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The earliest wildernesses: Their meanings and developmentsKristina TaylorPublished online: 30 Apr 2012.

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The earliest wildernesses: their meanings and developments

KRISTINA

For England, the second half of the sixteenth century was a time of upheaval

and social change, and of great discoveries in the New World. The Protestant

religion became firmly established through the long reign of Elizabeth I, and

English translations of the Bible allowed those who read to have a conversation

with God by themselves without the interventions of a priest. Wealth was

created for many at court including merchants and lawyers, who built new

houses on estates where the word wilderness started being applied to parts of

their gardens. This essay will examine how the term arose and was used in

gardens by looking at the meaning of the word in social parlance and its

literary context, and at descriptions of some gardens themselves. A common

modem explanation as to what the wilderness might have been in early

gardens is that they represented how man had tamed nature. But is that actually

what people were thinking at the beginning of the seventeenth century when

they were creating these spaces in their gardens?

By r634 what a wilderness should look like and how it was used were

defined by that developed at Wilton House for the 4th Earl of Pembroke and

his second wife Lady Anne Clifford (figure I). As Lord Chamberlain,

Pembroke regularly entertained Charles I and his court at Wilton and so the

garden created by Isaac de Caus, which looked to the flat walled enclosures of

the Veneto, would have been very influential.

The wilderness, between an embroidered box parterre with fountains next to

the house and a third garden area, was an Italian boscetto designed with symmetry

and neatness. I Its very fame meant that whatever the other earlier wildernesses

may have looked like, or were used for, they were gradually forgotten and

wilderness was then applied to regular wooded parts of gardens, sometimes

centuries after they were planted, its original meaning and function now lost.

ISSN 146o~1 176 © 2008 TAYLOR & F-RANCIS VOL. 28, NO. 2

TAYLOR

The earliest use of the word has a religious meaning and comes from

Chaucer in r390.2 'Here is non home, here nys but wyldernesse' and it means a

place one wanders or loses one's way in, in relation to heaven or future life,

when applied to the present life. This meaning continued to be accepted.

The word later takes on a completely new and significant meaning when it

appears as a place name on the r 547 court roll in the heart of the Sussex Weald,

at Hadlow Down." Le Wylderness is a farm situated in the middle of the Weald,

which was a great open woodland covering large parts of the south-east of

England and existing from before the Norman conquest." In fact the word

weald means wood and the form wild(e}, which occurs early in the sixteenth

century is used with a similar meaning." The poet and tutor to Lady Anne

Clifford, Samuel Daniel writes to her mother Lady Margaret in r603: 'What a

faire seate hath he, from whence he may the boundless wastes and weilds <if man

suruey'." Here he means a lightly wooded district or an open country, areas

which were highly managed and valuable to the rural economy, but not

wasted ground.

In literature, there was another concurrent yet different meaning of a 'wild or

uncultivated land', 7 relating to what was thought of as a place from a Bible

scene, particularly in The Faerie Queene by Spencer:

He traueild through wide wastefull ground,

That nought but desert wildernesse shew'd all around."

Sometimes the word could also mean a place where there were wild anirnals as

in Shakespeares's Titus Andronicusi"

Why, foolish Lucius, dost though not perceive

That Rome is but a wilderness of tigers>!"

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STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF GARDENS AND DESIGNED LANDSCAPES: TA YLOR

FIGURE I. Wilton house and its garden from the south c. 16]4 by Jacques Callot. Courtesy ofProvost and Fellows of Worcester College, Oxford.

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THE EARLIEST WILDERNESSES

Renaissance writers and poets had great fun making puns out of words I I and

they would have been aware that 'wilderness' was a compound of 'wilder', theOld English meaning of which is wild deer. 12 So, it is easy to understand howwild animals crept into this explanation. Two very closely related words, weald

and wilderness, with similar meanings and origins, were therefore used at thevery end of the sixteenth century to describe uncultivated land with some treesand with wild animal associations.

Latin, as a language, was known and used amongst those at the EnglishCourt on a daily basis, and a dictionary of the period, compiled in 1602,

translates in the desert or wildernesse as in deserto. There is also an interestingnumber of translations ofspecific, wild and verdant areas in and out of gardens,like the place where Bryers grow as vepretum.t! and places thick ofbushes translates asvespices.i" No other Latin words translate as wilderness. Given that there wereperfectly good descriptive words for places of verdure current at the timesuggests that in deserto was not only a description but had a metaphysicalmeaning too.

The French, at this time, also understood metaphysical meaning withingardens and they clearly had spiritual meanings connected with the wordswilde, wildness and wildernesse, which all have their separate translations intoFrench, wilderness meaning both desert and solitude. I 5 The reverse translation

of desert gives us a desart, a wilderness, a place unfrequented, or abandoned ifinhabitants, and for solitude explained as solitude, solitarinesse, lonlinesse, privacy,

want of company, deavelinesse; a desert, wildernesse, uncouth and uninhabited place; a

forlorne, or succourlesse estate. ' 6 This gives us a good explanation as to what theFrench considered the English meant by wilderness and its meaning of asolitary place devoid of people. At Chenonceau in 1559 there was aninscription under a tree that referred to a wilderness of bushes, desers et

buyssons, which the nymphs and gods having been so disgusted by they hadhidden away.'7 However, this use of desers within a garden context was

unusual.Given these meanings perhaps we can reassess what the garden at Nonsuch,

Surrey, may have looked like, where for the first time wilderness is used todescribe part of its garden. The original description was written by theReverend Anthony Watson, after 1582 in Latin; the word wilderness appears ina different script in English as headings in the margins. Professor MartinBiddle, who was the Director of excavations at Nonsuch Palace in 1959-60,

has translated a description of the garden, which suggests a place not very

accessible but loved by the goddesses, with wild birds and animals, some fierceand possibly depicted by statues. IS It is shady and with fine exotic trees,

including an olive, with an assortment of fruits, some of which are not wild.

