The great formal gardens of Tudor and Stuart England are a lost art form. This book sets out to evoke both the people and the ideas that led to the creation of the English Renaissance garden. The great formal gardens of Tudor and Stuart England are a totally lost art form. Swept away by the exponents of the landscape style in the 18th century, they are now seen in the form of Victorian re-creations around the ancient manor houses of England. But before Repton, Capability Brown and Henry Wise, England had been open to all the impulses that made the Renaissance garden. Up to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, the response had been some of the most legendary garden complexes of Renaissance Europe: Henry VIII's Hampton Court, Burgley's Theobalds, Lord Pembroke's Wilton. Intertwined with this story, which touches on the history of politics, art, architecture, literature and ideas, are some of the great figures of the age: Robert Cecil, Francis Bacon, Inigo Jones, Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, Charles I and Henrietta Maria, John Evelyn and Andrew Marvell. The study includes some visual material in the form of plans, diagrams, views and engravings of the lost gardens of Tudor and Stuart England.