Tulips were probably the most highly-prized flowers of the seventeenth century. In Holland in the 1620s and 1630s huge sums of money changed hands for single bulbs. ‘Broken’, or striped, tulips, like these, were the most coveted kind. The younger John Tradescant, a renowned plant collector and a friend of Marshal, was growing this variety (Tulipa gesneriana) in his Lambeth garden in 1656.