Notes and Queries, Number 79, May 3, 1851

    D. K.

When Deans first styled Very Reverend.—Can any of your correspondents state at what period Deans of Cathedrals were first designated as "Very Reverend?" Forty years ago they prayed at Christ Church, Oxford, for the Reverend the Deans, the Canons, &c. The inscription on the stone covering the remains of Sir Richard Kaye, Bart., Dean of Lincoln, who died in 1809, terms him "the Reverend."

    X. X.

Form of Prayer at the Healing (Vol. iii., pp. 42. 93. 148.).—As my note on this subject has been misunderstood, I would prefer this Query. What is the earliest edition of the Prayer Book in which the Form for the Healing appears? Mr. Lathbury states 1709, which is I believe the generally received date; but it is found in one printed in London in 1707 immediately before the Articles. Its appearance in the Prayer Book is entirely unauthorised; and it would be curious to ascertain also, whether it found a place in the Prayer Books printed at Oxford or Cambridge.

    N. E. R. (a Subscriber).

West Chester.—In maps of Cheshire, 1670, and perhaps later, the city of Chester is thus called. Why is it so designated? It does not appear to be so called now. Passing through a village only six miles from London last week, I heard a mother saying to a child, "If you are not a good girl I will send you to West Chester." "Go to Bath" is common enough; but why should either of these places be singled out? The Cheshire threat seems to have been in use for some time, unless that city is still called West Chester.

    John Francis X.

The Milesians.—With respect to the origin of the Milesian race little seems to be known, even by antiquaries who have given their attention to the archæology of Ireland, the inhabitants of which country are reputed to have been of Milesian origin. The Milesian race, also, is thought to have come over from Spain, a conjecture which is rather confirmed by the etymology of the names of some Irish towns, where the letters gh, as in Drogheda and Aghada, if so convertible, have the same pronunciation as the Spanish j in Aranjuez and Badajoz, and also by the expression and cast of features marked in many of the peasants of the south-west of Ireland, which strikingly resemble those of the children of Spain.

There is also another subject of antiquity in Ireland, and closely connected with her early history, of the true origin of which the world seems much in ignorance, viz. her Round Towers. Possibly some of your able correspondents will kindly supply some information on one or both of these subjects.

    W. R. M.

Round Robbin.—In Dr. Heylin's controversy with Fuller on his Church History, the following quotation[1 - Appeal of Injured Innocence, p. 462.] occurs:

"That the Sacrament of the Altar is nothing else but a piece of bread, or a little predie round robbin."

In the East Riding of Yorkshire the term is designative of a petition, in which all the names are signed radiating from a centre, so as to render it impossible to discover who was the first to sign it. What is the derivation of it?

    R. W. E.

Cor. Chr. Coll., Cambridge.

Experto crede Roberto.—What is the origin of this saying?

    N. B.

Captain Howe.—

Captain Howe, the King's (George II.) nephew by an illegitimate source."—Pictorial History of England, iv. 597.

Can you inform me how this captain was thus related to George II.?

    F. B. Relton.

Bactria.—Can you refer me to a work worthy the name of The History of Bactria, or to detached information concerning Bactriana, under the Scythian kings? I also want a guide to the Græco-Bactrian series of coins.

    Blowen.

Replies

THE FAMILY OF THE TRADESCANTS

(Vol. ii., pp. 119. 286.)

The family of the Tradescants is involved in considerable obscurity, and the period of the arrival of the first of that name in England is not, for a certainty, known. There were, it seems, three of the Tradescants at one time in this country—grandfather, father, and son. John Tradescant (or Tradeskin, as he was generally called by his contemporaries) the elder was, according to Anthony Wood, a Fleming or a Dutchman. He probably came to England about the latter end of the reign of Elizabeth, or in the beginning of that of James the First. He is reported to have been a great traveller, and to have previously visited Barbary, Greece, Egypt, and other Eastern countries. Upon his first arrival here he is said to have been successively gardener to the Lord Treasurer Salisbury, Lord Weston, the Duke of Buckingham, and other noblemen of distinction. In these situations he remained until the office of royal gardener was bestowed upon him in 1629.

To John Tradescant the elder, posterity is mainly indebted for the introduction of botany in this kingdom. "He, by great industry, made it manifest that there is scarcely any plant existing in the known world, that will not, with proper care, thrive in our climate." In a visit made by Sir W. Watson and Dr. Mitchell to Tradescant's garden in 1749, an account of which is inserted in the Philosophical Transactions, vol. xlvi. p. 160., it appears that it had been many years totally neglected, and the house belonging to it empty and ruined; but though the garden was quite covered with weeds, there remained among them manifest footsteps of its founder. They found there the Borago latifolia sempervivens of Caspar Bauhine; Polygonatum vulgare latifolium, C.B.; Aristolochia clematitis recta, C.B.; and the Dracontium of Dodoens. There were then remaining two trees of the Arbutus, which from their being so long used to our winters, did not suffer from the severe cold of 1739-40, when most of their kind were killed in England. In the orchard there was a tree of the Rhamnus catharticus, about twenty feet high, and nearly a foot in diameter. There are at present no traces of this garden remaining.

