Like a lord's private chambers, a castle garden was a private place. The chambers were usually a hidden library or a treasury containing rare treasures, while gardens were usually associated with Eden, the Song of Songs, paradise, or royal hunts.
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and father of Henry IV of the Lancastrian dynasty, had once been the master of Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire. Through his marriage to Constance, daughter of Pedro, the tyrant of Spain, he acquired enormous wealth and used it to decorate his castle.
In 1266, Kenilworth Castle was the Lancastrian military stronghold in Britain's Wars of the Roses, resisting foreign invasion for six consecutive months.
After John of Gaunt died, his son Henry seized the English throne and became Henry IV. His son was the renowned Henry V.
Most of the Lancastrian dynasty's blood relatives were lost in the Wars of the Roses. Henry Tudor, the last leader of the Lancastrian faction, was connected to House of Lancaster only through his maternal bloodline.
However, one branch of John of Gaunt's direct male descendants went to France. After Elizabeth I, the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty and the "Virgin Queen," died childless, the British throne passed according to her will to her distant relative, James I, who was also King of Scotland. They had once wanted to return home, but James I refused them.
During Elizabeth's reign, she often stayed at Kenilworth Castle. At the time, the castle belonged to the Earl of Leicester, and it was widely rumored that the earl was Queen Elizabeth I's lover.
She did not emerge from her bedchamber until five every afternoon, but she was not resting. She was a diligent queen, and twenty horses traveled back and forth between Kenilworth and London every day.
Later, the earl mysteriously