Works of art in the Park--Drinking fountain--Marble Arch--Hyde Park
Corner--Achilles statue--Walk round the Park--Cemetery of St.
George’s, Hanover Square--Sterne’s tomb and burial--Tyburn
tree--The Tybourne--People executed--Henrietta Maria’s
penance--Locality of the gallows--Princess Charlotte--Gloucester
House--Dorchester House--Londonderry House--Apsley House--Allen’s
apple stall--The Wellington Arch--Statues of the Duke--St. George’s
Hospital, Knightsbridge--A fight on the bridge--Albert Gate and
George Hudson--Knightsbridge Barracks.
Works of Art in the Park are conspicuous by their general absence. There
is a drinking fountain near the Bayswater Road, a fountain on the site
of the Chelsea Waterworks reservoir--the statue of Achilles, the Marble
Arch, and the Gate at Hyde Park Corner.
The drinking fountain was dedicated on Feb. 29, 1868, with a great
function in which figured the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Duke of
Cambridge, Lord Harris, and many other noblemen. This fountain was the
gift of the Maharajah of Vizianagram, K.C.S.I., and cost about £1200.
The material employed is box-ground stone, the columns being blue
pennant, and the bowls polished granite. The form of the fountain is
quadrangular, and the style early Gothic. On two sides are the portrait
and arms of the Maharajah; and on the remaining two sides the portrait
and arms of her Majesty Queen Victoria. On one of the recesses is the
following inscription, in old English character:--“This fountain, the
gift of the Maharajah Murza Vizeram Gujaputty Raj Munca Sooltan,
Bahadoor of Vizianagram, K.C.S.I., was erected by the Metropolitan
Drinking Fountain Association, 1868.”
The old Cumberland Gate, which was built about 1744, was, as may be seen
by a water-colour drawing in the Crace Collection (Port. ix. 75), a very
ugly brick construction with wooden gates--but it was removed in 1822,
and handsome iron gates substituted for it. But 1851--which turned Hyde
Park topsy-turvy--did away with them, and in their place was erected the
present Marble Arch, which was originally the chief entrance to
Buckingham Palace. The original estimate for it was £31,000, but that
included £6000 for an equestrian statue of George IV., which was to
surmount it, but was placed instead in Trafalgar Square. One authority
says it cost £80,000, whilst its metal gates cost £3000. It was designed
by Nash, the favourite architect of the Regency and reign of George IV.,
and is an adaptation from the Arch of Constantine at Rome. Flaxman,
Westmeath, and Rossi did the ornamentation, and, being of Carrara
marble, and kept scrupulously clean, it forms a very effective entrance
to the north of the Park.
Its removal was effected with great rapidity--for the foundations were
not begun to be dug till the middle of January, 1851. We hear of it in
_The Times_ of Feb. 25, that “the Arch is in a very advanced state, and
is, in fact, fast approaching towards completion. The works are so far
advanced that the massive gates have been fixed in their places, and
the whole of the superstructure is in a very forward condition.” And in
_The Times_ of April 1, 1851, we read: “On Saturday (March 29) the
re-erection of the Marble Arch at Cumberland Gate was completed; and, in
the course of the week, the carriage drive will be opened to the public.
The blocks of marble of which the Arch is composed have all been fresh
polished, and the structure has altogether a very chaste appearance. The
upper part of the Arch has been constructed as a police-station, and
will contain a reserve of men.”
In 1756, as we may see by a water-colour drawing by _Jones_ (Crace
Collection, Port. x. 39), the Piccadilly entrance to Hyde Park consisted
only of wooden gates, and so it remained until the present entrance was
made from designs by Decimus Burton in 1827. This is a screen of fluted
Ionic columns, supporting an entablature. This is divided into three
arched entrances for carriages, and two for foot passengers. The frieze,
which represents a naval and military triumph, was designed by
Henning--and if it were finished as he wanted it, with groups of
statuary on the top, it would be very fine. By the way, talking of
statuary at this spot, in “A New Guide to London,” 1726, p. 83, we find:
“If you please, you may see a great many Statues at the Statuaries at
Hyde-Park Corner.”
