James I., that conceited old pedant, whose “Counterblast to Tobacco” has worked the poorest of results, seems to have had a nice taste for fruits; and Sir Henry Wotton, his ambassador at Venice, writing from that city in 1622, says,—­“I have sent the choicest melon-seeds of all kinds, which His Majesty doth expect, as I had order both from ray Lord Holderness and from Mr. Secretary Calvert.”  Sir Henry sent also with the seeds very particular directions for the culture of the plants, obtained probably from some head-gardener of a Priuli or a Morosini, whose melons had the full beat of Italian sunshine upon the south slopes of the Vicentine mountains.  The same ambassador sends at that date to Lord Holderness “a double-flowering yellow rose, of no ordinary nature";[3] and it would be counted of no ordinary nature now, if what he avers be true, that “it flowreth every month from May till almost Christmas.”

King James took special interest in the establishment of his garden at the Theobald Palace in Hertfordshire:  there were clipped hedges, neat array of linden avenues, fountains, and a Mount of Venus within a labyrinth; twelve miles of wall encircled the park, and the soldiers of Cromwell found fine foraging-ground in it, when they entered upon the premises a few years later.  The schoolmaster-king formed also a guild of gardeners in the city of London, at whose hands certificates of capacity for garden-work were demanded, and these to be given only after proper examination of the applicants.  Lord Bacon possessed a beautiful garden, if we may trust his own hints to that effect, and the added praises of Wotton.  Cashiobury, Holland House, and Greenwich gardens were all noted in this time; and the experiments and successes of the proprietor of Bednall-Greene garden I have already alluded to.  But the country-gentleman, who lived upon his land and directed the cultivation of his property, was but a very savage type of the Bedford or Oxfordshire landholders of our day.  It involved a muddy drag over bad roads, after a heavy Flemish mare, to bring either one’s self or one’s crops to market.

Sir Thomas Overbury, who draws such a tender picture of a “Milke-Mayde,” is severe, and, I dare say, truthful, upon the country-gentleman.  “His conversation,” says he, “amongst his tenants is desperate:  but amongst his equals full of doubt.  His travel is seldome farther than the next market towne, and his inquisition is about the price of corne:  when he travelleth, he will goe ten mile out of the way to a cousins house of his to save charges; and rewards servants by taking them by the hand when hee departs.  Nothing under a sub-poena can draw him to London:  and when he is there, he sticks fast upon every object, casts his eyes away upon gazing, and becomes the prey of every cut-purse.  When he comes home, those wonders serve him for his holy-day talke.  If he goe to court, it is in yellow stockings:  and if it be in winter, in a slight tafety cloake, and pumps and pantofles.”