Hyde Park, Its History and Romance. Mrs. Alec-Tweedie
found age creeping upon them, they wished to secure the right of being buried in Westminster Abbey, and as a bribe the old knight handed over the Manor of Eia to the monks of Westminster. Thus, what is now Hyde Park, throughout its wide extent, became Church land.
In the Domesday Book the area of modern Hyde Park is thus described:
“Osvlvestane Hundred.
“Geoffrey de Mandeville holds Eia. It was assessed for ten hides. The land is eight carucates. In the demesne there are five hides and there are two ploughs there. The villanes have five ploughs, and a sixth can be made. One villane (has) half a hide there, and there are four villanes each with one virgate, and fourteen others each with half a virgate, and four bordars with one virgate, and one cottager. Meadow for eight ploughs; and sixty shillings for hay. For the pasture, seven shillings. With all its profits it is worth eight pounds; when received, six pounds: in the time of King Edward, twelve pounds. Harold the son of Earl Ralph held this manor; whom Queen Editha had charge of with the manor on the very day in which King Edward was alive and dead. Afterwards William the Chamberlain held it of the Queen in fee to farm for three pounds yearly, and after the death of the Queen he held it of the King in the same manner. There are now four years since William lost the Manor, and the King’s farm has not been rendered therefrom, that is twelve pounds.”
Some explanation of the terms used is desirable.
“Villeins” were the serfs, and were divided into classes, namely, those who were sold with the land on which they dwelt and worked, and those who were the absolute property of their master, and could be bought and sold at his will. The former class, known as villeins regardant, often rented small holdings from their master, and paid rent by produce, amongst these being the “bordars.”
A “hide” of land was of different sizes in different localities, but probably contained about 100 acres, and apparently four virgates formed a hide. The carucate was rather larger than a hide. The assessment referred to was Danegelt, a tax of twelve pence on every hide of land, first imposed by Ethelred the Unready as a means of raising money to keep the Danes out of England.
“Meadows for eight ploughs” meant feeding capacity for teams of eight ploughs. The woods were estimated in like manner. “Pannage and woods for swine” was the mode of expressing the extent of the coppices and forest land, where the Saxon pigs were given their due, and allowed to roam in cleanliness and comfort, routing up the roots and munching the berries. They were a very different kind of animal from the poor degraded beast that wallows in the mire nowadays, which we call a pig.
There is a record extant of our Tudor Queen Mary, after a day’s hunting in one of the forests in the neighbourhood of London, sending a command to a farmer who held land there, that he must not allow his swine to roam in the woods and grub holes, in which the horses stumbled, thus endangering the life of the Royal lady; and, in terms brooking no delay, she demanded that the holes already made should be filled up.
After its mention in Domesday Book, and the subsequent gift by Geoffrey de Mandeville of the Manor of Eia, Hyde Park remained Church land for close on four and a half centuries, during which period it had little history. It was the lardour of the monks. Lying remote from the town, chroniclers of the mediæval ages would probably have passed it over with barely a word of notice but for two associations, one grim and dreadful, the other pleasant enough. The former, at least, has carried the name of Tyburn down through centuries as a word of blackest omen.
By the side of the burn where it trickled down into the Park, stood the common gallows, of which much more will be said in another chapter. From springs feeding the burn, London obtained its first systematised water supply, which served the needs of a portion of the town for two or three centuries.
A few remote cottages were placed about the burn, and a little village grew up, but at the close of the fourteenth century it was deserted. Small wonder! The setting up of the gallows in its neighbourhood was sufficient cause for abandonment, within hearing, as the hamlet was, of the shrieks of the dying, and in sight of the processions that wended their way from the City to the gibbet. It was an age steeped in superstition, when people of high and low degree were staunch believers in witchcraft. Many a simple countryman must have been chilled with horror at the weird sounds he heard when the wind swept over the scaffold at night, or in his disordered imagination he saw, amid the darkness, the ghosts of victims return to visit the scenes where a violent death had ended their tortures and sufferings.
So complete was the demoralisation of the district, that the church built near Tyburn was the constant scene of robberies. Bells, vestments, books, images, and other ornaments were stolen, and in consequence, in the year 1400, Robert Braybrooke, Bishop of London, granted a licence to pull down the edifice. This was done, and a new one was erected farther back from Tyburn Road, and dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the words “le-bourne” being added to the name of Mary to distinguish it from other churches dedicated to the Virgin, hence Marylebone.
Pepys writes of the district as “Marrow-bones,” and this appears to have been the corruption in use in his day, as the form is often to be found in the early eighteenth-century newspapers, at which time “Marrow-bone-Fields” seems to have been a popular pleasure resort.
From Tyburn the famous Great Conduit was fed. This remarkable enterprise is of more than passing interest, as it is among the earliest examples in this country of which record survives of a municipal water supply. The story of its origin is quaintly given by Stow, who used such authorities as were at hand or traditions which he could himself pick up in Queen Elizabeth’s reign:
“The said River of Wels, the running water of Walbrooke, the Boornes afore named, and other the fresh waters that were in and about this Citie, being in process of time by incroachment for buildings, and heightnings of grounds mightily increased; they were forced to seeke fresh waters abroad, whereof some, at the request of King Henrie the third, in the 21 yeere of his reigne, were (for the profit of the Citie, and good of the whole Realme thither repairing; to wit for the poore to drink, and the rich to dresse their meat) granted to the Citizens, and their Successors, by one Gilbert Sandford, with liberty to convey water from the towne of Teybourne, by pipes of lead into their Citie.”
The date thus ascribed to the origin of the Great Conduit was 1237–8.
Near the close of the fourteenth century there was a large cistern, castellated with stone, in the Chepe—modern Cheapside. The expense of the works seem to have been heavy. Not only were various specific sums set aside, but foreign merchants visiting our shores were actually made to share the cost of the enterprise. Northouck says, writing of the year 1236:
“The foreign merchants, who were prohibited to land their goods in London, and were obliged to sell their merchandise on board a ship, purchased this year the privilege of landing and housing their commodities, at the expence of fifty marks per annum and a fine of one hundred pounds, towards supplying the City of London with water from Tyburn. This project was put in execution by bringing water from six fountains or wells in the town of Tyburn, by leaden pipes of 6-inch bore; which emptied themselves into stone cisterns or conduits lined with lead.”
This conduit was largely an open channel, exposed to all the vicissitudes of weather and accident, and partly piped. Its course was by Tyburn to St. James’s Hill (now Constitution Hill); thence to the Royal Mews, which occupied the present site of the National Gallery, and on through the Strand and Fleet Street to the Chepe. The pipes were a great source of annoyance to the inhabitants of Fleet Street and thereabouts, as they frequently burst and caused inundations. So much so, indeed, that in 1388 the residents requested that they might make a penthouse at their own cost; the request was granted, and it was erected where Salisbury Square now stands.
In the accounts of the Keepers of the Great Conduit for 1350, is the following interesting little item: “For bringing the pipes of the said Conduit into the King’s Mews, three men working for three days, each man receiving 8d. per day.” A little later the poet Chaucer was Clerk of the Works at these Royal Mews, so called because the King’s hawks were kept there, the word mews originating from the hawks “mewing,” or changing their feathers.
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