"And I doubt not of your Majesties further care of their bodies health that such Workes as deliver approved Remedyes may be divulged whereby they may both cure and prevent their diseases. Most properly therefore doth this Worke belong to your Majesty's patronage both to further and defend that malevolent spirits should not dare to cast forth their venome or aspertions to the prejudice of any well-deserving, but that thereby under God and Good direction, all may live in health as well as wealth, peace and godliness, which God grant and that this boldnesse may be pardoned to "Your Majestyes "Loyale Subject "Servant and Herbarist "JOHN PARKINSON." [Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF PARKINSON'S "THEATRUM BOTANICUM" (1640)] There are letters extolling the Herbal from three Oxford doctors, two of whom refer to the then newly-made physic garden on the Cherwell. One writes thus: "Oxford and England are happy in the foundation of a spacious illustrious physicke garden, compleately beautifully walled and gated, now in levelling and planting with the charges and expences of thousands by the many wayes Honourable Earle of Danby, the furnishing and enriching whereof and of many a glorious Tempe, with all usefull and delightfull plants will be the better expedited by your painefull happy satisfying Worke. "Tho. Clayton, His Majesty's prof. of Physicke, Oxon." * * * * * One who signs himself "Your affectionate friend John Bainbridge Doctor of Physique, and Professor of Astronomy, Oxon" writes thus: "I am a stranger to your selfe but not to your learned and elaborate volumnes. I have with delight and admiration surveyed your _Theatrum Botanicum_, a stately Fabrique, collected and composed with excessive paines.... It is a curious pourtrait and description of th' Earths flowred mantle, the Herbarist's Oracle, a rich Magazin of soveraigne Medicines, physicall experiments and other rarities." Parkinson divides his plants into "Classes or Tribes":-- 1. Sweete smelling Plants. 2. Purging Plants. 3. Venemous Sleepy and Hurtfull plants and their Counter poysons. 4. Saxifrages. 5. Vulnerary or Wound Herbs. 6. Cooling and Succory like Herbs. 7. Hot and sharpe biting Plants. 8. Umbelliferous Plants. 9. Thistles and Thorny Plants. 10. Fearnes and Capillary Herbes. 11. Pulses. 12. Cornes. 13. Grasses Rushes and Reeds. 14. Marsh Water and Sea plants and Mosses and Mushromes. 15. The Unordered Tribe. 16. Trees and Shrubbes. 17. Strange and Outlandish Plants.