There is an enclosure with birds and a good variety of trees, shrubs and plants.There are three paths.

It is unfortunate that various different Latin words are all translated as

wilderness, so that their particular meanings are lost along with a description of

what the garden parts actually looked like and what it was meant to be. What

was Watson describing? There are four different words translated as wilderness:

desertum, eremus, cremus, and solitudo. For instance, the Latin word that Watsoninitially uses is desertum.'? This word names the space and means the landscape

of Mount Sinai, the wilderness of the Bible, and may also mean a spiritualplace too. However, cremus means tinder or brushwood.r" Per ipsa cremi viscera,

should read: through the very heart if the brushwood, instead of through the very

heart if this wilderness. Now we have a description of undergrowth in an area,certainly untidy, which needs cutting back." I

Then later, on line 45, solitudo and eremus appear together: Habet suam

umbram solitude, et eremus ... and these have been translated as The wilderness has

a shade if its own. Eremus describes an uninhabited forest area and cornbinedwith solitudo emphasises a sense of being alone and Ioneliness.r" So, W atson's

lyrical and certainly fantasy-driven description of a shaded wooded area can be

interpreted as a lonely area with trees and shrubs, and as such not designed, butwith rich spiritual significance.

Soon after Watson wrote this description, Nonsuch became the property ofQueen Elizabeth 1. Fortunately, we have another description, in German, of

the garden from 1599, from Thomas Platter travelling from Switzerland:

... a wood in the gardens, with fine straight long alleys through it fashioned inthis wise: In the very densest part of the wood about here a great many trees areuprooted and cleared, within a breadth of some eighteen to twenty feet, along astraight course, so that there is a vista from one end to the other. And here andthere they are portioned off on either side with high boards, so that the balls maybe played in the shade of these same alleys very pleasantly, as in an enclosedtennis court, and other amusing pastimes may also be pursued, while thedelicious song of the birds in the tall trees, densely planted along the sides inordered array afford one great delight. From here we came to a maze orlabyrinth surrounded by high shrubberies to prevent one passing over orthrough them.":'

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STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF GARDENS AND DESIGNED LANDSCAPES: TAYLOR

In a short period with a new owner, the wilderness was being used for

recreation, and it had lost its original meaning and form.

This lyrical meaning of such informal pieces of woodland is confirmed bythe poem, 'The Induction to The Mirror for Magistrates', by Sir Thomas

Sackville (1563) describing interaction with a goddess in the woods:

And with these words, as I upraised stoodAnd gan to follow her that straightforth pacedEre I was ware, into a desert woodWe now were come, where, hand in hand embraced,She led the way and through the thick so tracedAs, but I had been guided by her mightIt was no way for any mortal wight.f"

It is significant that he used the term desert wood and not wilderness, suggesting

that this particular type oflandscape was not called a wilderness at that time. SirThomas, one of the most educated and refined men of his day, lived in the

Weald near Withyam, Sussex, was cousin to Elizabeth I and her Lord High

Treasurer in 1599.

The idea of desert wood appears again in the same context in 'Hymen's

Triumph' a play written for Queen Anne by Samuel Daniel and published in

1615. It is about love and nymphs in the woods, and at the very end, rather

poignantly it is said:

No Lydia, I will not take Thirsis course:Hide me for ever in these desert woodsr"

In both of these pieces of poetry the desert wood is where there is intercourse

between man and the supernatural, and it has a parallel function to lucus, thesacred grove. At Nonsuch, Watson described both a desertum and a lucus, and it

seems that these separate areas might both be performing differentmetaphysical functions. Helen Leach suggested that the different planting

style and function between the two wooded areas at Nonsuch would have hadseparate origins, the lucus in Classical Roman literature and the desertum in early

R · R 26enaissance omance poetry.

Woods were also a place for contemplation and being alone. The prose

romance Arcadia, published in 1590, was written by Sir Philip Sidney for the

entertainment of his sister, Mary, while staying at Wilton. Some lines confirm

the use of woods where the mind might wander too:

24°

o sweet woods, the delight of solitarines!o how much I do like your solitarines!Where man's mind have a freed consideration.f"

My analysis of published and archive material of over 500 gardens at thebeginning of the seventeenth century, revealed only four named wildernesses,

Nonsuch, Knole, Syon and Ashley House. A 1607 survey ofSyon.t" Middlesex,

shows, a 4 Yz acre new orchard and a 3 acre cherry orchard planted in 1603, therest being 18 acres'? (figure 2). Dorothy, Countess of Northumberland, lived

there with her daughters, one of whom became Lady Lisle and walked in the

Wilderness at Knole with Lady Anne Clifford. Dorothy was the daughter ofWalter the rst Earl ofEssex and sister to the favourite ofElizabeth 1. By 1607 her

brother was dead and her second husband Henry oth Earl was in the Tower. Thefollowing year she began to remodel her gardens.

Along with work in the nursery and kitchen garden, there was plowing and

harrowing in the orchards, and making of new allies and walkes. A dove housewas moved to the orchard, ponds filled in and a new vine and conduit house

built. 3° In 1609 Whitthorne standards for her la: wilderness ... xviiid ... in all xxixsvi d were accounted for, making twenty treesr' ' There are records for

quicksettes and ditching if xxiii rodds about the unldernesse.t" There is no further

mention until 16 I 9 when there is general gardening and parts of the wildernesseare pruned.I" Quicksettes were often used as hedging to divide up sections of

gardens and could look very neat, as in Wimbledon's sunken garden where the

garden had a simple quartered design of knots surrounded by thorn hedges 'cutverie fynelie',34

It is not possible to work out where Syou's wilderness was within theremaining garden space, but we can conclude from these fragmentary records

that a wilderness was created in 1609 with ditching and hedges as part of the

garden, but not of the orchards. It was an ordered place with the planting of

twenty standard whitethorns and it was pruned IQ years later. It was also

Dorothy's own personal space, indicated by the Clerk of Works in the

accounts. Dorothy died in 1619 while Henry was in the Tower and a few yearslater the accounts for Syon cease. When Henry was finally freed in 1621 he

went straight to Petworth where he lived under house arrest and died I I yearslater, never enjoying Dorothy's wilderness at Syon.

