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Introduction: Barber-Surgeons

The year following he was attacked by a "most greevous ague and of long continuance". He was appointed Junior Warden of the Barber-Surgeons. In December 1597, his immortal Herbal saw the light, whether published at his own risk or not is uncertain: Johnson says it was printed at Norton's charge. In January 1598 he was appointed one of the examiners of candidates for admission to the freedom of the Barber-Surgeons' Company. The next note of his affairs is dated November 1602, when a committee of the Company was called together to consider a question of a garden for "Mr. Gerrard". No subsequent minute refers to this, but it is not unlikely that the action of the committee resulted in a lease being granted to Gerard by the Consort of James I., as under: "Anna R. "Anne by the grace of God Queene of England, Scotland ffraunce and Ireland. To ALL, & whome these prnts shall come greeting. KNOW YEE that for and in consideracon of the some of ffive shillings of lawfull money of England in the name of a ffyne to us before hand payd by John Gerrard of London Surgeon and Herbarist to the Kings matie (whereof and wherewth we acknowledge our self satisfied) as also for divers and sundry other causes and consideracons but especially of his singular and approved art skill and industrie in planting nursing and preserving plants hearbes flowers and fruits of all kindes We are pleased to graunt unto the said John Gerrard one garden plot or piece of ground belonginge and adjoning on the east part to or mansion house called Somersett howse . . . . YEELDING also and annswearing yearlie to and for our owne use onely at the due and proper seasons of the yeare a convenient proportion and quantitie of herbes flowers or fruite renewing or growing wh in the said Garden plott or piece of grounde by the arte and industrie of the said John Gerrard if they be lawfully required and demanded Given under or seale at Whitehall the ffourteenth daie of August in the yeere of the Kings Matie of England ffraunce and Ireland the second and of Scotland the eight and thirtie."

Gerard did not long enjoy the use of this garden, parting in 1605 with all interest in the lease to Robert Earl of Salisbury, second son of Lord Burleigh, then Lord Treasurer of England and Secretary of State jointly with Sir Francis Walsingham. Possibly Gerard occupied a similar position in the household of the son as in that of the father.

In 1608 he was elected Master of the Barber-Surgeons' Company, and here, as the books of the Company are missing for the period, a curtain is dropped on his affairs. There is a note that in the year 1639 the Company paid 25s. 6d. for a copy of the Herbal. He died in February 1611-12, and was buried in St. Andrew's Church, Holborn. Of his family affairs little is known, except that he was married, and that his wife assisted him professionally. Scattered through the Herbal are the names of many acquaintances, numbering more than fifty. Plants were sent to him from all the then accessible parts of the globe, and from men of almost every rank. Exotic plants came from Jean Robin, of the royal gardens in Paris, whose address is carefully recorded in the chapter "Of Barrenwoort", of which he was donor to Gerard: "It is called Epimedium; I have thought to call it Barren woort in English". Other exotics came from Camerarius of Nuremberg, from Lord Zouch who sent him choice seeds from Crete, Spain and Italy, and Nicholas Lete, a London citizen: he was a merchant, wrote Gerard, greatly in love with rare and fair flowers, for which he sent to Syria, having a servant there and in many other countries. It was Lete who sent Gerard an orange tawny Gillyflower from Poland. British plants came from a Lancashire friend, Thomas Hesketh, and a physician, Stephen Bredwell, a learned and diligent searcher of Simples in the West of England. Another contributor, James Garret, was also an apothecary, a tulip grower who every season brought new plants of sundry colours not before seen, all of which to describe particularly were to roll Sisyphus's stone or number the sands. Gerard dispatched one of his assistants as a ship's surgeon to the Mediterranean that he might bring home new plants. It may be that Sir Walter Raleigh, a botanical collector, contributed to his garden. Gerard himself travelled over a large part of England in search of Simples, but the statement in Salmon's Herbal (1710) that he lived in Lincolnshire refers to his editor, Johnson. Miss Rohde in her Old English Herbals suggests that Shakespeare may have seen Gerard's garden, for he lived for a time nearby: "In those days two such prominent men could scarcely have failed to know one another". Shakespeare, when writing some of his finest plays, 1598-1604, lived in the house of a Huguenot refugee, at the corner of Mugwell (Monkswell) Street, and almost opposite the Barber-Surgeons' Hall. And it is perhaps not insignificant that Shakespeare's plays are full of the old English herb-lore in which Gerard delighted.