176 HISTORY OF ESSEX BOTANY.
plants." He is also frequently mentioned in Parkinson's
Theatrum. Ashmole in his Diary for October 9th, 1651, writes
"My Father Backhouse and I went to see Mr. Goodier, the
great Botanist, at Petersfield." Robert Brown justly honoured
Goodyer by naming after him the orchidaceous genus Goodyera.
The next work to Johnson's Herball which contains any
important Essex records is the Theatrum Botanicum of John
Parkinson, published in 1640. Of Parkinson there is a some-
what full account in Pulteney,28 to which a few points are added
in the Flora of Middlesex (p. 372) and by the late Mr. G. W.
Johnson in the Journal of Horticulture for 1875.29 He was
born apparently in Nottinghamshire, in 1567, and practised as
an apothecary in London, having a garden in Long Acre at
least as early as 1616 and becoming apothecary to James I.
Not till he was past sixty-two did he publish his first work
with its curious punning title Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris,
Folio. pp. 612, dedicated to Queen Henrietta Maria, with an
engraved portrait of himself by Switzer. This book, the title
of which is, "being interpreted," "Parkinson's Earthly
Paradise," deals with garden plants, describing nearly a
thousand and figuring 780 on 109 plates specially engraved in
England. Its quaint phraseology attracted the late Mrs. Ewing,
whose charming story, Mary's Meadow, has perhaps increased the
modern vogue for the book among collectors which it shares
with all old herbals. The reference on p. 359 to Convolvulus
purpureus spicaefolius at Dunmow, already quoted, is the only
Essex reference that I have found in this work. In 1640
Parkinson published his Theatrum Botanicum, London, folio, pp.
1746. This work, originally intended to be merely a supplement
to the Paradisus dealing with "A physical Garden of Simples,"
grew into a most comprehensive herbal, describing nearly 3,800
species, as against Johnson's 2,850, with newly cut figures of
over 2,500, very full details as to medicinal uses, and a synonymy
which, while incorporating nearly the whole of Bauhin's Pinax,
shows also independent reference to the original authors.
Though published seven years after Johnson's edition of Gerard,
its preparation dated from an earlier time, whilst it is in many
respects more original than either Johnson or Gerard. At the
time of its publication Parkinson obtained the title of King's
Herbalist or Botanicus Regius Primarius. He died in London
28 Sketches of the Progress of Botany, 1790, vol. i., pp. 138-152.
29 See Britten and Boulger, Biographical Index of British and Irish Botanists, p. 131,
and notice, by the present writer, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xliii.