‘When I am tempted to overreach myself in my garden or in the great wild forests which are the courts of Europe, you can remind me that I cannot always have my own way. I cannot command a garden to grow,’ Buckingham said humbly. ‘You can remind me that even the great Cecil had to wait for what he wanted, whether it was a plant or policy.’

John shook his head in quiet dissent. ‘I can only plant your garden, my lord,’ he said softly. ‘That’s all I did for the earl. I can’t do more than that.’

For a moment he thought that Buckingham would argue, demand that there must be more. But then the young man smiled at him and dropped an arm around his shoulders and set them both walking back to the house. ‘Do that for me now, and when you trust me more, and know me better, you shall be my friend and adviser as you were Cecil’s,’ he said. ‘You will make it grow for me, won’t you, John? You will do your best for me, even if I am impatient and ignorant?’

Tradescant found that he was smiling back. ‘I can undertake to do that. And it will grow as fast as it is able. And it will be all that you want.’

John started work that afternoon, walking to Chelmsford to find labourers to start the work of fencing the cows out, digging the lake and building the walls for the kitchen garden. He took a horse from the stables and rode a wide circle around the great estate to neighbouring farms to see what trees they had in their orchards and what wooded copses he could buy and transplant at once.

Buckingham was careless about cost. ‘Just order it, John,’ he said. ‘And if they are tenants of mine just tell them to give you whatever you wish and they can take it off their rent at quarter day.’

John bowed but made a point of visiting the steward of the household, at his desk in an imposing room at the very centre of the grand house.

‘His Grace has ordered me to buy trees and plants from his tenants, and command them to take the cost from their rent,’ Tradescant began.

The steward looked up from the household books, which were spread before him. ‘What?’

‘He has ordered me to buy from the tenants,’ John began again.

‘I heard you,’ the man said angrily. ‘But how am I to know what is bought or sold? And how am I to run this house if the rents are discounted before they are collected?’

John hesitated. ‘I was coming to you only to ask you how it should be done, if you have a list of tenants –’