The Bishop of Ely's garden in Holborn must have been one of the chief gardens of England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, for this is the third time it has been brought under our notice. It was celebrated for its Roses (_see_ ROSE); it was so celebrated for its Saffron Crocuses that part of it acquired the name which it still keeps, Saffron Hill; and now we hear of its "good Strawberries;" while the remembrance of "the ample garden," and of the handsome Lord Chancellor to whom it was given when taken from the bishopric, is still kept alive in its name of Hatton Garden. How very good our forefathers' Strawberries were, we have a strong proof in old Isaak Walton's happy words: "Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of Strawberries: 'Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did;' and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling." I doubt whether, with our present experience of good Strawberries, we should join in this high praise of the Strawberries of Shakespeare's or Isaak Walton's day, for their varieties of Strawberry must have been very limited in comparison to ours. Their chief Strawberry was the Wild Strawberry brought straight from the woods, and no doubt much improved in time by cultivation. Yet we learn from Spenser and from Tusser that it was the custom to grow it just as it came from the woods. Spenser says-- "One day as they all three together went Into the wood to gather Strawberries."--_F. Q._, vi. 34; and Tusser-- "Wife, into thy garden, and set me a plot With Strawbery rootes of the best to be got: Such growing abroade, among Thornes in the wood, Wel chosen and picked, prove excellent good. * * * * * The Gooseberry, Respis, and Roses al three With Strawberies under them trimly agree." _September's Husbandry._ And even in the next century, Sir Hugh Plat said-- "Strawberries which grow in woods prosper best in gardens." _Garden of Eden_, i, 20.[281:1] Besides the wild one (_Fragaria vesca_), they had the Virginian (_F. Virginiana_), a native of North America, and the parent of our scarlets; but they do not seem to have had the Hautbois (_F. elatior_), or the Chilian, or the Carolinas, from which most of our good varieties have descended.