrates was
accused of being unacquainted with even the neigh-
bourhood of Athens. ‘I am very anxious to learn,”
he replied, ‘‘and from fields and trees I can learn
nothing.” The Apostle Paul, though he must have
been familiar with some of the most enchanting scenery
in Europe and Asia Minor, seems to have been un-
moved by the beauties of Nature. There is hardly a
word in his thirteen epistles which shows that he had
the smallest susceptibility for beautiful scenery. St.
Bernard, having spent a day in riding along the lovely
shore of Lake Geneva, is said to have asked in the
evening where it was. There is not the slightest
allusion in any of Whitefield’s sermons to his thirteen
voyages across the Atlantic. Dr. Johnson is another
example of the same strange indifference. ‘ Sir,” he
said, ‘when you have seen one green field, you have
seen all green fields. Let us walk down Cheapside.”
The foregoing remarks apply to a very great extent
to the novels of Jane Austen. They are singularly
silent on the subject of natural scenery. That Jane

Austen herself was a lover of the beautiful in Nature
227

228 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

is abundantly evident from her published letters. Her
novels, on the other hand, are remarkable for the
almost entire absence of any description of beautiful
country. Here and there, scattered throughout her
writings, there may be some slight reference to the
natural features of the neighbourhood, as to the
coombes and downs near Exeter in Sevse and Sensi-
bility, to Spithead and the Isle of Wight in Mansfield
Park, and to Beechen Cliff in Morthanger Abdey ; but
the allusions are always of the slightest description.
There is, however, one notable exception. We refer
to the faithful and graphic picture of Lyme Regis and
its neighbourhood in Persuasion. The passage is not
too long for quotation :—

“After securing accommodations and ordering a
dinner at one of the inns, the next thing to be done
was unquestionably to walk directly down to the sea.
They were come too late in the year for any amuse-
ment or variety which Lyme as a public place might
offer. The rooms were shut up, the lodgers almost
all gone, scarcely any family but of residents left ; and
as there is nothing to admire in the buildings them-
selves, the remarkable situation of the town, the prin-
cipal street almost hurrying into the water, the walk
to the Cobb, skirting round the pleasant little bay,
which in the season is animated with bathing-machines
and company; the Cobb itself, its old wonders and
new improvements, with the very beautiful line of
cliffs stretching out to the east of the town, are what
the stranger’s eye will seek; and a very strange
stranger it must be who does not see charms in the
immediate environs of Lyme to make him wish to
know it better. The scenes in the neighbourhood,
Charmouth, with its high grounds and extensive

JANE AUSTEN AT LYME 229

sweeps of country, and still more its sweet retired
bay, backed by dark cliffs, where fragments of low
rock among the sands make it the happiest spot for
watching the flow of the tide, for sitting in unwearied
contemplation; the woody varieties of the cheerful
village of Up Lyme, and, above all, Pinny with its
green chasms between romantic rocks, where the scat-
tered forest trees and orchards of luxuriant growth
declare that many a generation must have passed away
since the first partial falling of the cliff prepared the
ground for such a state, where a scene so wonderful
and so lovely is exhibited, as may more than equal
any of the resembling scenes in the far-famed Isle of
Wight: these places must be visited and visited again
to make the worth of Lyme better understood.”

It was in the autumn of 1804—thirteen years before
Persuasion was finished—that Jane Austen spent a
few weeks with her father and mother at Lyme, and
it is to the strong impression then received that we
owe the above graphic description. We venture to
offer the present paper as a simple, but not, we trust,
uninteresting commentary on this unique passage in
her writings.

Lyme Regis still remains an old-world town, quaint
and picturesque ; changed, indeed, since the visit of
Jane Austen, but not yet vulgarised by modern improve-
ments. Now, as then, the principal street of the little
town almost hurries into the water, while the walk to
the Cobb, “skirting round the pleasant little bay,” is
as picturesque as when the party from Uppercross
strolled along it that late autumn afternoon. The
cliffs above are yellow in summer-time with wild
brassica and melilot, and the beach below is animated
as in 1804 with bathing-machines and company. The