Lady Jane Berkeley of Ashley House, Walton-on-Thames, also created a

wilderness. She was sister to Sir Michael Stanhope, a courtier of James 1.

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Though she had married Lord Berkeley, her second husband, in 1597 theylived apart and her brother had acquired Ashley on her behalf 3 5 The old house

was demolished and a new one built between 1602 and 1607, along with apiped water svstem.I" The garden and orchards were made at a cost of £149ros jd with fruit trees, shade trees, flowers, and:

Hawthorne, hollys, burch, ]unyper, eglentine & suche like settes for hedges."?

A year later, there appeared in the accounts:

Trees for frute & shade £7 I8s 8dsettes for the wild ernes £ I0 I 5s 5dHearbes, Seedes, Plantes & flowers £5 8s 7 Y2dConyes to Store the warren £4 I IS 3d38

The cost for the hedging was considerable and if the trees and plantsmentioned above were for this space too, it would suggest a distinct enclosurewith trees and perhaps with a similar treatment of hedges to Wimbledon. Thefirst edition Ordnance Survey map, 1870, shows a well with nearby pumpingmachines, and another well closer to the house. There are also three ponds anda small canal, but the map gives us no clue as to where the wilderness hadbeen. The significance of Ashley's wilderness was that it was created new for aLady, and that it was planted with settes.

Knole in Sevenoaks also has a large early garden area called the Wilderness,which was probably created by Sir Thomas Sackville, who regained the lease in1604 and spent the next four years remodelling the house and garden. Thoughthere is no particular documentation on the garden, given the wealth ofbotanical detail included in the house decorations and that he built a colonnadeon the south side leading out into the garden, we can speculate that he mighthave named and developed Knole's Wilderness.!" The first depiction of thegarden, in Britannia Illustrata, was drawn about 1698, surrounded by a stonewall, an enclosure of 6.5 hectares (figure 3). The Wilderness is separated fromthe main garden and house by another wall, giving two clearly defined areas.The first written evidence in June 1612 was when wood was harvested:

FI G U RE 2. Syon 1607, Ra/ph Tresswell. Courtesy of the Duke cif Northumberland.Paid to Richard Holmes labourer for digging of ground in the wilderness to setosiers on and for cutting of some osiers to sett before in the whole. I IS 6d. 4

0

A large stew pond and good supply ofspring water would account for the plantingofwillow. In the same accounts, Johnson the glasier is paid 5S 6d for laying a pipe.

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STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF GARDENS AND DESIGNED LANDSCAPES: TAYLOR

FIGURE 3. Knole 1698, Kip & Knyff published 1708. Courtesy if Lord Sackville.

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In October 1617 Lady Anne Clifford, wife of Richard, the jrd Earl

Sackville and Sir Thomas' grandson, says in her diary:

The zyth, being Saturday, My Lady Lisle, my Lady ---, my C02. BarbaraSidney & I walked with them all the Wildernesse over & had much talk of myC02. Clifford and other matters.f '

Lady Anne, living quietly at Knole, often writes in her diary of being in the

garden but on this particular visit from her lady friends, she specifies that it is

the Wilderness where they go to talk over her pressing private affairs.

Its use as a place to grow and harvest valuable wood crops seems to carry

on throughout the seventeenth century and the next reference is an account ifhop poles, wood and fagots cutt and sold in the wildernesse and elsewhere from

1654.42 Four thousand hop poles, probably chestnut, were cut and sold.

Other poles were cut from willow, aspen and birch, some from pollards. In

all I7 cord of faggots and wood were sold that year, including 6750 poles. In

1688 M. Roberts the tanner took 40 yards of tan as it lay in the wilderness, and

Wm. Smale is paid for 6 days for mowing and making hay.43 Part of this area

starts to be called the old and back orchard in 1687, shown by a clear planting

of fruit trees in rows.t" However, the orchard ends at a distinctly heavily

wooded area. The function and design at Knole as a working, practical

landscape was very different from other named Wildernesses in the mid

seventeenth century, which were viewed as designed bosquets within the

pleasure garden.

Richard Sackville died in 1624 and in 1630 his widow, Lady Anne Clifford,

married Philip Herbert, who had just become the 4th Earl of Pembroke and

owner ofWilton House. An extensive remodelling of the house and garden was

undertaken. It cannot be a coincidence that when she arrives at Wilton a

wilderness was created too, even though the planting was clearly very different

from that at Knole. It has been suggested that the garden would have been

designed with a great deal ofher input and that it celebrated the couple's love.f?

Wilton was a garden full of symbolism, connected to courtly life. In the

iconography ofthe garden, the parterre, closest to the house, represents love and

chastity with the statues ofDiana, Venus, Susanna and Cleopatra. Probably the

first to be completed at the beginning of their marriage, it celebrates the

goodness ofLady Anne. However, the second part, the wilderness, with covered

walks, represents fertility contrasting with drunkenness, with the opposing

statues of Bacchus and Flora. Depressingly this reflected how the marriage had

developed, even before the garden was completed and by the end of 1634, Anneand Philip were living separately.t"

It is possible that Lady Anne's wilderness at Wilton was not the first, as her

brother-in-law William Herbert had created a fine garden in the 1620S, with

walks, hedges and arbours in intricate designs, which seemed almost like a

labyrinth."? But the description, of a geometric and symbolic garden, by the

poet John Taylor stops short of describing and naming a wilderness or even

indicating to what meaning and use any part of the garden was put. There was

a social connection of importance, which would have meant that Lady Anne

and William would have had very similar upbringings. Mary Sidney, his

mother, had employed Samuel Daniel as his tutor in the 1590S. Daniel then

went on to live with Lady Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, to be tutor to

her daughter Lady Anne.

