THE GARDENERS OF THE EIGHTH LORD PETRE 205
Hereafter Miller sinks into oblivion, except that he may be
the J. Miller, Gardener, aged 56, who occurs in a list of Papists in
the parish of East Horndon or Thorndon drawn up by the vicar
in 1767. If so, it makes it look even more probable that Miller
turned gardener/schoolmaster, for in the list there are the names
of a dozen or so boys having no connexion with any of the adults,
thus almost certainly indicating the presence of a Catholic school
in the parish.25.
Whether John Miller was a better schoolmaster than gardener
we have no means of telling, but Collinson who revisited Thorndon
in 1762 had a chance to assess his handiwork as a gardener. All
the nurseries were overgrown. In the "great stove", in its day the
largest in the world, and where Lord Petre's mal© Papaya had
fruited to the bewilderment of contemporary 'botanists, there
was nothing but two great date palms, a Caroline palm and a
cactus. In the smaller houses there were just one or two plants
still living. Only in the kitchen garden hothouse was there any-
thing of note, a "pretty collection" of rare exotic trees and aloes,
but even they had only just been kept alive.26
Notes
1. The only accounts of any substance of the life of Robert James, eighth
Lord Petre (1713-1742), one of the most remarkable and interesting
botanist-gardeners of his time, are James Britten's (1914) The Eighth
Lord Petre, Dublin Review, 155: 307-321, and J. Ramsbottom's (1938)
Old Essex Gardens and their Gardeners, Essex Nat., 26: 73-87.
2. British Museum. Add. MSS. 28, 726. Lord Jersey's letters to Collinson
passim.
3. Bodleian Library. Richardson Correspondence, vol. 10. Letters from
John Blackburne.
4. Lord Petre had installed himself at Thorndon at the latest by Decem-
ber 1732. See letter from Mannock Strickland to John Caryll of
10 December 1732. BM. Add. MSS. 28,229, f. 14.
5. Extracts from the Correspondence of Richard Richardson. London,
1833, p. 314. Letter from R. Rauthmell to Richardson, 11 October
1731.
6. J. Britten (1914), Dublin Review loc. cit. C. T. Kuypers (1936). Thorn-
don : its history and associations. Reprint from the Brentwood
Dioscesan Magazine.
7. Bodleian Library. Richardson Correspondence, vol. 10. Exchange of
letters between Lord Petre and Richardson about Miller's failure
to deliver a parcel of seeds entrusted to him.
8. B.M. (Nat. Hist.), Brewer Correspondence, f. 84. Letter from Knowlton
to Samuel Brewer, 25 December 1741.
9. American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. Bartram Papers.
Letter from Lord Petre to Miller, 2 September 1741.
10. T. C. Porteus. Sweet Lady Petre of Dunkenhalgh. Blackburn
Times. July 21, 28 and August 4, 1926.