230 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

“rooms” which are several times referred to in Per-
suaston may still be seen; but the Cups—the “inn”
at which Mr. Musgrove’s party stayed—was burnt in
the disastrous fire of 1844, which also destroyed the
old Custom-house and the “‘ George Hotel,” celebrated
as the resting-place of the Duke of Monmouth when
he landed at Lyme in 1685. The Cobb, as the semi-
circular stone pier or breakwater is called—the scene
of the celebrated accident in Persuaston—was partly
rebuilt after a tremendous hurricane in 1824; but the
“steep flight” of stone steps which connect the Upper
and Lower Cobb, and down which Louisa Musgrove
fell, remain as when the famous passage was written.
Lord Tennyson, we know, placed the writings of Jane
Austen next to those of Shakespeare, and so the fol-
lowing story is not without some semblance of pro-
bability. It is said that when the great poet visited
Lyme, his friends were anxious to point out to him
the reputed landing-place of the Duke of Monmouth.
Tennyson waxed indignant. ‘Don’t talk to me,” he
cried, ‘‘of the Duke of Monmouth. Show me the
exact spot where Louisa Musgrove fell!”

From the end of the Cobb a splendid view may be
obtained of ‘the very beautiful line of cliffs, stretch-
ing out to the east of the town,” past Charmouth and
Bridport and the swannery of Abbotsbury, and which
on a clear day may be traced as far as the white rocky
peninsula of the isle of Portland. The cliffs between
Lyme and Charmouth have become celebrated since
Jane Austen’s eulogy by the discovery in certain strata
of the Lias formation of the gigantic remains of extinct
Saurian reptiles. The story of the discovery of these
giant fossils is worth telling, if for no other reason
than that it introduces us to one of the celebrities of

JANE AUSTEN AT LYME 231

Lyme—Mary Anning, the fossilist. In the month of
August, 1800, four years before the visit of Jane
Austen, a party of equestrians were performing in a
meadow, since known as “ wreck-field,” situated at
the back of Church Street, when a terrific thunder-
storm burst over the town. ‘The spectators fled for
the nearest shelter. Three women, one of them carry-
ing a baby, took refuge under an elm-tree. A flash of
lightning split the tree, and laid the three women dead
upon the sward. Strange to say, the infant was un-
injured, and from having been a dull and heavy child
she became from that moment, we are told, light and
intelligent. That infant was Mary Anning. Her
father was a mechanic—a stonemason or carpenter
—one Richard Anning, who was also a vendor of
curiosities.

His little shop, with shells and ammonites in the
window, was situated in Broad Street, and Jane
Austen must have often passed that way. In search-
ing for fossils he seems to have fallen down the cliffs,
and to have badly injured himself. He died in 1810,
leaving his family in a state bordering on destitution.
One Sunday morning, shortly after the funeral, Mary
strolled along the shore seeking for ‘‘curiosities.’”” She
picked up an ammonite, which the night’s storm had
washed out of the cliff, and this she afterwards sold to
a lady for half-a-crown. Delighted with her success
Mary spent most of her time hunting for fossils be-
neath the weather-beaten cliffs. Four months later—
she was now of the mature age of eleven—she dis-
covered the first remains of the great Saurian reptiles.
This splendid skeleton, which may now be seen in the
British Museum, was sold for 423, and Mary’s career
in life was finally determined.

232 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

From this time until her death, thirty-five years
later, she was constantly making fresh discoveries,
and bringing to light unknown species of extinct fishes
and reptiles, which have made the cliffs of Lyme Regis
famous in the scientific world. She is said to have
possessed a sort of intuitive knowledge as to where
the fossils lay embedded in the cliffs; and certain it
is that she made the most marvellous discoveries.
Several species of Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri she
unearthed from the Lias beds, and the remains of a
flying lizard, now known as the Pterodactyl. These
“finds”’ were examined by such eminent scientists as
Professor Buckland and Conybeare and Cuvier, who
were able, from the fragments of bone submitted to
them, to form an ideal restoration of the osteology
of these mighty reptiles. One skeleton, which Mary
Anning found entire, measured more than twenty-four
feet in length. This monster is described by Cuvier
as having the snout of a dolphin, the teeth of a croco-
dile, the head of a lizard, the extremities of a cetacean,
and the vertebre of a fish. The Plesiosaurus differs
from the Ichthyosaurus in having a long neck, like the
body of a serpent. More curious still is the Ptero-
dactyl, or flying lizard. The specimen described by
Professor Buckland was about the size of a raven;
in shape somewhat like a bat, with the bill of a wood-
cock, and the teeth of a crocodile, and covered with
scaly armour, like the dragons of romance. It is
needless to say that the unpretending little shop in
Broad Street, with the notice, ‘“‘ Anning’s Fossil Depot,”
written on a small white board over the doorway, was
well known to many of the most distinguished men of
science of the day.