A wilderness at Audley End, Essex, is also pertinent as it may have been

created by 1614.48 There are no records of when it was actually planted, or

what the trees were, but circumstantial evidence clearly suggests that an

ordered wood was put in at that time. It was first shown and named as a

wilderness in 1676, on Winstanley's plan and depicted in a drawing as mature

mixed wood between the house and the canalt" (figures 4 and 5). Visitors

would have to enter it either through the bowling green or the cellar

(kitchen) garden. It is clear from an analysis of the area in Tudor times,

before the house and grounds were improved, that there had been two ponds

on the site of what would later be the wilderness. 5° Work on building the

palace for Thomas Howard started in 1605. By 1614 it was finished in time

for two visits by King jarnes." I But Howard fell out of favour in 1618 and the

following year was fined £30,000 for embezzling. 52 John Evelyn, who visited

in 1654, says that nothing more than the minimum of repair and maintenance

had been done since 1614.53 A survey plan from 1666 indicates a mature

wooded area in quincunx pattern on the wilderness site. 54 It is possible the

name wilderness may have been assigned at any time, particularly when

Thomas's grandson James inherited Audley End in 1640 and brought with

him his wife Susanna Rich. Her family home was Lees Priory, Essex, where

there was a wilderness too.

Wildernesse as a word, would have become much more familiar through the

use of the KingJames Bible translated and published in English in 1611. 55 Over

450 entries use the word wildernesse, most of them meaning a desert

pastureland.Y' More than one Hebrew word was translated as wildernesse, and

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there are 19 entries for specific named Wilderness places. Even within the

Bible's text the term became homogenous, and with no experience of what

the landscape of the Holy land actually looked like it was left to the reader's

imagination as to what it was. So, with a new readily available English Bible

the use of the word wilderness would spread quickly.

Surprisingly few early seventeenth-century poets used wilderness, suggesting

that they had not experienced this garden space. One poet did, however: John

Donne became the Rector of St Nicholas, Sevenoaks, in 1616, where he

would preach once a year. The spire of St Nicholas can be seen from the

garden at Knole, where Donne would stay with his great friend Richard

Sackville. S7 In one of his Holy Sonnets, he twice uses wilderness, once in the

wooded and once in the religious senser'"

As do the Owles in the vast Wildernesse ...For in the Wildernesse, the sword did wait

Though we cannot be certain he was referring to Knole, his close connection

may have influenced the first quotation. Another poet, Rowlands, also refers

to a wilderness in the 'Melancholy Knight', a satirical poem from 1615, but not

in a garden context.

My mind is full of castles, towers, and Townes, woods wildernesses, stately fieldsand groves with cartel, most innumerable droves. 59

Another term wildness, which has been confused with wilderness, is used in early

seventeenth-century garden contexts, but the words were not interchangeable

at this time. The introduction to the opening of a masque Oberon the FairyPrince reads:

The first face of the scene appeared all obscure, and nothing perceived but a darkrock, with trees beyond it and all wildness that could be presented; till, at onecorner of the cliff, above the horizon, the Moon began to shew, and rising, asatyr was seen by her light to put forth his head and call.60

Written by Ben Jonson for Prince Henry, it was performed with courtiers,

including Richard Sackville, on new-year's night of 161O!I61 I. Later, in that

scene, the stage opens up to show a beautiful Palace. Sir Roy Strong writes

that in all court masques the garden is always symbolic of wild nature tamed,

FIGURE 4. Plan of Audley End by Winstanley 1676. (Y211713) Essex Record Office.

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FIGURE 5. General Prospect ofAudley End by Winstanley 1676. (YZ117/j) Essex Record Office.

and in this masque wildness refers to the description of the landscape.?' It does

not refer to a garden space.

Errors in the transposition of Bacon's essay 'Of Gardens', published 1625,

have contributed to the mistake in equating the meaning of wildness with

wilderness. The essay should read:

For the heath ... I wish it to be framed, as much as may be, to a naturalwildnesse. Trees, I would have none in it: but some thickets, made onely of

sweet-briar, and honeysuckle, and some wild vine amongst; And the ground set

with violets, Strawberries, and primroses. For these are sweet and prosper in theshade. And these to be in the heath, here and there, not in any Order .. _62

Bacon suggests a cultivated wild£lower garden, artfully made to look natural

and disordered but in fact carefully controlled. That Bacon envisages a heath

rather than an open woodland relates to the nature of southern English

Wealden woods, which had areas of heath framed by wood pastures and

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glades. It is a mistake to interpret Bacon's heath as a wilderness. Bacon, andJ onson

in the Masque ofFaeries, do not equate the word wildness with wilderness. The words

have different meanings. We know this because in another essay that Bacon wrote

'Touching an Holy Warre' in describing the Empire of the Turks he says:

And yet this nation hath made the Garden of the W orld, a wildernesse ... whereOttomans horse sets his foot, people will come up very thin.6 3

So, Bacon's heath is a wildflower meadow, perhaps similar to one William

Robinson later created at Gravetye Manor. The word wildness was also used in

the context of weeds in the garden. Lawson writes in r6r7 in The CountryHousewife's Garden: ' ... the wildnesse of the earth and weeds ... is killed byfrosts and drought'. 64

*****The mid sixteenth to mid seventeenth century was a transitional time for

the meanings relating to gardens, and in Italy emerged the idea of the garden as

third nature, which was a special combination of nature and culture. So that

creating a garden, for instance, out of waste land - first nature - would have

a particular meaning for its maker.I" Gardens also had allegorical meanings

connected with the soul, with their origins in paradise. There were different

ideas as to what paradise was and some teaching suggested that it could be

found on Earth, somewhere inaccessible, 'which might become the goal of

man's search and, in a literal as well as metaphysical way, the object of his

dreams.P" This was a concept that was particularly taken up by women,

perhaps as a spiritual necessity, because of their place in society and also

because of the ambiguity of who women were.

