Hyde Park from Domesday-book to Date. Ashton John
Keepers’ Lodge, admission to which seems to have been obtainable by payment of a shilling – at least, in 1751, as we see by the following extract from a poem by W. H. Draper, entitled, “The Morning Walk, or the City Encompass’d.”
“Behold the ranger16 there! with gun aslant,
As just now issuing from his cottage17 fold,
With crew Cerberian, prowling o’er the plain
To guard the harmless deer, and range them in
Due order set, to their intended use.
Key he can furnish, but must first receive
One splendid shilling, e’er I can indulge
The pleasing walk, and range the verdant field.”
As far as I can learn, the last Royal shooting of the deer in Hyde Park was on the 9th Sept., 1768, and it is the more interesting, considering how intimately we are now allied with the House of Saxe Cobourg Gotha. In The Public Advertiser of Sept. 12, 1768, we read: “Same day, their Serene Highnesses the two Princes of Saxe Gotha, and many other Foreigners of Distinction, together with a great Number of our own Nobility, and Gentry, attended the Diversion of Deer Shooting in Hyde Park, which continued all the Evening till Dark, when one was at last killed, after being shot at ten Times. What rendered it so difficult to kill him, was the Hardship of getting him from among the Deer, and no other was allowed to be shot at but this one: Several Wagers were won and lost upon this Occasion.”
The deer still remained, until early in this century, in this enclosure, which was in the north-west corner of the Park, bounded on the north by the Park wall, on the west by Kensington Gardens, on the south by the Serpentine, and on the east by a fence. Dogs were allowed in the other parts of the Parks, as our poet says, —
“But lo! a faithful spaniel, there stretch’d out,
Not food for powder meet, relentless gun!”
But the “relentless gun” was evidently necessary against the foxes, for there is a Minute of the Board of Green Cloth in 1798, by which Sarah Gray is granted a pension of £18 per annum, to compensate her somewhat for the loss of her husband, who was accidentally killed by a shot from the gun of a keeper, who was hunting for foxes in Kensington Gardens. It would be a thankless task to look for them there at the present time; but it is not very many years since there was a badger, who took up his abode in a drain in the Gardens, and could not be dislodged. Strange and weird legends were told concerning this badger, one of which was that he had devoured a policeman, clothing and all, with the exception of his boots and helmet. The badger was ultimately caught, and purchased, I believe, by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who sent it into the country, and there gave it its liberty.
CHAPTER II
Hyde Park in the early Commonwealth – Its sale – Toll on horses and carriages – A hurling match – Cromwell’s accident – Attempts to shoot him in the Park – Notices against trespassers – The Park at the Restoration.
It was not until after the martyrdom of the King, and a little before Cromwell found himself strong enough to become Lord Protector of the three Kingdoms, that the Parks, etc., were sold. But on Dec. 31, 1652, was passed “An Act for the Exposing to Sale divers Castles, Houses, Parks, Lands and Hereditaments, Belonging to the late King, Queen, or Prince, Exempted from sale by a former Act:” and among them was “All that Park commonly called Hide Park, in the county of Middlesex, with all Houses, Woods and Perquisits thereunto belonging.”
At the beginning of the troubles between the King and Parliament, the exclusiveness of the Park grew somewhat lax, and it became a place of fashionable resort; but the sour, puritanical spirit of the times prevailed, and, in 1645, it was ordered “that Hyde Park and Spring Gardens should be kept shut, and no person be allowed to go into any of those places on the Lord’s day, fast and thanksgiving days, and hereof those that have the keeping of the said places are to take notice and see this order obeyed, as they will answer the contrary at their uttermost peril.” And, presumably, this order was acted on until 1649, when it was resolved that the London Parks – Whitehall, Hampton Court, the New Park at Richmond, Westminster Palace, Windsor Castle and Park, and Greenwich House and Park – should be the property of the Commonwealth, and thrown open to the public.
But in 1652, it was thought fit to sell Hyde Park, Greenwich House and Park, Windsor Park and Meadows, Cornbury Park, Oxon, Somerset House, and Vauxhall House and Grounds, for the benefit of the Navy, and duly sold they were. Three lots were made of Hyde Park – called the Gravel Pit division, or that part abutting on the Bayswater Road, which was very well wooded; the Kensington division, which lay on the south, which was principally pasture land; whilst the third comprised what were termed the Middle, which comprised the Ring, the Banqueting division – in which was the Cake House – near the present site of the Receiving House of the Royal Humane Society; and the Old Lodge division, which said Old Lodge was near Hyde Park Corner; and this third lot was very well wooded.
The first lot was bought by Richard Wilcox for the sum of £4144 11s.; the second was secured by John Tracy for £3906 7s. 6d.; and the third fetched £9020 8s. 2d., and became the property of Anthony Dean, a ship-builder, who let the right of pasture of his portion; and the lessees immediately began to recoup themselves by exacting a toll on the carriages and horses entering the Park. Says Evelyn, in his diary, under date of April 11, 1653, “I went to take the aire in Hide Park, where every coach was made to pay a shilling, and horse sixpence, by these sordid fellows who purchas’d it of the State as they were cal’d.”
This toll seems afterwards to have been raised, or it might only have been for the occasion, which was the first of May, when it was fashionable to be seen in the Park; for, in a letter dated May 2, 1654,18 J. B. informs Mr. Scudamore that “Yesterday, each coach (and, I believe, there were fifteen hundred) paid half-a-crown, and each horse one shilling. The benefit accrues to a brace of citizens, who have taken the herbage of the Park from Mr. Dean, to which they add this excise of beauty. There was a hurling in the paddock course by Cornish gentlemen, for the great solemnity of the day, which, indeed (to use my Lord Protector’s word), was great. When my Lord Protector’s coach came into the Park with Colonel Ingleby and my Lord’s daughters only (three of them, all in green-a) the coaches and horses flocked about them like some miracle. But they galloped (after the mode court pace now, and which they all use wherever they go, round and round the Park,) and all that great multitude hunted them, and caught them still at the turn, like a hare, and then made a lane with all reverent haste for them, and so after them again, that I never saw the like in my life.”
Cromwell himself was present at this hurling match, according to the Moderate Intelligencer of April 26 – May 4, 1654. “This day there was a hurling match of a great ball by fifty Cornish gentlemen on the one side, and fifty on the other; one party played in red caps, and the other in white. There was present his Highness the Lord Protector, many of the Privy Council, and divers eminent gentlemen, to whose view was presented great agility of body, and most neat and exquisite wrestling at every meeting of one with the other, which was ordered with such dexterity, that it was to show more the strength, vigour and nimbleness of their bodies, than to endanger their persons. The ball they played withal was silver, and designed for that party which did win the goal.”
But, if Cromwell could drive the coach of State, he could not always manage to drive his own, and there is one memorable instance of his coming to grief in Hyde Park, in 1654, in endeavouring so to do, the story of which is thus told by General Ludlow (who was no friend to the Protector) in his Memoirs.19
“In the mean time, Cromwel having assumed the whole Power of the Nation to himself, and sent Ambassadors and Agents to Foreign States, was courted again by them, and presented with the Rarities of several Countries; amongst the rest the Duke of Holstein made him a Present of a Set of gray Frizeland Coach-Horses, with which taking the Air in the Park, attended only with his Secretary
Keeper, whose duty was to shoot trespassing dogs, and foxes.
His lodge.
Correspondence of Lord Scudamore, Ambassador at Paris in 1635, etc., privately printed.
Vol. ii. p. 508.