Visible from this entrance is the Achilles Statue--the first public nude
statue in England. A great deal of rubbish has been talked about this
statue, especially in attributing its original to Pheidias. Whoever was
its sculptor, it was a marble statue which formed part of a group on the
Quirinal Hill at Rome--which has been christened Achilles for no
particular reason, but that it seemed applicable to a monument from the
ladies of England to the hero of the day, the great Duke of Wellington.
The Pope gave the casts, the Ordnance Office found the metal from
captured French cannon, the Government gave the site, and yet it cost
£10,000 before it was erected. True, Westmacott furnished it with a
sword and shield which were not in the original, and part of the Park
wall had to be taken down in order to get it into the Park, an event
which took place on June 18, 1822 (the anniversary of the Battle of
Waterloo). But its beauties were not to be shown on that occasion, as
weighing about 33 tons, it required a lot of fixing--but it was unveiled
on July 14th. The height of this statue is more than 18 feet--and with
the mound, base, plinth, pedestal and statue, it is 36 feet high from
the road level. It was soon found necessary to surround it with an iron
balustrade, as it became a favourite play place of the little _gamins_
of the Park. On the pedestal is the following inscription:--
TO ARTHUR, DUKE OF WELLINGTON,
AND HIS BRAVE COMPANIONS IN ARMS,
THIS STATUE OF ACHILLES,
CAST FROM CANNON TAKEN ON THE VICTORIES OF
SALAMANCA, VITTORIA, TOULOUSE,
AND WATERLOO,
IS INSCRIBED
BY THEIR COUNTRYWOMEN.
PLACED ON THIS SPOT
ON THE XVIIITH OF JUNE MDCCCXXII
BY COMMAND OF
HIS MAJESTY GEORGE IV.
This statue was lampooned and caricatured very considerably, but both
are somewhat too broad for reproduction nowadays.
Let us now take a walk round the Park--outside--beginning on the North
side. All along the Park, till we come to Tyburn, was open fields and
market gardens, except the mortuary chapel and cemetery of St. George’s,
Hanover Square, and its concomitant, St. George’s Terrace, which we see
in Sandby’s camp picture of “The Toilet.” This burial ground was
enclosed and consecrated in 1764, and comprises an area of about four
acres. It is popularly supposed that Laurence Sterne is buried here--and
if you do not believe it, there is a tombstone to testify to the fact.
It is near the centre of the west wall of the cemetery, and it bears the
following inscription:--
Alas, poor Yorick.
Near to this Place
Lies the body of
The Reverend LAURENCE STERNE.
Dyed September 13, 1768,
Aged 53 years.
Ah! Molliter, ossa quiescant.
If a sound head, warm heart and breast humane,
Unsully’d worth, and soul without a stain,
If mental powers could ever justly claim
The well-won tribute of immortal fame,
Sterne was the Man who, with gigantic stride,
Mow’d down luxuriant follies far and wide.
Yet, what though keenest knowledge of mankind,
Unseal’d to him the springs that move the mind,
What did it boot him? Ridicul’d, abus’d,
By foes insulted, and by prudes accus’d.
In his, mild reader, view thy future fate,
Like him despise what ’twere a sin to hate.
This monumental stone was erected to the memory of the deceased by
two _Brother Masons_, for, although he did not live to be a member
of their _Society_, yet all his incomparable performances evidently
prove him to have acted by _Rule_ and _Square_; they rejoice in
this opportunity of perpetuating his high and unapproachable
character to after ages. W. & S.
If we analyze the above, and search out the truth of it, we find that
Sterne died on March 18th, and was buried in the cemetery on March 22nd,
being followed to the grave by only two persons, his publisher, Becket,
and Mr. Salt, of the India House. It is, and was, currently believed
that two nights after his burial his body was exhumed by the
body-snatchers, or “Resurrection Men,” as they were called, and by them
sold to M. Collignon, Professor of Anatomy at Cambridge: and the story
goes on to show, how among the scientific people the Professor invited
to witness his demonstration, there was one who had been personally
acquainted with Sterne, and who fainted with horror at the sight of his
corpse being thus anatomized. That this story is true is more than
probable--exhumation being rife--so much so, that in the _St. James’s
Chronicle_, Nov. 24-26, 1767, it is thus recorded of this very Cemetery:
“The Burying-Ground in Oxford Road, belonging to the Parish of St.
