CHAPTER IV.. Of Gardens:—Lavington Garden, Chelsey Garden.

OF GARDENS:—LAVINGTON GARDEN, CHELSEY GARDEN.

The gardens at Wilton, described in the last chapter, were completely in the style referred to. Solomon de Caus, to whom they are attributed by Aubrey, is supposed by Mr. Loudon, in his valuable “Encyclopaedia of Gardening”, to have been the inventor of greenhouses. The last mentioned work contains the best account yet published of the gardens of the olden time. Britton’s “History of Cassiobury” (folio, 1837), p. 17, also contains some curious particulars of the original plantations and pleasure grounds of that interesting mansion.

The gardens at Lavington, which are described in the present chapter, were evidently of the same character with those of Wilton. Chelsey-garden is very minutely described by Aubrey, but our limits forbid its insertion, especially as it is irrelevant to a History of Wiltshire.—J. B.]

O janitores, villiciq{ue} felices: Dominis parantur isti, serviunt vobis. MARTIAL, Epigramm. 29, lib. x.

To write in the praise of gardens is besides my designe. The pleasure and use of them were unknown to our great-grandfathers. They were contented with pot-herbs, and did mind chiefly their stables. The chronicle tells us, that in the reign of King Henry the 8th pear—mains were so great a rarity that a baskett full of them was a present to the great Cardinall Wolsey.

Henry Lyte, of Lyte’s Cary, in Somerset, Esq. translated Dodoens’ Herball into English, which he dedicated to Q. Elizabeth, about the beginning of her reigne . He had a pretty good collection of plants for that age; some few whereof are yet alive, 1660: and no question but Dr. Gilbert, &c. did furnish their gardens as well as they could so long ago, which could be but meanly. But the first peer that stored his garden with exotick plants was William Earle of Salisbury, [1612-1668] at his garden at [Hatfield?—J. B.] a catalogue whereof, fairly writt in a skin of vellum, consisting of 830 plants, is in the hands of Elias Ashmole, Esq. at South Lambeth.

But ’twas Sir John Danvers, of Chelsey, who first taught us the way of Italian gardens. He had well travelled France and Italy, and made good observations. He had in a fair body an harmonicall mind. In his youth his complexion was so exceeding beautiful and fine that Thomas Bond, Esq. of Ogbourne St. …. in Wiltshire, who was his companion in his travells, did say that the people would come after him in the street to admire him. He had a very fine fancy, which lay chiefly for gardens and architecture.

The garden at Lavington in this county, and that at Chelsey in Middlesex, as likewise the house there, doe remaine monuments of his ingenuity. The garden at Lavington is full of irregularities, both naturall and artificiall, sc. elevations and depressions. Through the length of it there runneth a fine cleare trowt stream; walled with brick on each side, to hinder the earth from mouldring down. In this stream are placed severall statues. At the west end is an admirable place for a grotto, where the great arch is, over which now is the market roade. Among severall others, there is a very pleasant elevation on the south side of the garden, which steales, arising almost insensibly, that is, before one is aware, and gives you a view over the spatious corn-fields there, and so to East Lavington: where, being landed on a fine levell, letteth you descend again with the like easinesse; each side is flanqued with laurells. It is almost impossible to describe this garden, it is so full of variety and unevenesse; nay, it would be a difficult matter for a good artist to make a draught of it. About An°. 1686, the right honourable James Earle of Abingdon [who had become possessed of the estate in right of his wife], built a noble portico, full of water workes, which is on the north side of the garden, and faceth the south. It is both portico and grott, and was designed by Mr. Rose, of …… in Oxfordshire.

Wilton Garden was the third garden after these two of the Italian mode; but in the time of King Charles the Second gardening was much improved and became common. I doe believe I may modestly affirme that there is now, 1691, ten times as much gardening about London as there was Anno 1660; and wee have been, since that time, much improved in forreign plants, especially since about 1683, there have been exotick plants brought into England no lesse than seven thousand. (From Mr. Watts, gardener of the Apothecary’s garden at Chelsey, and other botanists.)

As for Longleate Garden it was lately made. I have not seen it, but they say ’tis noble.

Till the breaking out of the civill warres, Tom ô Bedlam’s did travell about the countrey. They had been poore distracted men that had been putt into Bedlam, where recovering to some sobernesse they were licentiated to goe a begging: e. g. they had on their left arm an armilla of tinn, printed in some workes, about four inches long; they could not gett it off. They wore about their necks a great horn of an oxe in a string or bawdrie, which, when they came to an house for almes, they did wind: and they did putt the drink given them into this horn, whereto they did putt a stopple. Since the warres I doe not remember to have seen any one of them. (I have seen them in Worcestershire within these thirty years, 1756. MS. NOTE, ANONYMOUS.)