The St. Johns herald., 1894-11-08
THE NATIONAL FLOWER.
How the Rose of Sharon Became the
 Rose of England.

How the Rose of Sharon Became the Rose of England.
 That the rose is the national flower of England, and was accepted as such at the conclusion of the wars of the roses, when the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York were united by the marriage of the representatives of the two warning houses, most read CTS of history know. How this flower came to be the badge of either house, not many people even guess. The few students who suppose they know its history say that the white rose came to the house of York through the fam fly of Clifford, whose device it had long been, and beyond whom it cannot be traced. The red rose, it is supposed, dates back to Eleanor of Provence, queen of Henry III., and was her per sonal device, assumed for love of the beautiful Provence roses of her native duchy, and transmitted to her descend ants of Lancaster.
 But in the recently published life of Dean Stanley, devoted student of historic traditions, a new and pie turesque origin is assigned to the na tional flower. He gathered the story while visiting in a chateau in the little town of Provins, France, and believed it to be correct. According to it, the red rose of England was never a Provence rose, but instead was a rose of Provins.
 The chateau of Provins belonged centuries ago to the counts of Cham pagne, and in the time of the Fourth Crusade one of these counts, called 1 Thibaut the Troubadour, became a crusader and visited the Holy Land.
 On his return he brought to his wife rose-bush with a splendid bright crimson hower-the rose of Sharon and this was planted in the castle gar den, where it grew and flourished. Soon it spread to neighboring gar dens, and the town became famous for roses. Wreaths for the great church l festivals were made from these roses from the Holy Land; they were used to grace all gala occasions, and the good French housewives even turned them to more practical account. They made such an appetizing delicacy from rose leaves, put up with sugar or sirup, that it's fame spread far beyond the imme- diate neighborhood, and it commanded ready sale throughout the entire re- zion under the name of Conserves de Roses de Provins.
 A generation later the prosperity of the town received sad shock, and the preserving industry no doubt suffered 1,,e z as4 Provins had mayor of such Oppres- sive views on the labor question that he ventured to ring the great curfew bell, which ended the working day, an hour later than had been customary.
 This the work-people would not en- dure. They mobbed the unpopular magistrate, and killed him in his own house. They did not stop to consider the possible consequence of such an | act. The line of the counts of Cham pagne had become extinct, but Blanche, the widow of the last one, had married Edmund Crouchback, first earl of Lan- caster, who promptly undertook to punish the unruly inhabitants.
 He made such havoc that the town never recovered from it, and had even to submit to having a new bell made and named Guillonette, in honor of the murdered mayor, Guillaume. This bell, after six centuries, still rings the curfew in Provins every night. When Edmund went back to England, leav- ing misery, poverty and terrified quiet behind him, he carried home, says De;n Stanley, two relics.
 ''One was the yard measure which, for many years, was in France peculiar to Provins; the other was the crimson rose, which through him became the rose of Lancaster"
 The heraldic rose of England is still of blended red and white, significant of the union of the two great houses; but as Lancaster was victorious in bat tie, so also is the red rose the victor in popular favor, and it is of that, not of the stiff parti-colored rosette of the British coat-of-arms, that we think as the emblem and flower of the nation.
 The old French crusaders holy rose, the rose of Sharon, the rose of Provins, has become the rose of England.