ON NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS, 25
of the Tradescants.26 John Tradescant, the elder, who travelled
as a botanist, and was gardener to Queen Henrietta Maria, is
described by an old writer as "a painful industrious searcher,
and lover of all Nature's varieties," but his tastes were not con-
fined to natural history, and the museum which he formed at
Lambeth became an omnium gatherum. The collections were
augmented by his son John Tradescant, who in 1656 published
a catalogue of his" Rarities," which he described as being "more
for variety than any one place known in Europe could afford."27
The museum, known as "Tradescant's Ark," became one of the
curiosities of the age—"a world of wonders in one closet shut."
Prof. Newton, of Cambridge, has referred to the two Tradescants
as "the parents of British Musaeology,"28 and as such they
command our profound homage.
It appears that the second Tradescant made over his "Closet
of Curiosities" by deed of gift, in 1659, to his friend Elias
Ashmole, but by a will of later date bequeathed the collection to
his wife, for her life. This led, unfortunately, but not unnaturally,
to litigation. After a while, however, the museum passed to
Ashmole, whose name it afterwards bore.
Ashmole, who thus became possessed of the extensive collec-
tions of the Tradescants, was a learned man of versatile tastes,
leaning especially towards heraldry, astrology, and alchemy. A
liking for botany seems to have attracted him to Tradescant,
with whom at one time he lodged. On acquiring the "Ark,'' he
built for its reception a house in South Lambeth, adjoining that
previously occupied by Tradescant. After retaining the collection
for some years, and much enriching it, he offered to present it to
the University of Oxford, provided that a suitable building were
erected for its reception. This condition having been accepted,
the "Ashmolean Museum" was built from plans, said to be by Sir
Christopher Wren; and in 1682, twenty years after the death
of the younger Tradescant, the collection was removed in twelve
wagons from Lambeth to Oxford. Dr. Plot, the historian of
Oxfordshire and Staffordshire, became the first curator. In an
old essay on the "History of Museums," read before the
26 Excellent biographies of the Tradescants, by Prof. G. S. Boulger, will be found in the
Dictionary of National Biography. 
27 Musaeum Tradescantianum : or a Collection of Rarities preserved at South Lambeth, neer
(sic) London." By John Tradescant. London : 1656.
28 "Notes on some old Museums." By Alfred Newton, M.A., V.P.R.S. Rep. Museums
Assoc., Cambridge Meeting, 1891, p. 32.