George’s, Hanover Square, having been lately robbed of several dead
Bodies, a Watch was placed there, attended by a large Mastiff Dog,
notwithstanding which, on Sunday last, some Villains found Means to
steal out another dead Body, and carried off the very Dog.”
Ann Radcliffe, the novelist, who died in 1823, was also buried here.
The old chapel is now pulled down, and a new and much handsomer one
erected in its place; whilst the cemetery has been levelled, planted,
pathed, and seated, in accordance with modern taste.
Continuing our walk, we come to dread Tyburn, with its fatal tree of
which it was written:--
“Since Laws were made for ev’ry degree
To curb vice in others as well as me,
I wonder we ha’n’t better Company
Upon Tyburn Tree.
* * * * *
In short, were Mankind their merits to have,
Could Justice mark out each particular knave,
Two-thirds the Creation would sing the last stave
Upon Tyburn Tree.”
It derives its etymology either from Twy bourne--Two brooks, or the
united brooks; or else from Aye-bourne[60]--t’Aye bourne--which rises in
Hampstead, and receiving nine other rills, crossed Oxford Street about
Stratford Place, by the Lord Mayor’s Hunting Lodge, now Sedley Place,
where conduits were built to receive water from it for the use of the
City: which conduits were found in pretty fair repair in Aug., 1875. It
ran by Lower Brook Street, which owes its name to it, as does also Hay
(Aye) hill--Lansdowne Gardens, Half Moon Street, crossed Piccadilly,
where it was spanned by a bridge, and thence into the Green Park, where
it formed a pond. Running past Buckingham Palace, it divided and formed
Thorney Island--or Westminster--one outfall turning the Abbey Mill.
Tyburn has been a place of execution for centuries, the earliest I can
find being in “Roger de Wendover,” who mentions that, A.D. 1196, William
Fitz-osbert, or Longbeard, was drawn through the City of London, by
horses, to the gallows at Tyburn. We hear occasionally of executions
there in the 14th and 15th centuries, and Perkin Warbeck was hanged
there in 1499--as was also Elizabeth Barton, the Holy Maid of Kent, in
1534--but I have no wish to chronicle the people who were here done to
death for crime, and religious and political offences, except to mention
that the bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton and Bradshaw, were exhumed,
and on Jan. 30, 1661, dragged on sledges to Tyburn, where they were
suspended till sunset on the “triple tree.”
That the shape of the Tyburn Gallows was triangular is proved by many
quotations, one of which, from Shakespeare’s _Loves Labour’s Lost_ (Act.
iv. Sc. 3), will suffice:--
_Biron._--Thou mak’st the triumviry, the corner cap of society,
The shape of love’s Tyburn, that hangs up simplicity.
There is a story that Queen Henrietta Maria did penance under the
gallows at Tyburn in expiation of the blood of the martyrs who had
suffered thereon. That it was a matter of public report there can be no
doubt, as we may read in the “_Reply of the Commissioners of his Majesty
the King of Great Britain, to the proposition presented by Mons. le
Maréschal de Bassompierre, Ambassador Extraordinary from his most
Christian Majesty_.”[61] “They (_the Bishop of Mande and his priests_)
abused the influence which they had acquired over the tender and
religious mind of her majesty, so far as to lead her a long way on foot,
through a park, the gates of which had been expressly ordered by Count
de Tilliers to be kept open, to go in devotion to a place (_Tyburn_)
where it had been the custom to execute the most infamous malefactors
and criminals of all sorts, exposed on the entrance of a high road; an
act, not only of shame and mockery towards the queen, but of reproach
and calumny of the king’s predecessors, of glorious memory, as accusing
them of tyranny in having put to death innocent persons, whom these
people look upon as martyrs, although, on the contrary, not one of them
had been executed on account of religion, but for high treason. And it
was this last act, above all, which provoked the royal resentment and
anger of his Majesty beyond the bounds of his patience, which, until
then, had enabled him to support all the rest; but he could now no
longer endure to see in his house, and in his kingdom, people who, even
in the person of his dearly beloved consort, had brought such a scandal
upon his religion; and violated, in such a manner, the respect due to
the sacred memory of so many great monarchs, his illustrious
predecessors, upon whom the Pope had never attempted, nor had ever been
able, to impose such a mark of indignity, under pretext of penitence, or
submission due to his see.”
That Charles I. believed this story, there can be but little doubt, for,
on July 12, 1626, he writes to his Ambassador in France: “I can no
longer suffer those that I know to be the cause and fomenters of these
humours, to be about my wife any longer, which I must do if it were but
for one action they made my wife do; which is to make her go to Tyburn
in devotion to pray, which action can have no greater invective made
against it than the relation.”
Replying to the Commissioners, Bassompierre takes up the cudgels for the
Queen, and denies the accusation thus: “The Queen of Great Britain, with
the permission of the King, her husband, gained the jubilee at the
Chapel of the Fathers of the Oratory at St. James’s (_Saint Gemmes_)
with the devotion suitable to a great Princess, so well born, and so
zealous for her religion--which devotions terminated with Vespers; and
some time after the heat of the day having passed, she went for a walk
in the Park of St. James’, and also in Hyde Park (_Hipparc_), which
adjoins it, as she had, at other times, been accustomed to do, and
frequently in the company of the King, her husband; but that she has
done so in procession, that there have there been made any prayers,
public or private, high or low--that she has approached the gallows
within 50 paces--that she has been on her knees, holding a book of Hours
or a Chaplet in her hands, is what those that impose these matters do
not believe themselves.”
In the Print Room of the British Museum, in that fine collection of
pictures relating to London--Crowle’s interleaved edition of Pennant’s
London--is a very fine engraving of the Queen, praying under the gallows
by moonlight, assisted by a torch-bearer--a coach and six awaiting her
return; but as this picture is manifestly of the last century, it is not
worth reproducing in any way.
Where the gallows stood is still a moot point--but evidence points that
No. 49, Connaught Square was built on its site, and in the lease of the
house from the Bishop of London it is so expressed. Against this a
correspondent in “Notes and Queries” (2 S. x. 198) says, “that the late
Mr. Lawford, the bookseller of Saville Passage, told me that he had been
informed by a very old gentleman who frequented his shop, that the
Tyburn Tree stood as nearly as possible to the public house in the
Edgware Road, now known by the sign of the ‘Hoppoles,’ which is at the
corner of Upper Seymour Street; he having several times witnessed
executions there. Amongst them, Dr. Dodd’s, which had made a strong
impression on his memory, on account of the celebrity of the culprit,
and because, when the hangman was going to put the halter round the
doctor’s neck, the latter removed his wig, showing his bald shaved head;
and a shower of rain coming on at the same time, someone on the platform
hastily put up an umbrella, and held it over the head of the man who had
but a minute to live, as if in fear that he might catch cold.”
Another correspondent (4 S. xi. 98) practically endorses this site. He
says: “The _potence_ itself was in Upper Bryanston Street, a few doors
from Edgware Road, on the northern side. The whole of this side of the
street is occupied by squalid tenements and sheds, now (Feb. 1, 1873) in
the course of demolition, and on the site of one of these, under the
level of the present street, is to be seen a massive brickwork pillar,
in the centre of which is a large socket, evidently for one of the
pillars of the old gallows. An ancient house at the corner of Upper
Bryanston Street and Edgware Road, which has been pulled down within the
last few weeks was described to me as the only one existing in the
neighbourhood when executions took place at Tyburn, and from the balcony
in front of which the Sheriffs of London used to take their official
view of the proceedings.”
The date of the last hanging at Tyburn was Nov. 7, 1783.
A curious thing connected with Tyburn was the “Tyburn Ticket.” In the
_Morning Herald_, March 17, 1802, is this advertisement: “Wanted, one or
two Tyburn Tickets, for the Parish of St. George’s, Hanover Square. Any
person or persons having the same to dispose of may hear of a
purchaser,” etc. These tickets were granted to a prosecutor who
succeeded in getting a felon convicted, and they carried with them the
privilege of immunity from serving all parochial offices. They were
transferable by sale (but only once), and the purchaser enjoyed its
privileges. They were abolished in 1818. They had a considerable
pecuniary value, and, in the year of their abolition, one was sold for
£280.
