great variety of
"uncommon rarities." A catalogue of them was published in 12mo. in the year
1656, by his son, under the name of _Museum Tradescantianum_; to which are
prefixed portraits, both of the father and son, by Hollar. This Museum or
"Ark," as it was termed, was frequently visited by persons of rank, who
became benefactors thereto; among these were Charles the First, Henrietta
Maria (his queen), Archbishop Laud, George Duke of Buckingham, Robert and
William Cecil, Earls of Salisbury, and many other persons of distinction:
among them also appears the philosophic John Evelyn, who in his _Diary_ has
the following notice:

"Sept. 17, 1657, I went to see Sir Robert Needham, at Lambeth, a
relation of mine, and thence to John Tradescant's museum."

"Thus John Tradeskin starves our wondering eyes
By boxing up his new-found rarities."

Ashmole, in his _Diary_ (first published by Charles Burman in 1717), has
three significant entries relating to the subject of our notice, which I
transcribe _verbatim_:

"Decem. 12, 1659. Mr. Tredescant and his wife told me they had been
long considering upon whom to bestow their closet of curiosities when
they died, and at last had resolved to give it unto me.

"April 22, 1662. Mr. John Tredescant died.

"May 30, 1662. This Easter term I preferred a bill in Chancery against
Mrs. Tredescant, for the rarities her husband had settled on me."

The success of Ashmole's suit is well known; but the whole transaction
reflects anything but honour upon his name. The loss of her husband's
treasures probably preyed upon the mind of Mrs. Tradescant; for in the
_Diary_ before quoted, under April 4, 1678, Ashmole says:

"My wife told me that Mrs. Tradescant was found drowned in her pond.
She was drowned the day before at noon, as appears by some
circumstance."

This was the same Hesther Tradescant who erected the Tradescant monument in
Lambeth churchyard. She was buried in the vault where her husband and his
son John (who "died in his spring") had been formerly laid.

The table monument to the memory of the Tradescants was erected in 1662.
The sculptures on the four sides are as follows, viz. on the _north_, a
crocodile, shells, &c., and a view of some Egyptian buildings; on the
_south_, broken columns, Corinthian capitals, &c., supposed to be ruins in
Greece, or some Eastern country; on the _east_, Tradescant's arms, on a
bend three fleurs-de-ly