HISTORY OF ESSEX BOTANY. 61
Though we now generally look on the apple orchards of the
western counties as the main home of the misseltoe, there is still
plenty in Essex, growing on a variety of trees, including,
according to Mr. Gibson and his correspondents, the apple, elm,
lime, sloe, willow and thorn ; but, so far as I know, no longer
on the oak in this county. Yet in 1771 Warner records it,15 not
only on apple, pear, ash, lime, willow and elm, but
" On an oak, between Woodford Row and The Bald Faced Stag, near the
the Ten Mile Stone : and on several trees, many of them oaks, between
Loughton and Mr. Conyers's, Copped Hall."
This suggests ideas connecting the Forest not only with the
Romano - British period of Ambresbury Banks—but with the
pre-Christian days of Druidism.
Having returned to England at the accession of Elizabeth in
1558, Turner was reinstated in his Deanery, but in 1564 was
suspended for nonconformity, in declining to adopt the prescribed
ecclesiastical vestments. He then took up his residence in
London, where he died in 1568, and was buried in St. Olave's,
Hart Street.
In accordance with my intention of restricting this history to
the workers in Essex Botany, I need do no more than mention
Thomas Newton, a native of Presbury, Cheshire, who, after
practising as a surgeon, became a schoolmaster at Little Ilford
and, in 1583, Rector of that parish. In 1587 he published An
Herball to the Bible, translated from the Latin of the Dutch
physician, Levinus Lemnius. Newton died at Little Ilford in
May, 1607, and was buried in Ilford Church. (Pulteney,
Sketches of the Progress of Botany, i., 108 ; Britten and Boulger,
Biographical Index, 127.)
Essex Botany, however, owes far more than to Turner to
the better known Elizabethan worthy, John Gerard. Here
again Mr. B. D. Jackson's labours, in the work already quoted
render any detailed biography from me superfluous, John
Gerard was born at Nantwich, in Cheshire, in 1545, was educated
in a neighbouring school, was drawn at an early age to the study
of medicine, and travelled, possibly as surgeon on a merchant
vessel, in Demark, Sweden, Poland, and Russia. In 1577 he
had charge of the gardens of Lord Burleigh, in the Strand, and
at Theobalds in Hertfordshire, and either at this time or
subsequently he seems to have practised as a Barber-Surgeon.
15 Plantae Woodfordienses. London, Printed for the Author, 1771. 8vo.