The Undercliff towards Pinny and beyond it, “ with

JANE AUSTEN AT LYME 233

its green chasms between romantic rocks,” which Jane
Austen compares to “the resembling scenes of the
far-famed Isle of Wight,” is even more “ lovely and
wonderful” than when she saw it. Thirty-five years
after her September visit a further landslip occurred,
which produced a scene perhaps without parallel in
the British Isles. It took place on Christmas Day,
1839, when over forty acres of cultivated land slowly
and silently slipped away to a far lower level. Two
cottages were removed, and deposited with shattered
walls at a considerable distance below the cliffs, while
an orchard, which still continues to bear fruit, was
transplanted as it stood. The whole landslip is now
green with vegetation, and the scene from below, sixty
years after the disturbance, is most striking. High
above, the white chalk-cliffs stand out in turrets and
pinnacles. All around are irregular mounds and
chasms covered with herbage and brushwood. Chaos
is clothed with verdure. Vegetation runs riot among
the broken hillocks. Thickets of briar and clematis
form impenetrable jungles about the growing trees.
The stinking Iris, with its shining sword-shaped leaves
and knobs of scarlet berries, covers the more open
spaces of the Undercliff, which in summer are one
blaze of brilliant blue, with the blossoms of the viper’s
bugloss. Here and there, even in late September, the
perfoliate chlora opens its orange-yellow petals to the
sun, while all along the Pinny landslip the hound’s-
tongue is unusually abundant. You cannot mistake
this stout and curious plant. Its large, soft, downy
leaves and lurid-purple flowers are striking; its seed-
vessels, covered with barbed prickles, will stick to
your clothes like burs, and the whole plant smells
strongly of mice. The old herbalists fancied that “ it

234 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

will tye the Tongues of Houndes, so that they shall
not bark at you, if it be laid under the bottom of your
feet, as Miraldus writeth.” The name, however, was
probably given because of the shape and soft surface of
the leaves, in contradistinction to those of the bristly
ox-tongue. Other flowers may be found, although it
is autumn. The beautiful white-veined leaves of the
virgin thistle stand out boldly against the dark under-
growth. The little eye-bright, once a famous remedy
for ophthalmia, is everywhere, and so are such coarser
plants as hawkweed and ragwort and fleabane. Here
and there a bushy plant of gromwell, or grey millet,
may be seen. Its scientific name of Lithospermum
well describes the stone-like seeds, which show white
and polished in the sunlight. In one hollow, formed
by the peculiar conformation of the ground, a dark
pool of water is hemmed in by rushes, and pink
persicaria, and the red spikes of rumex; the air is
fragrant with the scent of wild-mint, while in the tiny
stream, which flows from the pool, water-cress, still
in flower, grows in abundance.

When, in Persuasion, Jane Austen writes of “the
fine country about Lyme,” she is only speaking the
literal truth. The walk up the valley of the Lynn to
“the cheerful village of Up Lyme” is full of interest
and beauty. Several disused mills and factories are
passed in picturesque decay. A pair of water-ousels
may mostly be seen wading in the swift stream.
Colway Farm, the headquarters of Prince Maurice
during the famous siege of Lyme in 1644, is noticed
on the right, now a simple farmhouse, but the broad
drive, bordered with ancient elms leading up to the
Tudor doorway, speaks of former magnificence. Tradi-
tion says that numbers of soldiers killed during the
siege were buried in their armour in the meadow