When Elizabeth I made an early speech at Tilbury she said: 'I have the body

of a weak and feeble woman: but I have the heart and stomach of a King',

deliberately mixing up the genders. As a woman she survived and ruled

England for over 40 years only because it was accepted that she was either an

exception or that she did not exercise any real power.67 Women were seen as

having poor emotional control and reasoning, and their morality was in

question. They were both subordinate to their husband and disqualified from

full participation in the spiritual life, though this was about the here-and-now,

meaning that eventually they could be equal to men in the joys of paradise.

One way that women, including those who were highly educated at Court,

believed they could spiritually succeed and thus win a place in paradise was to

suppress carnal feelings and live a virtuous life. 68

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Protestant teaching suggested that being alone sometimes was a highly

desirable state,69 while other writings confirm the importance of the garden to

lend succour to the soul:

And that wee may come to this Paradise, we must keepe welle the garden of oursoules; that must be hortus inclusus a garden shut up carefully, so that thedestroying beasts come not into it, and that the malicious enemy so not weeds in

it: that garden we must plant with all kinds of fruits, with all the virtues, allgraces: and as Saint Hierome speaketh, the chiefe plante must be lignumsapiente, the tree of wisedome. 7°

Given that two of the named early seventeenth century Wildernesses were

made for women and a third, Knole, was used and written about by Lady

Anne Clifford, we can speculate that women may have been using this garden

space for contemplation and to work at being virtuous.

There was another more practical function for the wilderness at the beginning

of the seventeenth century. Robert Burton refers to the artificiall Wildernesses in

roz r , very much in passing, when explaining how to cure melancholv.?" Just as

the term wilderness was undergoing a change in meaning so was that of

melancholy. Melancholy in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries did not

mean what we now think of as depression, the need to be alone, or mental

illness. It was a specific term, one ofthe four humours, which related to how the

body and mind were understood by ancient and mediaeval physiologists. The

significance ofmelancholy and the garden has been discussed, with emphasis on

its intellectual meaning.?" However, it could also be a physical illness, a

condition ofhaving too much black bile. In r621, Burton wrote his book in an

attempt to analyse, inform and solve how to deal with the condition. As there

were many causes and manifestations he began by suggesting airing the roorn.i"

'A clean Aire cheares up the spirits, exhilarates the mind, a thicke blacke, misty,

tempestuous contracts, overthrows'. He also recommended the importance of

exercise before eating when the body is empty, perhaps in the artefidallwilderness. 'But the most pleasing of all outward pastimes is that of "Aretus,deambulatio per amna loca'''.74 Walking to keep healthy gives a good explanation

as to why there was a proliferation ofwalks in gardens at this time, the wilderness

being suitable for a similar function.

However, for some owners there was perhaps a distinction between the art

of melancholy and meditation/solitude, because Ham House had both a

wilderness and a blacke melancholic walk (figure 6). The wilderness was first

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THE EARLIEST WILDERNESSES

mentioned in 1653, but could have been planted earlier, between 1633 and1639 when the house was being remodelled for William Murray.i" He had

been young Charles I's whipping boy and gained the lease of Ham in 1626.

The original design for Ham in 1610, for Sir Thomas Vavasour, did not

include the land that the wilderness and melancholy walk were on."? Though

it is not known when this land was acquired, a large wall was constructed in

1633, perhaps the boundary wall, and the additional garden would have been

in place by 1642, when Murray went into exile leaving his wife and daughtersbehind, returning in 1653.77

As well as Anne Clifford, Mary Boyle, later Countess of Warwick, also

wrote about walking in the wilderness. In 1641 she married Charles Rich, of

Lees Priory, brother-in-law ofJames Howard ofAudley End, and delighted innothing so much as being alone in the wilderness. The gardens lying to the

west of the house, the River Ter along one side, had a long grove with anarbour, a banqueting house and a wilderness.?" The significance of this

wilderness has more to do with Mary's use of it than its planting, her diaries

giving us the best clues as to her particular meaning of it: 'In the morning, assoon as I waked, I bless'd God, then I retired myself into the wilderness tomeditate'i?"

According to Dr Walker her virtue was that she walked for two hoursmeditating daily: 'In which Divine art she was an accomplished mistress bothin set times and occasional'. 80 She used the wilderness to enhance her

meditation and to get closer to God, in the very same way that Jesus did whenhe spent 40 days in the wilderness.

Today it is difficult for us to comprehend her constant need to think about

her sins, death, eternity and the special mercies God granted to her throughout

her life. Her introspection was certainly to do with being a woman and with

Christian doctrine of the time, possibly intensified by the experiences and

effects of the Civil War. However, her diary and use of the wilderness is unlikeLady Anne Clifford's, sixty years earlier. Lady Anne never writes about going

into the Wilderness at Knole to meditate. She was devout and learned but in

her forays into the garden, sometimes with a bible, we do not know whethershe connected the garden to her soul. 81

FIGURE 6. Ham House Garden, Plan attributed to John Sleazer & Jan Wyck c.1671-2.Courtesy of Victoria & Albert Museum, London ©NTPL.

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STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF GARDENS AND DESIGNED LANDSCAPES: TAYLOR

The creation of the wilderness also reached the landed gentry in the more

distant parts ofEngland before the Civil war. Edward Lloyd inherited Llanforda

Hall, Shropshire, in 1634 and for the next few years transformed its gardens.

