452 ESSEX AND THE EARLY BOTANISTS.
great Fire of London, in the years 1667, 1668, came up abun-
dantly among the rubbish in the Ruines,' This he found a few
years later, some five miles from Dewlands, on the way to Witham,
'about the house of his honoured friend, Edward Bullock Esqre.,
at Faulkbourn Hall.' From the sporadic nature of this rare
plant it is not surprising that it has now entirely disappeared,
but the record is a most interesting one.
Ray tells us that in his day the Crocus sativus, or saffron, was
cultivated in the fields about Walden, thence denominated Saffron
Walden. 'Of the culture whereof,' he adds, 'I shall say nothing,
referring the reader to what is written by Camden.' Turning
to Camden's Britannia we find the passage of sufficient interest
to quote in full. 'The fields all about,' he says, 'look very
pleasant with saffron. For in the month of July every third year,
when the roots have been taken up, and after twenty days put
under the turf again, about the end of September they shoot forth
a bluish flower, out of the midst whereof hang three yellow chives
of saffron, which are gathered in the morning before sun-rise, and
being taken out of the flower are dried by a gentle fire. And so
wonderful is the increase, that from every acre of ground they
gather eighty or an hundred pounds of wet saffron, which when it
is dry, makes about twenty pounds. And what is more to be
admired, that ground that hath born saffron three years together,
will bear Barley very plentifully eighteen years without dunging,
and then will bear Saffron again.' The origin of the cultivation
of saffron in England is unknown. It is commonly said, and the
statement is repeated by one writer after another, that it was
introduced by one Sir Thomas Smith, into the neighbourhood of
Walden in the time of Edward III. Old Hakluyt, writing in
1582, says, 'It is reported at Saffron Walden that a pilgrim, pro-
posing to do good to his countrey, stole a head of Saffron, and hid
the same in his Palmer's staffe, which he had made hollow before of
purpose, and so he brought the root into this realme with venture
of his life, for if he had bene taken, by the law of the countrey
from whence it came, he had died for the fact.' It is evident from
this story that even in the sixteenth century Saffron had been so
long cultivated at Walden that the true history of its introduction
had been lost; and perhaps the theory of old Cole in his Adam
in Eden, published in 1657, may not be so very far wrong when
he suggested that for this plant, as for so many others, we are
indebted to the Romans. The cultivation of saffron 'about
Walden and other places thereabouts, as corne in the fields,' has