Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

UNDER HENRY 117
In the front of this greenhouse is another sunk
parterre. To the left, as you look towards the
Thames, is the large oriel which Queen Elizabeth
set in the tower that stands between a fine piece
of Wolsey's building and the rigid stateliness of
the end of Wren's south front. The low walls
stand, it is likely, as they stood in Henry's days,
and on them may now be trained dwarf creepers,
where the bright gillies with " the mynts and other
sweet flowers " stood out against the red brick in
the old days. Architecture is brought in to aid
the attraction of horticulture. Steps lead down, in
the little garden hard by, to the fountain in the
midst; and, again, low walls and trim hedges shut
off one walk and one design from another. Rising
a few feet and walking southwards, you would come
upon the terrace that overlooked the river.
Iam tempted to quote Ellis Heywood's fascinating
description of that other garden, some miles farther
down the stream, where Henry's faithful Chancellor,
Wolsey's successor, walked with his children.
" There each child, each servant, had his own
domain and his own work. There the friends
gathered to talk with More," he says in his pretty
Italian memory of the martyr More,1 " on a little
lawn set in the midst of the garden, on which was
a little grass ' mount.' It was a happy spot, crowned
with perpetual verdure, having flowering shrubs and
the branches of trees woven together in sort so
1 "IIMoro," Florence, 1556,pp. 13-14-