The subtle and elegant tomb of the Tradescants

The Tradescants, pere et fils, embodied the sense of innovation and expansion of the Restoration. They were horticultural adventurers who traveled extensively in the New World and introduced exotic fruit like the pineapple to Europe. They were Charles the Second’s official gardeners, which sounds like they were clipping hedges around Buckingham Palace but actually meant they were involved in engineering new hardy varieties of essential grains and revolutionizing fruit propagation.

Explorers ended up bringing them all sorts of tchotkes, like Pocahontas’s dad’s cape, out of respect for their accomplishments. Their house in Lambeth became known as “The Ark” and is credited as being the first public museum in England. A creepy lawyer named Elias Ashmole befriended the younger Tradescant and encouraged him to leave the collection to Ashmole, who would take reeeeeeeal good care of it. Before Tradescant could get out of the agreement, he died, and his widow took up the fight to keep the Ark out of the hands of Ashmole, who moved in next door and made her life a living hell until she conveniently turned up drowned in the pond they shared. Ashmole managed to disarm most critics by founding (and endowing) the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford with the contents of the Ark. He’s also planted in the Lambeth churchyard.