OLD ESSEX GARDENERS AND THEIR GARDENS. 69
"them Trifolium Vesicarinm, which he gathered there with above
"two hundred other sorts of seedes, besides divers other
"rare plants, dried and laid betweene papers, whereof the seedes
"were not ripe, of all which seedes I had my part, and by sowing
"them saw the faces of a great many excellent plants, but many of
"them came not to maturitie with me, and most of the other
"whereof I gathered ripe seede one yeare, by unkindly yeares that
"fell afterwards have perished likewise." Parkinson apparently
had some cause for dissatisfaction in the transaction for under
Lathyrus (in which eight species are described under "Lathyrus
annuus"), he writes:—"All these sorts except the sixt (which I
"found in clensing of Anneseede to use) grow in Spaine, and from
"thence were brought with a number of other rare seedes besides
"by Guillaume Boel and imparted to Mr. Coys of Slabbers in
"Essex in love, as a lover of rare plants, but to me of debt, for
"going into Spains almost wholly on my charge hee brought mee
"little else for my mony, but while I beate the bush another3
"catcheth and eateth the bird: so while I with care and cost
"sowed them yearely hoping first to publish them, another3
"that never saw them unlesse in my Garden, nor knew of them
"but by a collaterall friend,4 prevents me whom they knew
"had their descriptions ready for the Presse."
In 1620 Goodyer visited his "worthy friend and excellent
"Herbarist of happy memorie Mr. William Coys of Stubbers in
"the parish of Northokington." It was on the way to pay this
visit that Goodyer made the discovery of an Elm hitherto
unrecorded. As we read in Johnson's edition of Gerard, "I
"observed it growing very plentifully as I rode between Rumford
"and the said Stubbers, in the yeare 1620, intermixed with the
"first kinde [the common Elme tree], but easily to be discerned
"apart, and is in those parts usually called Witch Elme." This
is the "smooth leaven Elme" of which Coys told him
"that the wood of this kinde was more desired for naves of
"Carts than the wood of the first."
Goodyer kept a list of the descriptions he made of plants.
According to Gunther more than two hundred and fifty plants
are specially noted in addition to some hundred which are
5 Thomas Johnson in Gerard's Herball, 1636.
6 Coys.