However, after the sequestration of his estates during the Civil War he wrote in

a chastened fashion to his mother, no longer able to be patron to poets and

harpists, his only ambition to rebuild his estate and worship God in the garden:

In my gardens I must make my address to God ... divine contemplation can

make gardens as pleasing to the soul as they are to the body. '" I have beencharged with folly for my gardens and walks, for my wilderness and fountain andyou dear mother have been at distant with me for them as to the charges, and thecharges charges then with vanity tis true ... there is not such a noble and

gentleman like vanity ... as gardens and walks. 82

There were new and important gardens created from the end of the sixteenth

century that did not have wildernesses. Most prominent were those ofRobert

Cecil, at Hatfield House, with his innovative water gardens, and his brother

Thomas, Lord Burghley, who created a unique terraced Italianate garden at

Wimbledon by 1609.83 Though the garden layouts were old fashioned, they

were nonetheless innovative and the lack ofwildernesses indicates that the idea

of an 'artificial' wilderness had not developed sufficiently, even within court

circles. Perhaps the many walks the Cecils created were enough for

constitutional needs and that a nebulous wooded area, 'a desert wood', had

no place in their new gardens. However, by the time of the Civil War

wildernesses had been developed with new owners at Hatfield in 1650 and at

Wimbledon, which was first noted in 1649.84 This suggests that by then having

a wilderness had become an essential element of a fashionable garden.

Lieutenant Hammond wrote an account of his travels around the south of

England and from this we have a good contemporary description of a number

of important gardens. About his visit to Wilton in 1634 he specifically uses

wilderness when he describes the area around the River Nadder in the garden,

suggesting either that this was what the area was called by those living at the

house, or, what he expected a wilderness to look like. This is significant

because the designer Isaac de Caus did not use the word when he published his

book later in 1645, writing instead: 'two groves cutt with diverse walkes'. ss So

Hammond's label would suggest that the wilderness had already become an

expected part of the private garden belonging to the house, by 1632, when

Wilton was being planted (see figure I).

248

Hammond also describes a wilderness at Petworth in 1634:

From hence I march' d along the chiefe Mansion up-on one of those 2 ffiles ofWalkes ... To the Wilderness; wherein are 2 walkes both alike in length, andbeing 400 of my paces, wch are overshadow'd wth sycamore trees & guardedwth 200 rankes and ffiles of pleasant, young fflourishing growing Plants, & allplanted in a comely and orderly decorum. 86

However, examination of the early seventeenth century accounts has failed to

find any mention of a wilderness. This is significant since Petworth was owned

by the oth Earl of Northumberland, owner ofSyon, where there was one, and

parts of both household accounts are written in the same hand.

Ralph Tresswell made a survey of Petworth in 1610, which shows 'Birchen

walkes, a nursery, a hopp garden and scicorners' in the area that Hammond

would later describe as a Wilderness87 (figure 7). The walkes had been planted

up soon after Henry inherited Petworth in 1585, when he embarked on a

programme of improving his estates and income. 88 By the time he was released

from the Tower in 1621, these plantings had matured.f" Henry died in 1632

and there was a lull in garden improvements, as his son enjoyed a career in the

Navy."? So when Hammond visited in 1634 what he actually saw were mature

birch walks, and an out-grown nursery, lined with large sycamore trees.

Maybe it looked like, and performed the function of, a wilderness for him, but

it certainly was not designed or planted as one.

This raises the question of whether another wilderness that Hammond

described at St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, belonging to Lady Wotton,

was really called that at the time or if this was a romantic fancy of his own.?'

He was calling walks, wildernesses, suggesting that there were connecting

functions and planting patterns between the two areas. It might also explain

why the Cecils had no wildernesses, as the lime walk at Wimbledon and those

at Hatfield performed these functions without the symbolism.

By 1639 the wilderness was a well-established concept within aristocratic

gardens. 'The strange phantasms of vanitie, as Hugo speaketh, wherein the

world still exceedeth, one is the invention of the wildernesse which is often

adjoined to great gardens belonging to great houses, and by a multitude of

thick bushes and trees affecting an ostentation of solitarinesse in the midst of

worldly pleasures.Y"

Helen Leach examined the earliest uses of wilderness in the garden and

concluded that a number of names were tried out for the wooded areas of

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THE EARLIEST WILDERNESSES

FIGURE 7. Petworth 1610, Robert TresswellJnr. Courtesy Lord Egremont PHA 3574 WestSussex Record Office.

gardens at the end of the sixteenth century but that eventually wilderness wassettled upon in the early 1600S. 9 3 It has been suggested that the function andterm wilderness and orchard were sometimes interchangeable, but at Harn,Audley End, Knole, Syon and Nonsuch they were distinct areas, even thoughwe know that some wildernesses might have had fruit trees in them, as at Hamand Knole.?" There is also an idea that the wilderness may have been a maze,or labyrinth.t" But this was almost certainly a misinterpretation of the meaning

of the garden at Wimbledon in the 1649 Parliamentary survey.The origin of wilderness in the desert wood of courtiers of Elizabeth I was

connected to the idea of a third nature, that gardens were a place thatsymbolised and so demonstrated the taming of nature. Depending on whomade or used the garden, at any particular time, would determine whetherthere was a metaphysical meaning to that space, and what that was. So that SirThomas Sackvillc's wilderness, because he had travelled in Italy, would rneansomething very different from Lady Anne Clifford's, a woman, even though itwas the same space. We can only speculate what Knole's Wilderness may havelooked like when Sir Thomas Sackville took over in 1604, and it is not evenclear he ever lived there. 9 6 On his death in 1608 his son inherited for a yearand then his grandson Richard, the third Earl, in 1609. This rapid change inownership, as at Nonsuch, may have meant that any special meaning of thearea was lost, indicating an unstable meaning of wilderness at this time.