JANE AUSTEN AT LYME 235

below the garden. In some of the valleys near Up
Lyme black rabbits may be seen scuttling about in
every direction. Pheasants, too, strut along the hedge-
rows and about the copses where the acorns fall. In
some meadows mushrooms are so plentiful in Septem-
ber as to give the appearance at a distance of chalk
scattered over the surface of the field. Now and then
a beautiful or uncommon plant delights the eye of
the botanist. On one particular spot the lovely wood-
vetch, with its pure white flowers streaked with bluish
veins, trails luxuriantly all over the tangled brush-
wood. Not far distant the curious tooth-wort, a
parasite on the roots of hazel, comes up abundantly
every spring, while on the hill that overlooks the
valley the autumnal orchid, known as lady’s tresses,
grows. ‘The extensive sweeps of country about
Charmouth” will well repay the research of a natura-
list. In a damp meadow, yellow with fleabane and
surrounded by glorious woods, the haunt of several
pairs of green woodpeckers and of jays and magpies
without number, a large patch of purple colchicum, or
meadow saffron—the flower differs from a crocus in
having six stamens instead of three—shines in the
autumn sunlight. It is a sight worth walking many
miles to see. Not far distant the rare Helenzum, or
elecampane, grows in abundance. One corner of the
rough meadow is covered with it. This splendid
plant is dedicated to Helen of Troy, “ of which herbe,”
says old Gerarde, ‘“‘she had her hands full when she
was carried off.” On another spot in the neighbour-
hood the elecampane may also be found; and in the
opinion of those who ought to know there are strong
claims for regarding it as indigenous.

fee ISLE OF WIGHT OF LEGH
RICHMOND’S NARRATIVES

THE Victoria History of the counties of England
mentions four clergymen, closely connected with
Hampshire during the nineteenth century, whose
writings exercised an influence far beyond the range
of the Diocese of Winchester.. These four are John
Keble, Charles Kingsley, Richard Chevenix Trench,
and Legh Richmond, whose narratives of The Dairy-
man's Daughter and The Young Cottager were, it
rightly says, “‘at one time the most popular religious
works in England.” Indeed, it is difficult to exagger-
ate the favour with which these works were received.
With the Bible and the Pzlerim’s Progress they
became the Sunday reading of numberless Christian
households. Appearing originally in the columns of
the Christian Guardian during the years 1809-1811,
they were afterwards published separately in the
form of tracts, and finally issued, together with Zhe
Negro Servant, in one small volume under the appro-
priate title, taken from Gray’s Elegy, of The Annals
of the Poor. The little book at once became immensely
popular. Within a few years it was translated into
almost all the European languages, and successive
editions were published in America. Altogether it

has been estimated that millions of copies have been
237

238 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

sold, and it has found its way alike into the hut of
the Red Indian and into the palaces of kings. And,
curious though it may seem, the interest excited by
the narratives still continues; new editions are fre-
quently published, and every year numbers of visitors,
including many Americans, make a pilgrimage to the
cottages of Little Jane and of the Dairyman’s daughter,
and gaze on their respective tombstones in Brading
and in Arreton churchyards.

These facts present a literary problem of consider-
able interest. After all, the Azuza/s are only tracts,
and of a religious complexion no longer so predomi-
nant among Christian people as was the case a hun-
dred years ago. But in one important particular they
differ from the great bulk of Evangelical writings once
eagerly read and now totally forgotten. We allude
to their deep sympathy with Nature, and to the
beautiful descriptions of local scenery which they
contain; and it is this recognition of “ delightful
scenery” which separates the writings of Legh Rich-
mond from those of contemporary Evangelicals whose
works are now buried in oblivion.

For some eight years only did Legh Richmond
reside in the Isle of Wight, but short though his
ministry was, it left an abiding impression on the
neighbourhood. Every detail of his work is now
regarded with interest, and the spots connected with
his narratives are sacred ground. It was in the year
1797 that he was ordained to the curacy of Brading,
which at that time included within its bounds what
were then the obscure fishing hamlets of Bembridge
and Sandown. He also had charge of the small
parish of Yaverland, with its beautiful little Norman
church delightfully situated on rising ground about

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two miles distant. His vicar, one Miles Popple,
being after the manner of the age non-resident, the
curate took up his abode in the old Vicarage, a small
and inconvenient house which has been since pulled
down. A print of it, however, hangs in the vestry of
the parish church, while a companion picture shows
the interior of the church as it was before restoration
in 1864. There is the eighteenth -century “ three-
decker” — now rightly removed—from which Legh
Richmond delivered his gospel to the poor. An un-
sightly gallery will be noticed stretching across the
west end of the building. The Early English nave
is crowded with high-backed square pews, and the
Oglander chapel is boarded up. In this chapel, now
beautifully restored, are preserved the Communion
chair and the Church Office-Book which Legh Rich-
mond used, and within the chancel rails will be noticed
the small font which in his time stood in the church,
and at which he baptized the village children.

