This great delight in growing flowers for domestic decoration, was a marked feature in English life at this per10d. A Dutch traveller, Levimus Leminius, a physician and a native, Zierikzee, visited England in 1560. He was charmed with English comfort, and thus writes*:—"Their chambers and parlours strawed over with sweete herbes refreshed mee ;—their nosegays finely intermingled with sundry sorts of fragraunte floures, in their bed chambers and privi rooms with comfortable smell cheered me up and entirely delyghted all my senses".

* Translation by Thomas Newton, published in The Touchstone of Complexions, 1581—reprinted in England as Seen by Foreigners. Brenchley Rye.