By the mid seventeenth century owners applied this new name to areas thathad been known and used as walks, desert woods, or bosquets, as the wordwilderness became more popular in gardens, because socially it was importantfor each 'great house' to have one. Literary and romantic owners may havewanted somewhere to act out their fantasies, with Goddesses and nyrnphs, oras a venue for an outdoor feast, as at Nonsuch under the plane tree."? Women

used them and perhaps applied a special spiritual meaning, connected to theirsocial status. Those who wrote about the wilderness, like the Rev. Watson,

the Countess of Warwick and Edward Lloyd, used the space to get closer toGod. Robert Cecil, perhaps, had no need to have a wilderness at Hatfield ashis particular interest was creating elaborate waterworks. Some houses, likeKnole and Audley End, may have had a wood with readily available kindlingtinder, cremi, nearby, which was not meant to be seen by visitors and this,when fashion dictated, was adopted as a wilderness.

With changes in ownership there was often a change of use and thusmeaning, as demonstrated at Nonsuch. Inevitably there were different

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interpretations for a while until a set style and purpose were established

through the writing, lifestyle and entertainments of the Jacobean and Caroline

Courts. There was a very large walled Wilderness at Knole, which may have got

its name because it resembled a wild wood. Isaac de Caus designed a boscetto at

Wilton, to hide the River Nadder, which wound irregularly across the garden.

However, it was called a wilderness by the Herberts and Lady Anne, and by this

time it really did symbolise nature tamed. This named garden space became

quite fashionable through the fame of Wilton and through its common usage

amongst the social circles at court developed permanence in gardens towards

the end of the seventeenth and throughout the eighteenth century.

Acknowledgements

With particular thanks to Elizabeth Le Bas for all her support and Jan

Woudstra for making me want to write this essay.

I. Roy Strong, The Renaissance Garden in England(London.t oox), p. 148.

2. Oxford English Dictionary (znd edn, Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1989), Vol. 20, p. 334.

3. English Place-Name Society, The Place Names ofSussex (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1930), Vol. 7, part 2, p. 396.

4. Oliver Rackham, The Illustrated History of theCountryside (London: Phoenix, 1997), p. 134.

5. OED zrid edn, P.40.6. Ibid., p. 40.7. Ibid., p. 124.8. Ibid., p. 124.9. Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus (1588), Act 3, Scene I,

line 54.10. OED (1933), p. 124.I I. Pers. comm. Sarah Wintel, University College,

London, English Dept.12. A. H. Smith (ed.), English Place-Name Elements

(Cambridge: 1956), Vol. 2, p.266.13. M. Withals, A Dictionary in English and Latin: Devised

for the Capacitie of Children and Young Beginners(London, 1634), p. 114. This was compiled in 1602by Will Clerk.

14. Ibid., p. 113.15. Randle Cotgrave, A French-English Dictionary

(London, 1650).16. Ibid.17. Les Triomphes Faictz a L'entree du Roy a Chenonceau

Le Dymanche Dernier Jour de Mars 1559, p. 16; and

250

NOTES

Kenneth W oodhouse, Princely Gardens (London:Thames & Hudson, 1986), p. 82.

18. Martin Biddle, "The Gardens of Nonsuch", GardenHistory, 27 (1999), p. 168.

19. Ibid., p. 174, line 41.20. Ibid., p. 175, line 44.21. C. T. Lewis and C. Short, Latin Dictionary (Oxford:

1933).22. J. F. Niermayer, Medieval Latin-French/English

Dictionary (Leiden: 1976), P.380. Lewis and Short,P·I720.

23. Clare Williams, Thomas Platter's Travels in EnJ!,land,1599 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1937), pp. 190-198.The original document was written in German.

24. EmrysJones (ed.), The New Oxford Book of SixteenthCentury Verse (Oxford: 1991), p. 144.

25. Samuel Daniel, Hymen's Triumph (London: 1615),Act 5, Scene 2.

26. Helen Leach, Cultivating Myths (Auckland:Random, 2000), p.85.

27· W. A. Ringle Jr. (ed.), The Poems if Sir Philip Sidney(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p.68. MarySidney, brought up at Pensuhurst, in the Weald ofKent, was the focus and patroness of a literary circlein which Samuel Daniel and John Donne dedicatedpoems to her, many of which were not publisheduntil much later in the seventeenth century. She wasthe third wife of the znd Earl of Pembroke andmother to both the j rd and 4th Earls.

28. Syon MSS B. XIII. La A Large Plan of the Manor of

Isleworth Syon by Ralph Tresswell Jnr. (1607).29. British Library Microfilms M362 U'r 1(2).30. Ibid., M362 Ur 3 and M 365/6 UI50.31. Ibid., M362 UI 3(1), Feb 1609-Feb 1610, Roll of

Account of Christopher Ingram.]2. Ibid., M363 UI.33. West Sussex Record Office, PHA 428.34. PauIa Henderson, 'A Shared Passion: The Cecils and

their Gardens', in Patronage Culture and Power TheEarly Cecils 1559-1612 (New haven: Yale UniversityPress, 2002), p. 105. This reference to Wimbledon isfrom the Parliamentary survey of 1649.

35. Michael E. Blackman, History ofAshley Park (Waltonand Weybridge Local History Society, 1976), Paper16, p. 8.

36. Michael E. Blackman, Ashley House Building Accounts1602-1607 (Guildford: Surrey Record Society, 1977),Vol. 39, P.36. The piped water system with brassstopcoks and cistern cost a similar amount to thegarden, £152 7s 8d.

37. Ibid., P.72. These were made before July 1605.38. Ibid., p. 77.39. When Sir Thomas Sackville occupied Knole, the

wall around the garden, defining the space, hadalready been built.

40. Centre for Kentish Studies, U269 A2/z.41. D. J. H. Clifford (ed.), The Diaries if Lady Anne

Clifford (Stroud: Sutton, 1990), p. 62. Lady Anne wasin dispute with her husband Richard Sackville,cousin the Earl of Cumberland and King James I

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over the inheritance of her father's estates, which shebelieved belonged to her. As a consequence, at thistime, she was keeping away from the Court.