A tablet has lately been placed on the south wall
of the church by the grandchildren of Legh Richmond,
to commemorate his ministry at Brading; and it is
worth remarking that the inscription, after duly men-
tioning his Christian virtues, speaks of “his graceful
descriptions of the beautiful scenery of the Isle of
Wight.” These descriptions are chiefly confined to
the corner of the island in which his ministry was
cast. The Azmna/s contain no mention of the romantic
scenery of the Undercliff, nor of the magnificent chalk
cliffs of Freshwater. The beauties of Bonchurch are
not alluded to, nor the quiet charm of the old village
of Shanklin. But every detail of the country around
Brading was familiar to our author, and finds expres-
sion in his writings. Little Jane’s cottage is situated

240 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

in the village itself, and the lane past it leads to Ashey
Down, which he named his “ Mount of Contemplation.”
The picturesque approach to the church of Yaverland,
where he learnt to preach extempore, is more than
once noticed, and the fine old Jacobean mansion close
to the churchyard. Brading Harbour and the view
from the Culver cliffs are graphically described ; and
in Zhe Dairyman’s Daughter we are introduced to
the neighbouring village of Arreton, and to the pleasant
country beneath the south slope of Ashey Down.
There have been many changes in the Island since
the time of Legh Richmond. Steamboats and rail-
ways have rendered it easy of access, and considerable
towns now flourish where only a few fishermen’s huts
were to be seen at the close of the eighteenth century.
In those days, so we learn from John Wilkes of orth
Briton fame, who had a little “ villakin” in Sandham
Bay, it not infrequently took two hours to cross the
Solent from Portsmouth to Ryde. The latter place
was then a hamlet within the bounds of the parish of
Newchurch. The towns of Ventnor and Sandown did
not exist. Shanklin and Bonchurch together contained
only thirty-two houses. Bembridge, now a flourishing
little seaside resort, consisted of a cluster of cottages
at the entrance of the haven which then stretched for
three miles, almost as far as Brading church. But in
spite of the railways which now traverse the island in
every direction, and the upgrowth of towns consequent
upon the increase of population, the beauty of the
landscape is but little impaired. Now, as when Legh
Richmond reclined upon the turf beneath the “ trian-
gular pyramid” on Ashey Down, a delightful panorama
meets the eye from that ‘lovely mount of observa-
tion.” To the north “the sea appears like a noble

THE ISLE OF WIGHT 241

river,” with the distant towns of Gosport and Ports-
mouth on the opposite shore and the Portsdown hills
beyond. Eastward is “the open ocean bounded only
by the horizon.” Southward, now as then, a rich
and fruitful valley lies immediately beneath. ‘A fine
range of opposite hills, covered with grazing flocks,
terminate with a bold sweep into the ocean, whose
blue waves appear at a distance beyond. Several
villages, hamlets, and churches are scattered in the
valley. The noble mansions of the rich and the lowly
cottages of the poor add their respective features to
the landscape.” The parish church of Godshill is
seen crowning a little eminence which rises out of
the valley; while to the south-west, some ten miles
away, is dimly discerned the remains of an ancient
chantry, once occupied by a solitary hermit, on the
summit of St. Catherine’s Down.

Little Jane’s cottage, which is annually visited by
large numbers of persons, is still in the same condition
as when she died there in the summer of 1799. For
many years it was owned by a pious and cultured
lady, lately deceased, who venerated the name and
teaching of Legh Richmond, and who regarded its
possession as a sacred trust. She would allow no
alterations to be made, no modern “improvements”
to be carried out. The cottage is still thatched with
straw, and the original lead casements of the lattice-
windows remain. Inside, upstairs and downstairs
alike, nothing has been changed; and the ‘ mean
despised chamber,” with its “sloping roof” and
“uneven floor,” remain as when the good pastor
administered the Holy Communion to the dying child
more than a hundred years ago. The little garden,
too, is practically unchanged. A high bank, starred

Q

242 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

with celandines in early spring, still faces it, and the
cottage is covered with yellow jasmine and fragrant
honeysuckle, while a large shrub of Lyczum barbarum,
or the tea-plant, forms an evergreen porch over the
doorway. Last summer several tall hollyhocks were
blooming in the cottage garden, and the little bed in
front of the parlour window was filled with Sedum
Telephium, or livelong, a plant which still grows wild
in the neighbourhood.

