‘Then why does he touch for the king’s evil?’ Frances asked innocently, bringing a plate of biscuits which she put at John’s elbow. ‘Is that not the superstition of ignorant people? Would he welcome an inquiry into such nonsense?’

Elias was briefly put out. ‘He does his duty, he does everything that is right and courteous and pleasing,’ he said with emphasis. ‘Nothing more than good manners. Good manners, Mrs Norman, are the very backbone of civilised society.’

‘If you are a Royal Society I had best order a royal dinner,’ Hester said tactfully. ‘Come and help me, Frances.’

Frances shot a grin at her father and followed her stepmother into the house.

It was a good summer for the Ark. The sense of safety and prosperity meant that more and more visitors came to the doors. The spirit of inquiry which the Royal Society represented spread throughout London, and men and women came to see the marvels of the Tradescant collection and then walk in the rich gardens and the orchards.

The horse chestnut avenue which ran from the terrace before the rarities room to the end of the orchard was now thirty-one years old, with broad trunks and wide, swaying branches. No-one who saw the trees in flower could resist purchasing a sapling.

‘There will be a chestnut tree in every park in the land,’ John predicted. ‘My father always swore that they were the most beautiful trees he had ever grown.’

But the chestnuts had their rivals in the garden. John’s own tulip tree from Virginia flowered for the first time in the hot summer of 1660, and botanists and painters made special trips up the river to see the huge cupped flowers against the dark, glossy foliage. John had some new roses, Warner’s rose and a beautiful new specimen from France that they called the velvet rose for the deep, soft colour of the petals. The fruit trees in the garden had shed their blossoms and were heavy-laden with growing fruits. The early cherries were picked at dawn by Frances to save them from the songbirds, and sold at the garden gate by the lad. One part of the fruit garden was set aside for vines now; John had row upon row of well-pruned bushes, grown low on wires, just as his father had seen them grown in France, with fourteen varieties of grape, including the fox grape from Virginia and the Virginian wild vine.