42. CKS, U269 E27.43. CKS, U269 A 42/I & 2 (1687).44. Kristina Taylor, The Park and Garden at Knole,

Conservation Issues. Thesis for the AA 200 I, atSevenoaks Library and Centre for Kentish Studies,p.26.

45. Strong, p. 159·46. Clifford, p. 100.47. Strong, pp. 122-123.48. Michael Sutherill, Audley End Guide Book (English

Heritage, 1995), p. 19.49. Henry Winstanely, A General Plat of ye Royall Palace

if Audley End & Offices & Gardens Belonging to It(1676), and General Prospect of the Royal Palace ifAudleyene (1676). Essex Record Office, BraybrookeArchives Y2,11713 & 5.

50. Thomas Tompkins, Scrapbook in Audley End House,Plate 36, Y2, [17/I7. This is an r Srh-century copyof a lost Tudor original pre-1605.

5I.]. Nichols, The Progress of James 1 (1828), Part 2,P.746, and Part 3, p. 12.

52. P.]. Drury & 1. R. Gow, Audley End Essex (London:HMSO, 1984), PP.4, 4 1, 44, and 54·

53. E. S. Beer (ed.), The Diary ofJohn Evelyn (Oxford:Clarendon Press, [955), Vo!. 3, pp. 140-141.

54. George Sargeant, Public Record Office, MPE 366.55. King James I, The Holy Bible (London: Robert

Barker, 161 I).56. Robert Young, Analytical Concordance to the Holy

Bible (London: Lutterworth Press, [983), p. 1005.57. Vita Sackville-West, Knole and the Sackvilles (ath edn,

5th impression, Ernest Benn, 1984), p. 69.58. A Concordance to the English Poems C!f John Donne

(Chicago: Packard & Company, 1940), pp. 332 and335. This is tentatively dated to between 1608 and161 5.

59. S. Rowlands, The Melancholy Knight (London: 1615).60. John Nichols, The Progresses of King James the First

(London: Society of Antiquaries, 1828), P.376.

THE EARLIEST W1LDERNESSES

61. Strong, p. 92.62. John Dixon Hunt and Peter Willis (eds), The Genius

of the Place (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000),

P·55·63. Francis Bacon, Certaine Miscellany Works C!f the Right

Honourable Francis Lo. Verulam Viscount S. Alban.(London: William Rawley 1629), p. 105.

64. W. Lawson, The Countrvhousewfe's Garden (London:1617), Chapter 2, P.4.

65. John Dixon Hunt, Greater Perfections (London:Thames & Hudson, 2000), pp. 32-34.

66. A. Bartlett Giamatti, The Earthly Paradise & theRenaissance Epic (Princeton University Press, 1966),

P·15·67. Betty S. Travitsky and Adell F. Seeff, Attending to

Women in Early Modern England (University ofDelaware Press, [994), p. 220.

68. Denise Riley, Am I That Name? (Macmillan, 1988),

P·25·69. Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World (AlIen

Lane, 1983), p. 268.70. Michael Jennin, A Commentary on the Whole Book of

Ecclesiastes (London: 1639), p. 36, Chapter 2, verse 5.This book was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth ofBohemia, the sister of Charles I, who had arenowned garden Hortus Palatinus. She was also afriend of Lady Anne Clifford.

7 i . Robert Burton, TIle Anatomy of Melancholy (Oxford,1621), p. 342.

72. Strong, pp. 2[ 5-219. This is written about men andfrom their perspective.

73· Burton, p. 335·74· Ibid., p. 339·75. This Blacke or Melancholy walk is to the left of the

Slezer and Wyck plan of figure 6. The wilderness is atthe top middle. Inventory made roth September 1653,Ham House Archive, National Trust: There were 253furr trees, & 40 peare and apple trees, 6 mulberie treesand 4 cornelion cherrie trees in the wilderness, as wellas I medlar tree and 25 plumbe trees up against thewilldernis wall. The blacke walke had 2 virginhollitrees and 27 plumbe trees of severall kinds.

76. Mark Girouard, The Smythson Collection of the RIBA.Architectural History, 1961-2, Vo!. 5, p. 70.

77. Tollemache MS 116, Ham House Archive, NationalTrust.

78. Mary E. Palgrave, Mary Rich Ccountess of Warwick1625-1678 (London: JM Dent & Co, 1901), PP·96and 203.

79. Ibid., P.196. Her writings were written between1663 and just before she died in 1678. Thewilderness was already at Lees when she married in164 1.

80. Ibid., p. 196.8I. Clifford, pp. 50-5 I.

82. P. A. Stamper, A Survey of Historic Parks and Gardensin Shropshire. A compendium of Site Reports ... 1994-6(Shropshire Archaeology Service Report 55, 1996).Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole (1825), pp. 101-102.

83. Henderson, pp. 99-120.84. Hatfield Accounts: for Thomas Darrell 1649-50, 14

January (Box L/ [ I) still owned by the Cecil family,and Wimbeldon Parliamentary survey of 1649 whenthe property was owned by Queen Henrietta Maria.

85. Jan Woudstra, Thesis on i rth and t Sth. CenturyWildernesses (MA, University of York, 1986), P.49,and Isaac de Caus, LeJardin de Wilton (1645).

86. British Library Landsdowne 213 ff361.87. West Sussex Record Office PHA 5417.88. Ibid., PHA 424 & 425.89. Dorothy Stroud, The Gardens and Park (Apollo, May

1977), p. 334·90. Ibid., p. 335.9 t , David Coffin describes the Canterbury garden is in

his book, The English Garden: Meditation & Memorial(Princeton University Press, 1994), P.72, but givesno evidence that the wilderness actually existed.

92. Jermin, p. 36, Chapter 2, verse 693. Leach, p. 82.94. Pers. comm. John Phibbs.95· Coffin, p. 72.96. Robert Sackville-West, Knole Guide Book (National

Trust, 1999), p. 59.97· Biddle, p. 174, line 47.

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