In the days when “Little Jane” and the village
children, under the guidance of their loving teacher,
were wont to learn the epitaphs on the tombstones
in Brading churchyard, the haven extended almost as
far as the parish church. Legh Richmond speaks of
it as “a large arm of the sea which at high tide
formed a broad lake or haven of three miles in
length.” This estuary in former years was a famous
haunt of wildfowl, and back in the sixteenth century
we are told that Sir William Oglander “‘ when itt wase
froste & snowe woolde goe downe to Bradinge Havan
a shootinge, where he woolde kill 40 coupell of fowle
in a nyght, hee & his man.” The haven has now,
after many failures, been reclaimed, and large numbers
of cattle feed on the rank herbage. At the extreme
end of what was once ‘“‘a large river or lake of sea
water” there still stands, ‘‘ close to the edge of the sea
itself, the remains of the tower of an ancient church,
now preserved as a sea mark.” This is the tower of
the old parish church of St. Helen’s, the nave of which
has fallen a victim to the encroachment of the sea.
It is to be regretted that Legh Richmond was not a
scientific botanist, for the sandy spit of land on which
the tower stands is remarkable for its wealth of wild-
flowers, Though not exceeding forty or fifty acres in

THE ISLE OF WIGHT 243

extent, it is said to yield some two hundred and fifty
species of British plants. Most of these the writer
has himself identified. Perhaps the most beautiful
and interesting is Scz//a autumnaiis, L., the autumnal
squill, which in tens of thousands stars the sandy turf
with its exquisite blue flowers every August and Sep-
tember. And, strange to say, this plant is nowhere
else to be found in the county of Hampshire. But
though there is nothing in his writings to show that
Legh Richmond was acquainted with the rarer plants
of the Island, yet he frequently alludes to the extra-
ordinary number of wayside flowers. In one instance
only, so far as we remember, does he mention an
uncommon plant by name. In his description of the
“stupendously lofty” Culver cliffs, he adds that their
“whiteness was occasionally chequered with dark-
green masses of samphire which grew there.” It is
interesting to note that when the writer visited the
spot a few summers ago, one large mass of samphire
was conspicuous against the white chalk about half-
way up the “‘tremendous perpendicular cliff.”

The cottage of Zhe Datryman’s Daughter—perhaps
the most popular of Legh Richmond’s narratives—is
still standing beside the highroad that runs between
Apse Heath and the village of Arreton. It lies back
a little from the road, and is approached, now as then,
through “a neat little garden” full of old-fashioned
flowers, though the “two large elm-trees” which
formerly overshadowed it have disappeared. Since
Legh Richmond’s time the cottage has been roofed
with slate and slightly enlarged, and this unfortunately
has given it a somewhat modern appearance. But
otherwise the fabric is but little changed. The grey
stone walls are covered with ivy and other creepers,

244 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

and “the branches of a vine” still trail above the
parlour window. The interior of the cottage remains
in almost the same condition as when the “ good
dairyman” lived there. The two corner cupboards
occupy their old position in the parlour, and the door
of the dairy with the original open lattice-work still
swings on its ancient hinges. Upstairs, the room in
which the daughter died, with the great brick chimney-
stack standing out against the wall, is but slightly
altered since the early summer of 1801. The present
occupier of the cottage shows with pride a length of
iron chain which formerly belonged to old Wallbridge,
and the original chimney-rack from which his bacon
was suspended. Hard by the cottage a Wesleyan
Methodist church, known as ‘‘The Dairyman’s
Daughter's Memorial Chapel,” now stands, built—in
part, at least—with the offerings of strangers, whose
interest in Legh Richmond’s story had led them to
make a pilgrimage to the cottage. Numbers of
persons still continue to visit the grave of the dairy-
man’s daughter in Arreton churchyard, marked by a
headstone bearing an epitaph of much simple beauty
from the pen of her pious biographer. Legh Rich-
mond himself officiated at her funeral, and as the
procession filed into the church, he mentions that,
looking upwards, he observed a dial—one of the few
ancient sundials now remaining in the Isle of Wight—
on the church wall, which brought to his mind the
Psalmist’s words, ‘‘Our days on the earth are as a
shadow, and there is none abiding.”

