from this we have little definite knowledge of his life. He seems to have been a well-known figure in the later years of Elizabeth and the early years of James I., and it is probable that he held the same position in the household of Robert Earl of Salisbury, Secretary of State, as he had held in that of his father, Lord Burleigh. A few years before he died James's queen (Anne of Denmark) granted him the lease of a garden (two acres in all) east of Somerset House for four pence a year. Besides the rent he had to give "at the due and proper seasons of the yeare a convenient proportion and quantitie of herbes, floures, or fruite, renewing or growing within the said garden plott or piece of grounde, by the arte and industrie of the said John Gerard, if they be lawfully required and demanded."[82] Gerard only kept this garden for a year. In 1605 he parted with his interest in it to Robert Earl of Salisbury, and it is interesting to note that in the legal documents connected with this transaction he is described as herbarist to James I. Of his private life we know nothing beyond that he was married and that his wife helped him in his work. He died in February 1611-1612, and was buried in St. Andrew's Church, Holborn. In 1597, as we have seen, Gerard published the Herbal which made him famous, but its history, as his critics point out, reflects little credit on the author. John Norton, the Queen's printer, had commissioned Dr. Priest, a member of the College of Physicians, to translate Dodoens's _Pemptades_ from Latin into English. Priest died before he finished his work and the unfinished translation came somehow into Gerard's hands. Gerard altered the arrangement of the herbs from that of Dodoens to that of de l'Obel in his _Adversaria_, and of Priest's translation he merely says: "Dr. Priest, one of our London College, hath (as I heard) translated the last edition of Dodoens, which meant to publish the same, but being prevented by death his translation likewise perished." There are no fewer than 1800 illustrations in the Herbal, most of them taken from the same wood-blocks that Tabernæmontanus (Bergzabern) used for his _Eicones_ (1590). Norton, the Queen's printer, procured the loan of these wood-blocks from Nicolas Bassæus of Frankfurt. They are good specimens, and certainly superior to the sixteen original cuts which Gerard added. It is interesting, however, to note that amongst the latter is the first published representation of the "Virginian" potato. Gerard made so many mistakes in connection with the illustrations that James Garret, a London apothecary (and the correspondent of Charles de l'Escluse), called Norton's attention to the matter. Norton thereupon asked de l'Obel to correct the work, and, according to de l'Obel's own account, he was obliged to make over a thousand alterations. Gerard then stopped any further emendation, on the ground that the work was sufficiently accurate, and declared