A page of watercolours of three Tulips including an Agatte Robin Tulip, a Penelope Tulip and a Yellow Crown Tulip. Tulips were the most highly-valued flowers of the seventeenth century. In Holland in the 1620s and 1630s huge sums of money changed hands for single bulbs. 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.