As John drew nearer to Paris the woods became thinner except for the preserved forests for hunting, and then the road became lined with little farmhouses and market gardens to feed the insatiable appetite of the city. From his vantage point on horseback John overlooked garden and orchard walls and constantly surveyed what the French gardeners were growing. As a man from Kent he could afford to despise the quality of their apples but he envied the size and ripeness of their plum trees and stopped half a dozen times to buy specimens of what looked like new varieties.

He entered Paris with an entourage following him like a travelling garden, two wagons loaded with swaying leaves, and he had to find an inn that was accustomed to great baggage trains where he could pack up his new purchases and send them on to England.

As soon as they were safely despatched John called for a laundress to wash and starch his clothes, to clean the dust from his cape so that he might use his letter of introduction to the French king’s own gardener, the famous Jean Robin.

Robin had heard of Tradescant and was desperate for news of the new great palace and gardens at Hatfield. Of course it would be in the French style, it was to be designed by a Frenchman, but what of the woods, what of the walks? And what did Tradescant think of the prices of tulips, were they rising or would they hold steady for another year? How high could the price of a bulb go anyway? Surely there must be a point where a man would pay no higher?

Tradescant and Jean Robin walked around the royal garden for a couple of hours and then retired for a grand dinner enhanced by several bottles of claret from the royal cellar. Jean Robin’s son joined them for the meal, washing the mud from the garden off his hands before he sat down and bowed his head for a Papist grace. Tradescant shifted uneasily in his seat while the ritual Latin was spoken but when the young man broke bread he could not help but smile.

‘I hope that my son too will follow me into my place,’ John said. ‘He’s only a baby now, but I will bring him up to my work and – who knows?’

‘A man who holds a craft should pass it on,’ Jean Robin said, speaking slowly for John’s benefit. ‘But when it is a garden which takes so long to fruit, then you are planting for your son and his sons anyway. It is a fine thing to say to a boy, look out for this tree and when it is grown this high, I want it pruned like that. To know that the garden lives on, and your work and plans for it will live on, even after you are long dead.’

‘It is a poor man’s posterity,’ John said thoughtfully.