Virgin Earth

Summer 1660

Charles Stuart, who was to be known as Charles the Second, came home to a country mad with joy. People wanted to get back to a system that everyone knew, many of them hoped to gain from a change of government: a chance to settle old scores and regain old ground. Quakers, sectaries, Roman Catholics and a number of old women who could be named as witches by spiteful neighbors felt the brunt of popular confidence which expected the new king to restore the old persecutions as well as freedoms. Commoners all around the country helped themselves to firewood, poached from the royal forests and the derelict parks, and there was a great rush of burglary from the empty palaces before the new royal servants came to stock-take.

The new king set up a new Privy Council and the great English cake of rewards and places was sliced up between royalists and their friends; but Charles took some care to see that experienced men and those from wealthy or noble families were recruited to office whatever they had done in the wars against his father. Those who had been party to the trial and execution of his father only lost their places of power and were fined, if they fled England.

“I think he’ll release John Lambert,” Frances said, bent over a newspaper spread out on the kitchen table. “It says here that the House of Lords seeks his death but the House of Commons wants him reprieved.”

“Will he be free?” Hester asked, looking up from shelling peas.

Frances shook her head. “It doesn’t say. But if I was Charles Stuart I don’t think I’d want Lord Lambert at the head of a regiment again.”

A month after the king was restored to the throne Elias Ashmole asked and got the place of a Windsor Herald. He came to visit the Ark wearing his new regalia, to suggest that John should publish a new edition of the catalogue.

“It should be dedicated to His Majesty,” Elias urged John as they sat on the terrace in the sunshine and looked over the garden which was in full summer bloom. “Think, if he were to come to visit! His father did, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” John said. “With the queen.”

“I hear she’s coming from France in the autumn,” Ashmole said enthusiastically. “We should have a new edition published by then. I’ll pay for it, if you wish. I have some money put by.”

“I can pay!” John said, nettled. “I’ll compose a dedication.”

“I have one already,” Elias said and produced from the deep pocket of his coat a folded manuscript. “Here.”

John spread the paper on the table.

To the sacred majesty of Charles the II

John Tradescant, His Majesties most obedient and most loyal subject in all humility offereth these collections.

Frances, looking over John’s shoulder, let out a little gurgle of laughter. “I don’t know if you’re his most obedient subject,” she remarked. “He surely has some servants that didn’t spend the wars as far away as they could get.”

John turned his laugh into a cough. “Frances, go about your business,” he said sternly and turned to Elias. “I apologize.”

“A flighty woman,” Ashmole said disapprovingly. “But if there is any question about your loyalty then you cannot affirm it too loudly, you know, John.”

John nodded.

“Fortunately you have the record of your son’s service,” Elias remarked. “You could always say he died at Worcester. Or died here of his wounds.”

Hester, coming to the terrace with a tray and three glasses of madeira wine, checked at that and exchanged a shocked look with her husband.

“We wouldn’t do that,” John said briefly. He got to his feet and took the tray from Hester’s hands. “Look at this that Mr. Ashmole has prepared for the printer for me. A new dedication for the front of the catalogue. Dedicated to His Majesty.”

She leaned over the table and read it carefully. To his surprise when she straightened up there were tears in her eyes.

“Hester?”

She turned a little away from the table so Elias Ashmole could not see her face. John followed her.

“What is it?” he asked quietly.

“I was just thinking how proud Johnnie would have been,” she said simply. “To see our name on the same page as the king’s. To have the collection dedicated to the king.”

John nodded. “Yes, he would have been,” he said. “His cause won the war in the end.” He turned to Elias Ashmole. “I thank you for your help, Elias. Let’s get it printed at once.”

Elias nodded. “I’ll deliver it to the printers on my way home,” he said cheerfully. “It’s no trouble. I’m glad you approve.”

Hester took her glass of wine and sat with the men. “Do we have guests for dinner tonight?” she asked. “Is Dr. Wharton and the rest coming for dinner?”

“Yes, and there’s news about that too!” Elias said gleefully. “We are to have royal patronage. The king is very interested in our thoughts and discoveries. We are to be called the Royal Society! Imagine that! We are to be fellows of the Royal Society! What d’you think?”

“That is an honor,” John said. “Though we’d never have gathered together if it hadn’t been for the republic. Under the bishops half what we discussed would have been called heresy.”

Elias flapped his hand dismissively. “Old days,” he said. “Old history. What matters now is that we have a king who loves to talk and speculate and who is prepared to advance men of science and learning.”

“Then why does he touch for the king’s evil?” Frances asked innocently, bringing a plate of biscuits, which she put at John’s elbow. “Is that not the superstition of ignorant people? Would he welcome an inquiry into such nonsense?”

Elias was briefly put out. “He does his duty, he does everything that is right and courteous and pleasing,” he said with emphasis. “Nothing more than good manners. Good manners, Mrs. Norman, are the very backbone of civilized society.”

“If you are a Royal Society I had best order a royal dinner,” Hester said tactfully. “Come and help me, Frances.”

Frances shot a grin at her father and followed her stepmother into the house.

It was a good summer for the Ark. The sense of safety and prosperity meant that more and more visitors came to the doors. The spirit of inquiry which the Royal Society represented spread throughout London, and men and women came to see the marvels of the Tradescant collection and then walk in the rich gardens and the orchards.

The horse chestnut avenue, which ran from the terrace before the rarities room to the end of the orchard, was now thirty-one years old, with broad trunks and wide, swaying branches. No one who saw the trees in flower could resist purchasing a sapling.

“There will be a chestnut tree in every park in the land,” John predicted. “My father always swore that they were the most beautiful trees he had ever grown.”

But the chestnuts had their rivals in the garden. John’s own tulip tree from Virginia flowered for the first time in the hot summer of 1660, and botanists and painters made special trips up the river to see the huge cupped flowers against the dark, glossy foliage. John had some new roses, Warner’s rose and a beautiful new specimen from France that they called the velvet rose for the deep, soft color of the petals. The fruit trees in the garden had shed their blossoms and were heavy laden with growing fruits. The early cherries were picked at dawn by Frances to save them from the songbirds, and sold at the garden gate by the lad. One part of the fruit garden was set aside for vines now; John had row upon row of well-pruned bushes, grown low on wires, just as his father had seen them grown in France, with fourteen varieties of grape, including the fox grape from Virginia and the Virginian wild vine.

In the melon beds John grew half a dozen varieties of melon. He always kept one fruit to the side, he called it the royal melon, descendant of the seeds Johnnie had planted at Wimbledon House. When it fruited in midsummer John sent a great sweet-smelling globe to the king, who was hunting at Richmond, with compliments of John Tradescant. He wondered if this was the second melon that Charles Stuart had received, and if he would ever understand the devotion that had been poured into growing the first fruit.