Some two miles from the cottage there stood in
Legh Richmond’s time “a large and _ venerable
mansion, situated in a beautiful valley at the foot
of a high hill.” This was Knighton, the house where

THE ISLE OF WIGHT 245

he first met Elizabeth Wallbridge, “the dairyman’s
daughter.” It is much to be regretted that this fine
old Jacobean manor-house, ‘‘ the most considerable
and beautiful of the ancient mansions of the Island,”
was pulled down in the year 1820. Standing on an
elevated terrace beneath the south slope of Ashey
Down, it occupied a position of great charm and
beauty. Close by, in a wooded dell, on the margin
of a pool of clear water, were to be seen the remains
of a medieval chapel, dating back to the time of
Edward III. The mansion possessed a massive
square tower of great antiquity, and several rooms
of considerable dimensions adorned with oak panel-
ling and carved mantelpieces. In the long gallery
beneath the roof there stood ‘a very large oaken
chest, covered with rich niche-work and tracery, of
the time, probably, of Henry IV., and possessing the
original lock with tracery carved in iron.” Nothing
now remains of the ancient structure, save a few
dilapidated outbuildings, and the massive piers of
grey stone some fifteen feet in height which mark
the entrance from the road. A portion, too, of the
garden wall remains, with its ancient coping of red
brick, on which the beautiful ivy-leaved Lzxaria grows
abundantly, with here and there a delicate wall-fern,
or a plant of the greater yellow celandine, or the
ploughman’s spikenard. The spot beside the pool
where the chapel stood is now covered with the
buildings of the Ryde Waterworks, and a farmyard
occupies the site of the Jacobean mansion. One
wonders what became of the ancient chest of curious
design, and the dignified oak panelling which en-
riched the rooms. Some of the latter seems to have
found its way to a cottage in the village of Brading,

246 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE

where a room may be seen panelled with ancient oak
and with a stately Jacobean mantelpiece, which tra-
dition associates with the dismantled manor-house of
Knighton. Nothing could exceed the quiet beauty of
the scene when the writer visited the deserted site
a few summers ago. From one of the gables of the
farm-buildings a female kestrel-hawk was calmly sur-
veying the surrounding stubble. Scores of rabbits
were feeding and scuttling about at the foot of the
noble down. A squirrel was playing in the branches
of a magnificent elm-tree. Swallows were skimming
over the pool, in which, according to tradition, a
former owner of the property, overwhelmed with
grief at the sudden loss of his wife and children,
committed suicide. In the copse beside the stream
which issued from the haunted pool the rare marsh-
fern (lV. thelypteris, Desv.) was growing abundantly,
and splendid specimens of purple foxglove covered
the rising ground. Not a sound was to be heard,
save the murmur of innumerable insects, and the
notes of a willow-wren in the coppice beyond.

In the quiet beauty of the parish of Brading Legh
Richmond found a constant source of refreshment
and delight. The wide open downs were dear to
him, and the chalk cliffs and the seashore. On his
frequent rounds of pastoral visitation, often to distant
parts of the parish, his mind would be occupied with
the contemplation of nature. ‘How much do they
lose,’ he exclaims in one of his narratives, ‘‘ who
are strangers to serious meditation on the wonders
and beauties of nature!” To his mind “ the believer
possessed a right to the enjoyment of nature, as well
as to the privileges of grace.” And this feeling, which
shows itself in his graceful descriptions of local scenery,

THE ISLE OF WIGHT 247

still gives interest to The Annals of the Poor. The
attitude of Legh Richmond towards nature finds exact
expression in the beautiful lines of Cowper’s 7Jask,
with which doubtless he was acquainted :—

** He looks abroad into the varied field
Of nature, and though poor, perhaps, compared
With those whose mansions glitter in his sight,
Calls the delightful scenery all his own.
His are the mountains, and the valleys his,
And the resplendent rivers. His to enjoy
With a propriety that none can feel
But who, with filial confidence inspired,
Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye,
And, smiling, say, ‘ My Father made them all.’”

THE END

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