John Tradescant the elder

John Tradescant the elder was an English gardener, collector and traveller in the early seventeenth century. His plant collecting and cabinet of curiosities helped shape the culture of natural history and aristocratic gardens in Stuart England.

John Tradescant the elder was born in Suffolk. Tradescant travelled widely collecting plants and curiosities, worked as gardener to leading patrons including the Duke of Buckingham and established the collection later known as the Tradescant Ark, a foundation of the Ashmolean Museum.

Philippa Gregory’s Earthly Joys makes John Tradescant the Elder its historical protagonist, following his rise from practical gardener to collector and trusted servant of Jacobean grandees. Work for Robert Cecil and George Villiers draws him into court patronage, while journeys across Europe enlarge the plants and curiosities that will become the Tradescant collection. Gregory uses his dependence on powerful patrons to connect horticulture and discovery with the unstable politics leading from James I into the reign of Charles I.