John Tradescant the Elder (; c. 1570s – 15–16 April 1638), father of

John Tradescant the Younger John Tradescant the Younger (; 4 August 1608 – 22 April 1662), son of John Tradescant the Elder, was a botanist and gardener. The standard author abbreviation Trad. is applied to species he described. Biography Son of John Tradescant the ...

, was an English naturalist, gardener, collector and traveller. On 18 June 1607 he married Elizabeth Day of

Meopham Meopham is a large linear village and civil parish in the Borough of Gravesham in Kent, England, lying to the south of Gravesend. The parish covers , and comprises two villages and two smaller settlements; it has a population of 6,427 increasi ...

in Kent, England. She had been baptised on 22 August 1586 and was the daughter of Jeames Day, also of Meopham.

Life

John Tradescant was probably born in Suffolk. He began his career as head gardener to

Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, (1 June 156324 May 1612), was an English statesman noted for his direction of the government during the Union of the Crowns, as Tudor England gave way to Stuart period, Stuart rule (1603). Lord Salisbury s ...

Hatfield House Hatfield House is a country house set in a large park, the Great Park, on the eastern side of the town of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England. The present Jacobean house, a leading example of the prodigy house, was built in 1611 by Robert Ceci ...

, who initiated Tradescant in travelling by sending him to the

Low Countries The term Low Countries, also known as the Low Lands ( nl, de Lage Landen, french: les Pays-Bas, lb, déi Niddereg Lännereien) and historically called the Netherlands ( nl, de Nederlanden), Flanders, or Belgica, is a coastal lowland region in N ...

for fruit trees in 1610/11. He was kept on by Robert's son

William William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

, to produce gardens at the family's London house, Salisbury House. He then designed gardens on the site of

St Augustine's Abbey St Augustine's Abbey was a Benedictine monastery in Canterbury, Kent, England. The abbey was founded in 598 and functioned as a monastery until its dissolution in 1538 during the English Reformation. After the abbey's dissolution, it underwent ...

for Edward Lord Wotton in 1615––23. Later, Tradescant was gardener to the royal favourite

George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, 28 August 1592 – 23 August 1628), was an English courtier, statesman, and patron of the arts. He was a favourite and possibly also a lover of King James I of England. Buckingham remained at the ...

, remodelling his gardens at

New Hall, Essex 350px, Beaulieu Palace circa 1580 The Palace of Beaulieu ( ) is a former Royal Palace in Boreham, Essex, England, north-east of Chelmsford. The surviving part is a Grade I listed building. The property is currently occupied by New Hall School. ...

and at Burley-on-the-Hill. John Tradescant travelled to the

Nikolo-Korelsky Monastery Nikolo-Korelsky Monastery ''(Николо-Корельский монастырь)'' is a Russian Orthodox monastery in Severodvinsk (Russia). This monastery is believed to have been founded by St. Euphemius, an Orthodox missionary in the Kare ...

in Arctic

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

in 1618 (his own account of the expedition survives in his collection), to the

Levant The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is eq ...

and to

Algiers Algiers ( ; ar, الجزائر, al-Jazāʾir; ber, Dzayer, script=Latn; french: Alger, ) is the capital and largest city of Algeria. The city's population at the 2008 Census was 2,988,145Census 14 April 2008: Office National des Statistiques ...

during an expedition against the

Barbary pirates The Barbary pirates, or Barbary corsairs or Ottoman corsairs, were Muslim pirates and privateers who operated from North Africa, based primarily in the ports of Salé, Rabat, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, Libya, Tripoli. This area was known i ...

in 1620, returned to the Low Countries on Buckingham's behalf in 1624, and finally went to

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

and (as an engineer for the ill-fated siege of

La Rochelle La Rochelle (, , ; Poitevin-Saintongeais: ''La Rochéle''; oc, La Rochèla ) is a city on the west coast of France and a seaport on the Bay of Biscay, a part of the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Charente-Maritime department. With ...