In the Ashmolean Library is preserved (No. 1461.) a folio manuscript (probably in the handwriting of the elder Tradescant) which purports to be "The Tradescants' Orchard, illustrated in sixty-five coloured drawings of fruits, exhibiting various kinds of the apple, cherry, damson, date, gooseberry, peares, peaches, plums, nectarines, grape, Hasell-nutt, quince, strawberry, with the times of their ripening."

Old John Tradescant died in the year 1652, at which period he was probably far advanced in years, leaving behind him a son (also of the same name) who seems to have inherited his father's talents and enthusiasm. There is a tradition that John Tradescant the younger entered himself on board a privateer going against the Algerines, that he might have an opportunity of bringing apricot-trees from that country. He is known to have taken a voyage to Virginia, whence he returned with many new plants. The two Tradescants were the means of introducing a variety of curious species into this kingdom, several of which bore their name. Tradescants' Spiderwort and Aster are well known to this day, and Linnæus has immortalised them among the botanists by making a new genus under their names of the Spiderwort, which had been before called Ephemeron.

When the elder Tradescant first settled in England, he formed a curious collection of natural history, coins, medals, and a great variety of "uncommon rarities." A catalogue of them was published in 12mo. in the year 1656, by his son, under the name of Museum Tradescantianum; to which are prefixed portraits, both of the father and son, by Hollar. This Museum or "Ark," as it was termed, was frequently visited by persons of rank, who became benefactors thereto; among these were Charles the First, Henrietta Maria (his queen), Archbishop Laud, George Duke of Buckingham, Robert and William Cecil, Earls of Salisbury, and many other persons of distinction: among them also appears the philosophic John Evelyn, who in his Diary has the following notice:

"Sept. 17, 1657, I went to see Sir Robert Needham, at Lambeth, a relation of mine, and thence to John Tradescant's museum."

"Thus John Tradeskin starves our wondering eyes
By boxing up his new-found rarities."

Ashmole, in his Diary (first published by Charles Burman in 1717), has three significant entries relating to the subject of our notice, which I transcribe verbatim:

"Decem. 12, 1659. Mr. Tredescant and his wife told me they had been long considering upon whom to bestow their closet of curiosities when they died, and at last had resolved to give it unto me.

"April 22, 1662. Mr. John Tredescant died.

"May 30, 1662. This Easter term I preferred a bill in Chancery against Mrs. Tredescant, for the rarities her husband had settled on me."

The success of Ashmole's suit is well known; but the whole transaction reflects anything but honour upon his name. The loss of her husband's treasures probably preyed upon the mind of Mrs. Tradescant; for in the Diary before quoted, under April 4, 1678, Ashmole says:

"My wife told me that Mrs. Tradescant was found drowned in her pond. She was drowned the day before at noon, as appears by some circumstance."

This was the same Hesther Tradescant who erected the Tradescant monument in Lambeth churchyard. She was buried in the vault where her husband and his son John (who "died in his spring") had been formerly laid.

The table monument to the memory of the Tradescants was erected in 1662. The sculptures on the four sides are as follows, viz. on the north, a crocodile, shells, &c., and a view of some Egyptian buildings; on the south, broken columns, Corinthian capitals, &c., supposed to be ruins in Greece, or some Eastern country; on the east, Tradescant's arms, on a bend three fleurs-de-lys, impaling a lion passant; on the west, a hydra, and under it a skull; various figures of trees, &c., in relievo, adorn the four corners of the tomb; over it is placed a handsome tablet of black marble. The monument, by the contribution of some friends to their memory, was in the year 1773 repaired, and (according to Sir John Hawkins) the following lines, "formerly intended for an epitaph, inserted thereon." Other authorities say that they were merely restored.

"Know, stranger, ere thou pass beneath this stone,
Lye John Tradescant, grandsire, father, son;
The last dy'd in his spring; the other two
Liv'd till they had travell'd Art and Nature through,
As by their choice collections may appear,
Of what is rare, in land, in sea, in air;
Whilst they (as Homer's Iliad in a nut)
A world of wonders in one closet shut;
These famous antiquarians that had been
Both Gardeners to the Rose and Lily Queen,
Transplanted now themselves, sleep here; and when
Angels shall with their trumpets waken men,
And fire shall purge the world, these hence shall rise,
And change this garden for a Paradise."

A number of important errors concerning this once celebrated family have been made by different writers. Sir John Hawkins, in a note to his edition of Walton's Angler (edit. 1792, p. 24.), says: