HYDE A:NX) ROMi^NGE MRS. ACEG. TWEEDIE ^77 ^oV HYDE PARK ITS HISTORY AND ROMANCE HYDE PARK ITS HISTORY AND ROMANCE BY MRS. ALEC TWEEDIE (Nie HARLEY) WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS NEW YORK JAMES POTT & CO. LONDON: EVELEIGH NASH I 908 ^ ft CONTENTS PACK I I. Introduction II. A Royal Hunting-Ground 19 III. Vagaries of Monarchs 47 IV. Under the Commonwealth . 79 V. Fashion and Frivolity 94 VI. Masks and Patches 119 VII. In Georgian Days 141 VIII. Early Chronicles of Tyburn 172 200 IX. Beneath the Triple Tree . X. Nineteenth-Century Fragments 236 XI. Duels in the Park 265 XII. The People's Park 288 311 XIII. Nature in the Park . XIV. The Evolution of the Carriage 325 APPENDIX List of Trees, Shrubs, and Plants in Hyde Park . 367 Index ...•••• 377 57,3977 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The Four-in-Hand Club in Hyde Park . Frontispiece Execution of Earl Ferrars Facing p. i Map of Westminster, illustrating Charter of King Edgar, granted to Dunstan . ,, 20 Bathing Well in Hyde Park Henry viii. ..... 42 The Cheesecake House, to which the Duke of Hamilton was carried mortally Wounded 66 Queen Henrietta Maria's Penance at Tyburn 70 Prostitute Drummed out of Hyde Park ,, III Tyburn Ticket, Preserved in Guildhall 128 Drinking Well in Hyde Park ,. 136 Entrance to Hyde Park on a Sunday . 142 Map, 1725 ..... 144 Molly Lepell, .afterwards Lady Hervey 148 Map, 1746 ..... 152 The Original " Tattersall's," and St. George's Hospital ..... „ 156 Maria Countess of Coventry, n6e Gunning 162 William Pitt, Earl of Chatham . ., 167 Marble Arch at Three o'clock in the Morning 172 London Bridge .... 192 Jack Sheppard .... 214 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Jonathan Wild pelted by the Mob on his Way • • Facing . p. 224 TO Tyburn . The Execution of Catherine Hayes at Tyburn „ 232 Camp in Hyde Park during Gordon Riots, 1780 „ 238 Winter Amusements ....,, 244 Jubilee Fair in Hyde Park, 18 14, to Celebrate THE Fall of Napoleon . „ 248 Lady Blessington . ,, 254 Festivities on the Ice, 1857. By John Leech ,, 258 Cumberland Gate ....... 260 A Camp Kitchen ....... 280 An Airing in Hyde Park. 1793 . „ 312 • BIBLIOGRAPHY The following books have been consulted in the compilation of this volume : — Stow's " Annals." Hollinshed's " Chronicles." Baker's " Chronicle." Whitelock's " Memorials of English Affairs." Northuek. Macaulay's " History of England." Hume's " History of England." Lingard's " History of England." Craik and Macfarlane's " Pictorial History of England." Domesday Book. Translated by Sir Henry James. " The Chronicle of the Greyfriars." (Camden Society.) Lyttelton's " History of Henry ii." Gilbert Burnett's " History of my Own Times." State Papers. Public Record Office. MSS. from Muniment Room. Westminster Abbey. Strickland's " Queens of England." Riley's " Memorials of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Centuries." " Archceologia." Stow's " Survey of London." (Strype.) Dean Stanley's " Histoiy and Memorials of Westminster Abbey." Knight's " London." Walford's " London Old and New." Wheatley's " London Past and Present." Timbs' " Curiosities of London." Larwood's " The London Parks." Ashton's " Hyde Park from Domesday to Date." Jesse's "London: its Celebrated Characters and Remarkable Places." Malcolm's " Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London." Besant's " London in the Eighteenth Century." Fuller's 'Worthies of England." xii BIBLIOGRAPHY Drake's " Shakespeare and His Times." Osborne's " Historical Memories on Reigns of Elizabeth and James I." Ellis's " Original Letters." ' Diary of John Evelyn." Edited by Wheatley. " Diary of Samuel Pepys." Edited by Wheatley. " Memoirs of the Comte de Gramont." Trans, by M. Beyer. " Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield " (2nd). CoUey Gibber's " Apology for the Life of G. G." Defoe's " Narrative of Jack Sheppard." " Thomas Brown's Amusements, Serious and Gomical." Strutt's " Sports and Pastimes of the People of England." " Letters and Works of Lady Mai-y Wortley Montagu." Mrs. Eliz. Montagu's " Lady of the Last Gentury." " Letters of Horace Walpole." Edited by Mrs. Paget Toynbee. " Letters of Lord Hervey." " Letters of the Earl of Ghesterfield (4th) to Dayrolles." " George Selwyn and his Gontemporaries." " Some Account of the Military, Political, and Social Life of the Rt. Hon. John Manners, Marquis of Granby." By W. Granby. Stephen's " Literary and Social Life of the i8th Gentury." " Autobiography of Madame Piozzi." Hayward. Wraxall's " Historical Memoirs of My Own Times." Thackeray's " Four Georges." Fitzgerald Molloy's " London under the Georges." " Diary of the Hon. Wilham Windham." Edited by Mrs. Baring. " The Two Duchesses of Devonshire." Vere Foster. " Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox." By the Gountess of Ilchester. Rosebery's " Life of Pitt." " William Wilberforce and His Friends." Ashton's " When William iv. was King." Paston's " Sidelights on the Georgian Period." " Journal of Gharles G. F. Greville." Gook's " Tyburn Chronicle." Dr. Millinger's " History of Duelling." Mrs. Stone's " Chronicle of Fashion." " Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Garlyle." Thomas Garlyle. Kingston's " Romance of a Hundred Years." " Report of Historical Commission on MSS." D'Avenant. Wilson's " Memoirs of Wonderful Characters." Richard Davey's " The Pageant of London." " The Letters of Queen Victoria." Edited by A. G. Benson. " Treason and Plot." By Major Martin Hume. ' ' Calendar of Spanish State Papers." By Major Martin Hume. Hi y. HYDE PARK: ITS HISTORY AND ROMANCE CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Hyde Park. What a world of memories is sug- gested by the name. Standing right in the heart of London, it is almost the only surviving out-of-door public pleasure resort left in the West-End, wherein fashion may display itself and take exercise, since St. James's Park has now no social life, and Spring Gardens, Vauxhall, Old Ranelagh, and Cremorne are long since dead. Gay as it is now in the season with its well-dressed saunterers, its beautiful equipages, its noble trees, and its wide expanse of water, it conjures up dark and evil memories, for the Park has been the scene of stirring events in our national history. Nor is its romantic mystery entirely of the past, even now. Surrounded by the palaces of the rich, the resort of the favoured ones of the earth, for whose wealth and ostentation it provides a fitting back- A I HYDE PARK ground ; it forms also the refuge of the vicious and the destitute, and, alas, its green sward serves as the dormitory of filthy vagrants, whose very existence in this city of boundless wealth is an eyesore and a reproach. There, vice and virtue still jostle each other, poverty and riches, greed and simphcity : there, every creed is expounded, every grievance aired, every nostrum advocated with violent vociferation hard by the spot where, upon the fatal Triple Tree of Tyburn, scores of miserable martyrs went to their doom for daring to put into words the thoughts that were their own. The Park now extends from Park Lane to Ken- sington Gardens, and from the Bayswater Road to Knightsbridge ; but the creation of Kensington Gardens in the reign of George ii. — sheltering the Royal Palace where Queen Victoria was born in 1819 — robbed Hyde Park of 300 acres of land. Queen Caroline devoted much time and thought to the formation of the Serpentine and the beautifying of the surroundings of her Palace. Roughly speaking, Hyde Park is about 3^ miles round, or covers an extent of 360 acres. This is by no means enormous, not as large as the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, nor as wild as Thier gaarten in Berlin, but there are trees in Hyde Park and Ken- sington Gardens which far surpass in bulk and beauty the trees of either of these Continental rivals. We have in Hyde Park none of the "ancestral statues " such as Berlin has to represent the noble army of the Kaiser's forebears. Our Park is not quite like the CasteUana in Madrid, where fashion drives from the Prado during the dusk, 2 INTRODUCTION shut up in truly Spanish fashion in closed carriages, or the Prater in Vienna, where so many beautiful is it large as the women may be seen ; nor nearly as Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, which, however, is more of wild common than cultivated land. Hyde Park differs from all these ; and Hyde Park stands within a huge city, and not a mile or two outside. It is not newly planted or freshly made, and some of the trees within its railings, dating back through many centuries, would be hard to rival in any land. So interesting, indeed, are the trees and shrubs and plants, the birds and beasts, that a hst will be found in an appendix. At an early period in the history of Great Britain, this district must have been part of the vast forest that lay inland from the little British settlement, founded on the banks of the Thames before the Romans landed. These early inhabitants of London lived in rude huts, probably stretching from where the Tower now stands to Dowgate, their simple tenements forming the beginning of the present great throbbing heart of the Empire. It is probably true that at the time of the Saxons, parts of the Park of to-day were cultivated in the primitive fashion of the race ; while the forests afforded good feeding-ground for the hogs which later formed such an important item in the farming operations of our ancestors. It must be remembered that a forest in ancient times meant not only a thickly wooded area, but also wide open glades and spaces, in which simple homesteads nestled and cattle grazed. In these the Saxons, according to the sparse records of the 3 HYDE PARK " period, turned their attention to their " wyrt-tun (plant-enclosure) or " wyrt-geard " (plant-yard), from which probably originated the modern kitchen garden.