) the

Île de Ré Île de Ré (; variously spelled Rhé or Rhéa; Poitevin: ''ile de Rét''; en, Isle of Ré, ) is an island off the Atlantic coast of France near La Rochelle, Charente-Maritime, on the northern side of the Pertuis d'Antioche strait. Its highe ...

with Buckingham. After Buckingham's assassination in 1628, he was then engaged in 1630 by King Charles I to be Keeper of his Majesty's Gardens, Vines, and Silkworms at his queen's minor palace,

Oatlands Palace Oatlands Palace is a former Tudor and Stuart royal palace which took the place of the former manor of the village of Oatlands near Weybridge, Surrey. Little remains of the original building, so excavations of the palace took place in 1964 to ...

in Surrey. Wenceslas Hollar - John Tradescant the elder

On all his trips he collected seeds and bulbs everywhere and assembled a collection of curiosities of natural history and ethnography which he housed in a large house, "The Ark", in Lambeth, London. The Ark was the prototypical " Cabinet of Curiosity", a collection of rare and strange objects, that became the first

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

open to the public in England, the

Musaeum Tradescantianum The ''Musaeum Tradescantianum'' was the first museum open to the public to be established in England. Located in South Lambeth, London, it comprised a collection of curiosities assembled by John Tradescant the elder and his son in a building c ...

. He also gathered specimens through American colonists, including his personal friend John Smith, who bequeathed Tradescant a quarter of his library. From their

botanical garden A botanical garden or botanic gardenThe terms ''botanic'' and ''botanical'' and ''garden'' or ''gardens'' are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word ''botanic'' is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens, an ...

Lambeth Lambeth () is a district in South London, England, in the London Borough of Lambeth, historically in the County of Surrey. It is situated south of Charing Cross. The population of the London Borough of Lambeth was 303,086 in 2011. The area expe ...

, on the south bank of the

Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

, he and his son,

John John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Second ...

, introduced many plants into English gardens that have become part of the modern gardener's repertory. He was buried in the churchyard of St-Mary-at-Lambeth, as was his son. The churchyard is now established as the

Garden Museum The Garden Museum (formerly known as the Museum of Garden History) in London is Britain's only museum of the art, history and design of gardens. The museum re-opened in 2017 after an 18-month redevelopment project. The building is largely the ...

Legacy

The Tradescant collection, which was added to significantly by Tradescant's son,

, was later given to the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

Elias Ashmole Elias Ashmole (; 23 May 1617 – 18 May 1692) was an English antiquary, politician, officer of arms, astrologer and student of alchemy. Ashmole supported the royalist side during the English Civil War, and at the restoration of Charles II he ...

. It was combined with an older University collection to become the

Ashmolean Museum The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of ...

, which opened in 1683. A genus of flowering plants (''

Tradescantia ''Tradescantia'' () is a genus of 85 species of herbaceous perennial plant, perennial wildflowers in the family Commelinaceae, native to the Americas from southern Canada to northern Argentina, including the West Indies. Members of the genus are ...

'') is named in his honour. Tradescant Road, off South Lambeth Road in Vauxhall, marks the former boundary of the Tradescant estate.

Popular culture

Tradescant is the subject of the novel ''Earthly Joys'' by

Philippa Gregory Philippa Gregory (born 9 January 1954) is an English historical novelist who has been publishing since 1987. The best known of her works is ''The Other Boleyn Girl'' (2001), which in 2002 won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award from the Roman ...

References

Citations

Sources

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External links

Tradescant Collection at the Ashmolean Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tradescant, John, The Elder 1570s births 1638 deaths 17th-century English botanists 16th-century English botanists English gardeners People educated at The King's School, Canterbury People from Kent History of museums History of the London Borough of Lambeth People from Hertfordshire 16th-century gardeners 17th-century gardeners 17th-century English naturalists People associated with the Ashmolean Museum 16th-century English naturalists Burials at St Mary-at-Lambeth