John Parkinson (botanist)

John Parkinson (1567 to 1650) was apothecary to James I, a founding member of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries in December 1617 and later Royal Botanist to Charles I, described as the last of the great English herbalists and one of the first of the great English botanists. Born in Yorkshire, he moved to London at fourteen to become an apprentice apothecary. He sat on the Society's Court of Assistants until 1622, helped it obtain a grant of arms and served on the committee that published the London Pharmacopoeia in 1618. His two monumental works are Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris (1629), on the cultivation of plants, and Theatrum Botanicum (1640), the most complete and beautifully presented English treatise on plants of its time. He kept a botanical garden at Long Acre in Covent Garden and kept close relations with English and continental botanists, herbalists and plantsmen.