The Feminine Monarchie or THE HISTORY OF BEES

<p>Charles Butler<br />1623<br />The Feminine Monarchie is an early and remarkable work of English natural<br />history first published in 1609 and written by a scholarly country parson of<br />wide ranging interests. Like the later Gilbert White of Selborne a distant relation<br />Charles Butler had a deep curiosity about the natural world and recorded his<br />discoveries methodically in keeping with the growing scientific mood of the<br />seventeenth century.<br />Butler was the author of several books on subjects as diverse as music<br />grammar logic and church law. He was also a noted beekeeper and The<br />Feminine Monarchie is the classic English beekeeping text earning Butler the<br />title ‘father of English bee-keeping’. The book explores the world of the honey<br />bee with a keen intelligence and makes implicit reference to Elizabeth I’s long<br />reign as England’s female monarch.<br />This is the first new edition of The Feminine Monarchie to be published<br />for over three hundred years and contains a new introduction as well as<br />annotations and a glossary of the more obscure words used by Butler. The<br />spelling and grammar have been modernised throughout. This edition has been<br />prepared from the 1623 edition which includes Butler’s famous ‘Bees Madrigal’.<br />John Owen is vicar of two rural parishes in Hampshire in the South Downs<br />National Park thirty miles from Butler’s parish of Wootton St Lawrence in the<br />same county. He keeps bees poultry and goats and is rural advisor in the<br />Diocese of Portsmouth.</p>