The last of the great English herbalists was John Parkinson, the author of the famous _Paradisus_ and also of the largest herbal in the English language, _Theatrum Botanicum_, which was published when the author was seventy-three. The latter was intended to be a complete account of medicinal plants and was the author's most important work, yet it is with the _Paradisus_ (strictly not a herbal, but a gardening book), that his name is popularly associated. Of Parkinson himself we can learn very little. We know only that he was born in 1567, probably in Nottinghamshire, and that before 1616 he was practising as an apothecary and had a garden in Long Acre "well stored with rarities."[88] He was appointed Apothecary to James I., and after the publication of his _Paradisus_ in 1629 Charles I. bestowed on him the title of Botanicus Regius Primarius. Amongst Parkinson's acquaintances mentioned in his books were the learned Thomas Johnson, who in 1633 emended and brought out a new edition of Gerard's _Herball_, John Tradescant,[89] the famous gardener, traveller and naturalist, and the celebrated physician, Sir Theodore Mayerne. Parkinson died in 1650 and was buried at St. Martin's in the Fields. There is a portrait of him in his sixty-second year prefixed to his _Paradisus_, and a small portrait by Marshall at the bottom of the title-page of his _Theatrum Botanicum_. The full title of Parkinson's _Paradisus_, which in the dedicatory letter to Queen Henrietta Maria he truly describes as "this Speaking Garden," is inscribed on a shield at the bottom of the frontispiece. The first three words, "Paradisi in Sole," are a punning translation into Latin of his own surname. At the top of the page is the Eye of Providence with a Hebrew inscription, and on each side a cherub symbolising the winds. In the centre is a representation of Paradise with Adam grafting an apple tree and Eve running downhill to pick up a pineapple. The flowers depicted are curiously out of proportion, for the tulip flower is a good deal larger than Eve's head, and cyclamen in Paradise seems to have grown to a height of at least five feet.