Following his studies in Montpellier, l'Obel set up a medical practice in England (1566–1571), living initially in London, and then in
Somerset, near
Bristol at the home of his patron,
Edward St. Loe. There he was joined in botanical expeditions by
Clusius. On his return to continental Europe, he practised in
Antwerp (1571–1581) and then
Delft (1581–1584). The period from 1571 to 1596, after his return from England, was one of the most productive in his life, with two major publications. Delft had been the residence of
William, Prince of Orange (William the Silent) since 1572, and became the capital of the newly independent Netherlands in 1581. In Delft l'Obel served as personal physician (
hofarts) to the Protestant Prince William. The exact date of this appointment is uncertain, but his
Kruydtboeck (1581) is dedicated to the Prince, and the title page describes l'Obel as
Medecijn der Princ. suggesting it was some time between returning to the Low Countries in 1571 and 1581. His name also appears on a list of court personnel dated 1578. William, however, was
assassinated in 1584. Claims that after William's death, l'Obel was employed by the
Estates General, the governing body of the Netherlands, have been disputed. Following the assassination l'Obel became a
city physician in
Middelburg, which was then a prosperous centre of trade and capital of the province of
Zeeland. He was responsible for the establishment of a botanical herb garden there, and would have known
Ambrosius Bosschaert (1573–1621), the artist, best known for his meticulous flower paintings, who was a member and eventually dean of the
Saint Luke’s Guild in Middelburg. In 1596 he moved from Middelburg, returning once more to England, becoming
personal physician and
botanicus regius (Botanist Royal) to King
James I of England in 1607. From there he periodically returned to Middelburg for a visit. Amongst his responsibilities in England was as superintendent of the
botanical garden of
Lord Zouch in
Hackney, a partnership brought about by Clusius. This was a
physic garden and at the time, one of the few in existence in England. It became a gathering place for botanists, enabling l'Obel to become an important link between England and the continent. He also accompanied Lord Zouch on his posting as ambassador to Denmark in 1598, where he carried out botanical exploration. The latter was published in 1605 as an appendix to the second edition of
Stirpium adversaria. It was through Zouch that he obtained the post of
botanicus regius. In 1597 he became involved in a controversy surrounding his friend John Gerard. In 1596 he had provided a preface to Gerard's
Catalogus. The following year, Gerard was working on a translation of
Dodoens's
Stirpium historiae pemptades sex (1583), to be published by John Norton, the
Queen's Printer. James Garrett, on a visit to the Norton's publishing house, saw the proofs and alerted Norton as to both errors and unattributed borrowings from Lobelius. Norton then hired Lobelius as an expert editor, but when Gerard discovered this, he had Lobelius dismissed, and had the work published under his own name as
The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes (1597). Lobelius provides an account of this in his
Stirpium illustrationes (1655) in which he accuses Gerard of
plagiarism. He spent much of his life looking for a rational way to classify plants that could be tested by
empiricism. In the
Stirpium of 1571, it is the form of the
leaves and their
venation that he favoured. In doing so he distinguished between grass-like plants with long straight parallel veins, while the majority had broad leaves with net-like venation. He was the first to recognise the fundamental difference between
monocotyledons (grass-like) and
dicotyledons, although he never suggested names to group these plants under.
Life and times Lobelius has been described as the least well known of a group variously called the
Ecole flamande de Botanique du XVIme siècle (16th century Flemish school of botany) or Flemish "Fathers of Botany", which, in addition to Lobelius, included
Carolus Clusius and
Rembert Dodoens. Lobelius and others have stated that the collection and cultivation of plants had been a preoccupation in the Southern Netherland (Flanders or
Galliae Belgicae) since the crusades, and that Flemish gardens contained many rare plants, although these were destroyed in the civil wars of the sixteenth century, and he mentions many important growers such as
Carolus de Croy, and his wife
Marie de Brimeu, Joannes de Brancion and Joannes van der Dilf. At the opening of the sixteenth century the general belief was that the plant world had been completely described by
Dioscorides, in his
De Materia Medica. During Lobelius' lifetime, botanical knowledge was undergoing enormous expansion, partly fueled by the expansion of the known plant world by New World exploration, the
discovery of printing and the use of
wood-block illustration. This period is thought of as a botanical
Renaissance. Europe became engrossed with natural history from the 1530s, and gardening and cultivation of plants became a passion and prestigious pursuit from monarchs to universities. The first botanical gardens appeared as well as the first illustrated botanical encyclopaedias, together with thousands of watercolours and woodcuts. The experience of farmers, gardeners, foresters, apothecaries and physicians was being supplemented by the rise of the plant expert. Collecting became a discipline, specifically the
Kunst- und Wunderkammern (cabinets of curiosities) outside of Italy and the study of naturalia became widespread through many social strata. The great botanists of the sixteenth century were all, like Lobelius, originally trained as physicians, who pursued a knowledge of plants not just for medicinal properties, but in their own right. Chairs in botany, within medical faculties were being established in European universities throughout the sixteenth century in reaction to this trend, and the scientific approach of observation, documentation and experimentation was being applied to the study of plants. These were also turbulent times. Following the Protestant
Reformation in the mid sixteenth century, and the subsequent
Counter-Reformation there was much religious intolerance and persecution, while in the Netherlands the northern provinces started a rebellion against the governing Spaniards, the
Eighty Years War (1568–1648). As a result many people fled or emigrated and many herbal and botanical gardens were destroyed. Lobelius stated that it was becoming increasingly difficult to live in his native Flanders. == Publications ==