author

active 1572-1614 Simon Harward

A little-known English cleric and practical writer from the late 16th and early 17th centuries, he left behind works on lightning, bloodletting, and orchard-making. His books show how closely religion, medicine, and everyday rural life could overlap in early modern England.

1 Audiobook

A New Orchard And Garden or, The best way for planting, grafting, and to make any ground good, for a rich Orchard: Particularly in the North and generally for the whole kingdome of England

A New Orchard And Garden or, The best way for planting, grafting, and to make any ground good, for a rich Orchard: Particularly in the North and generally for the whole kingdome of England

by active 1618 William Lawson, active 1572-1614 Simon Harward

About the author

Simon Harward was an English divine and author active in the late 1500s and early 1600s. A nineteenth-century biographical notice says he studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, was later incorporated at Oxford, served as chaplain of New College, and became rector of Warrington in 1579.

He is remembered less as a literary figure than as a practical writer. Works associated with him include A discourse of lightenings, a treatise on bloodletting often known as Harward's Phlebotomy, and material printed with William Lawson in A New Orchard and Garden. Taken together, these books suggest an author interested in explaining natural events, everyday health, and useful country knowledge for ordinary readers.

Very little personal detail seems to survive, which makes him one of those early authors known mainly through the books he left behind and the records attached to them. Even so, his surviving works offer a vivid glimpse of the concerns of early modern England, where theology, household medicine, and practical husbandry often sat side by side.