Slowly John shook his head. ‘I don’t mean to question my God,’ he said humbly. ‘Any more than I would question my lord. It just seems odd to me. And God did not make all things at once in Eden, and give them to us. I know that cannot be, though I read it in the Bible, because I see them changing from season to season.’

The vicar nodded, quick to move on. ‘That is no more than a craftsman making a table, I suppose. It is using the skills which God has given you and the materials which He has provided to make something new.’

John hesitated. ‘But if I made a new daisy, say, or a new tulip, and a man came along and saw it growing in a garden, he would think it was the work of God and praise Him. But he would be wrong. It would have been my work.’

‘Yours and God’s,’ the vicar said smoothly. ‘For God made the parent tulip from which you made one of another colour. Undoubtedly it is God’s purpose to give us many things of beauty, many things which are rare and different and strange. And it is our duty to thank Him and praise Him for them.’

John nodded at the mention of duty. ‘It would be a man’s duty to gather the varieties?’ he asked.

The vicar drank a little wedding ale. ‘It could be,’ he said judiciously. ‘Why would a man want to collect varieties?’

‘To the glory of God,’ John said simply. ‘If it is God’s purpose that we should know His greatness by the many varieties of plants that are in the world now, and that can be made, then it is to the glory of God to make sure that men know of His abundancy.’

The vicar thought for a moment, fearful of heresy. ‘Yes,’ he said cautiously. ‘It must be God’s will that we know of His abundancy, to help us to praise Him.’

‘So a man making a garden, a fine garden, is like a man making a church,’ John said earnestly. ‘Showing men the glory of God as a stonemason might carve the glory of God into his pillars and gargoyles.’

The vicar smiled. ‘Is that what you want to do, Tradescant?’ he asked, seeing his way at last to the heart of it. ‘Being a gardener and digging up weeds is not enough for you – it has to be something more?’