Hyde Park, Its History and Romance. Mrs. Alec-Tweedie
ruff was profusely laced, plaited, and apparently divergent from a centre on the back of her neck; it was very broad, extending on each side of her face, with the extremities reposing on her bosom, from which rose two wings of lawn edged with jewels, stiffened with wire, and reaching to the top of her hair, which was moulded in the shape of a cushion and richly covered with gems. The stomacher was strait and broad, and though leaving the bosom bare, still formed a long waist by extending downwards; it was loaded with jewels and embossed gold, and was preposterously stiff and formal.”
Men’s ruffs never reached the extravagant size of the ladies’ attire, but they grew to such an extent that Elizabeth considered it necessary to order that any beyond “a nayle of a yard in depth” should be clipped. The edge of the ruff was called a “piccadilly,” as may be seen in several of the earlier dictionaries, hence the name of the fashionable street abutting on Hyde Park to-day. When there were practically no houses there, a ruff shop kept by a man named Higgins existed, and was called a “piccadilly.” Higgins is said to have made money, and built a row of houses to which he handed on the name. The term “Pickadilla” is applied to this district in Gerarde’s Herbal, where it is mentioned that “the small wild buglosse” was growing on the banks of the dry ditches “about Pickadilla.”
Queen Elizabeth was so anxious that she should not be surpassed in the beauty of her own dress, that in addition to her sumptuary laws regulating the clothes worn by the different classes of society, young and old alike, she personally snubbed anyone who she thought wore too rich a gown or too high a ruff. It is told of Lady Mary Howard that she appeared at Court in a velvet suit richly trimmed, Her Majesty looked at it carefully, and the next day sent privately for the robe, and, donning it herself, entered the room where Lady Mary and her other ladies were sitting. She then asked what they thought of her “new-fancied suit,” further inquiring of the owner if it were not too short. That chagrined lady delightedly answered in the affirmative. Whereupon the Sovereign gave a sharp retort that if it was too short for her, it was certainly too fine for Lady Mary, and she must never wear it more.
Of course, as Queen Elizabeth had sandy-coloured hair, that also became the fashion, and ladies dyed their tresses and painted their faces. This curious old Queen, with her enamelled complexion and darkened eyes, her love of dress, her endless admirers, her hard-hearted and level-headed administration, is reported to have danced an Irish jig only a few days before her death.
Pinched and old, and yet rouged to the eyes—for she was vain to the last—Elizabeth disappears from the scene she had so adorned, and James VI. of Scotland rides into London—in hunting costume, “a doublet, green as the grass he stood on, with a feather in his cap, and horn by his side”—to claim the English throne. On the way he had delayed his progress to make two or three sporting expeditions from the great houses at which he stayed. Clearly this was a type of monarch under whom Hyde Park would be put to other uses than the shows and fêtes and fashionable dallyings of Elizabeth. So it quickly proved. His first act of authority over the Royal demesne was to appoint Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, Keeper of Hyde Park for life, with significant instructions. The Queen, his predecessor, being a woman, had been too lenient; he now wished closer supervision, more careful preservation of the game, and a smart eye to be kept on poachers.
Hyde Park again became the closest of Royal preserves, maintained for hunting alone. An occasional passage met with in contemporary letters shows how strictly the forest laws were enforced. Osborne, writing of this time in 1658, long after James’s death, says of the game laws instituted by that monarch:
“Nay, I dare boldly say one Man might with more safety have killed another than a raskall-Deare; but if a Stagge had been knowne to have miscarried, and the authour fled, a Proclamation with a description of the party had been presently penned by the Attourney-generall, and the penalty of His Majesty’s displeasure (by which was understood the Star-Chamber) threatened against all that did abet comfort or relieve him. Thus satyricall, or if you please Tragicall, was this sylvan Prince, against Dear-Killers and indulgent to man-slayers.”
A deer was of more value than a man, and a mole was apparently of importance. Among the State Papers is a Warrant issued the day after Christmas, 1603, authorising the Vice-Chamberlain to pay Richard Hampton, official Mole-taker in St. James’s Park, and the gardens and grounds at Westminster, Greenwich, Richmond, and Hampton Court, the fee of fourpence a day and twenty shillings yearly for livery. A man had just resigned the post, which was evidently considered a lucrative one, as there were several applications for it.
James I. was a good sportsman, even down to cock-fighting, for he restored the cockpit which Elizabeth had been at particular pains to abolish, and appointed a Cockmaster for breeding, feeding, and managing the King’s game-cocks. But this was an occasional pastime. He enjoyed many a manlier diversion in the excitement of the hunt, refreshing himself between times at the Banqueting House erected in the middle of Hyde Park, with a deep draught of good sack ere he returned to the Palace of Whitehall. When his Queen was visited by her brother, the King of Denmark, a series of Royal entertainments were arranged for him. In an old MS. preserved in the Harleian Miscellany a full description of some of these occasions is given, and it may be read that:
“… In the morning very early, being Saturday (Aug. 2nd, 1606), they hunted in the park of St. James, and killed a buck. Then passed they on to Hyde Park, where they hunted with great delight, spending the rest of the forenoon in following their pastime; and about the time of dinner they returned and there dined; and about four o’clock, their barges being by commandment ready at the privy stairs, they went by water to Greenwich.”
To the sporting proclivities of James I. we owe a Book of Sports, in which the Royal writer authorised all those who had been to their own parish church, to indulge in “sports on the Lord’s Day,” including dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, May games, morrice dances, and setting up of Maypoles; though bull and bear baiting, interludes, and bowls, were prohibited. The King ordered the book to be read in the churches, but the Primate absolutely refused to do so. About twenty years later, news of deer escaping from the Old Park at Wimbledon, and having been killed, reached Charles I. He therefore forbade any person to go into his woods carrying a gun, or engine, to take, or destroy the game, and if any presumed after notice given in the churches, to come thus provided, the King would have them punished.
Is it not a bit of delightful irony that the Lord’s Day Observance Act, abolishing all these revels, and under which even now tradesmen are occasionally fined for opening their shops on Sundays, was a gift to our generation from that austere monarch Charles II.?
Owing, no doubt, to the strict laws for its preservation made by James I., game seems to have much increased in the forest glades and about the marshes and rivulets in Hyde Park. Still the cooks appear to have been playing their old trick of trying to get venison cheap, for in 1619 the State Papers have a record that two men were found shooting deer in Hyde Park. They were captured by the keepers, and were hanged at Hyde Park Corner, as well as an unfortunate labourer whom they had employed to hold their dogs. One wet season played havoc with the deer in “Marybone” Park—known to-day as Regent’s Park—and a warrant was issued to the Keeper of Hyde Park to send three brace of bucks to help make up the deficiency.
A quaint manuscript is in existence, recording an outlay for the upkeep of Hyde Park at this period.
“An account of monneys disbursed by Sʳ Walter Cope, Knight, in his Majesties Parke called Hide Parke, from October 1611 until October 1612:
“Imprimis laid out for two hundred of lime trees brought out of the Lowe Countries at ten shillings the peece amounts unto twentie poundes; wᶜʰ were planted along the walkes in the places of those that were decaied. Also for mending the pondheads and gravelling them, being spoiled by the floudes in the winter. Also for reparacions about the lodges, the Parke pale, the standinges, and charges for making the haie for the deere twentie marks. All wᶜʰ amounts unto 33 li.
(Signed) “Walter Cope.”
An order for the payment of these moneys follows in the handwriting of the Earl of Suffolk of the day.
With