Tyburnia is that part of London bounded south by the Bayswater Road,
east by the Edgware Road, and the west includes Lancaster Gate.
There was a Turnpike called Tyburn Gate which commanded the Edgware and
Uxbridge Roads; and close by, on the north side of the Bayswater
Road--from the corner of the Edgware Road--is Connaught Terrace; No. 7
of which was, in 1814, the residence of Queen Caroline--wife of George
IV. It was here, and to her mother, that the Princess Charlotte ran,
rather than live at Carlton House, or marry the Prince of Orange. Then
there was great consternation, and the Lord Chancellor, the Chancellor
of the Duchy of Lancaster, and others, came to reason with her, but she
would none of them, and not even her kind uncle, the Duke of Sussex,
could prevail with her to go back.
Lord Brougham was more successful, and this is a portion of his account
of how he managed the wayward girl: “We then conversed upon the subject
with the others, and after a long discussion on that and her lesser
grievances, she took me aside, and asked me what, upon the whole, I
advised her to do. I said at once, ‘Return to Warwick House, or Carlton
House, and on no account to pass a night out of her own house.’ She was
extremely affected and cried, asking if I, too, refused to stand by her.
I said, quite the contrary, and that as to the marriage, I gave no
opinion, except that she must follow her own inclination entirely, but
that her returning home was absolutely necessary; and in this all the
rest fully agreed--her mother, the Duke of Sussex, Miss Mercer and Lady
Charlotte Lindsay, for whom she had a great respect and regard. I said,
that however painful it was to me, the necessity was so clear, and so
strong, that I had not the least hesitation in advising it. She again
and again begged me to consider her situation, and to think whether,
looking to that, it was absolutely necessary she should return.
“The day now began to dawn, and I took her to the window. The election
of Cochrane (after his expulsion, owing to the sentence of the Court,
which both insured his re-election and abolished the pillory) was to
take place that day. I said, ‘Look there, Madam; in a few hours all the
streets and the park, now empty, will be crowded with tens of thousands.
I have only to take you to the window, show you to the crowd, and tell
them your grievances, and they will rise in your behalf.’ ‘And why
should they not?’ I think she said, or some such words. ‘The commotion,’
I answered, ‘will be excessive; Carlton House will be attacked,--perhaps
pulled down; the soldiers will be ordered out; blood will be shed; and
if your Royal Highness were to live a hundred years, it never would be
forgotten that your running away from your father’s house was the cause
of the mischief; and you may depend upon it, such is the English
people’s horror of bloodshed, you would never get over it.’ She at once
felt the truth of my assertion, and consented to see her uncle Frederic
(the Duke of York) below stairs, and return with him. But she required
one of the Royal carriages should be sent for, which came with her
governess, and they, with the Duke of York, went home about five
o’clock.”
Turning down Park Lane, we find Gloucester House, the residence of
H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge, and it is so called because it was bought
by the late Duke of Gloucester on his marriage. Formerly the Earl of
Elgin lived here, and here he exhibited the “Elgin Marbles” which are
now the pride of the classical section of the British Museum. Byron, in
his _Curse of Minerva_, thus writes of them:--
“While brawny brutes, in stupid wonder stare,
And marvel at his lordship’s ‘stone shop’ there.”
Lower down is Dorchester House, the residence of Capt. Holford, erected
in 1852-4. It is so named because it stands on the site of a house
belonging to the Damers, Earls of Dorchester. It is celebrated for its
libraries, engravings, and paintings by the old masters. Yet nearer Hyde
Park Corner is Londonderry House, the town house of the Marquess of
Londonderry, K.G.
Hyde Park Corner, as shown in a water-colour drawing of 1756 in the
Crace Collection, gives us a good idea of what it was like--its wooden
gates, its apple stall, the row of squalid cottages, and the
public-house called the “Hercules’ Pillars”--where now stand Apsley
House and the houses of the Rothschilds. Anent the apple stall, the
story is told that the wife of a discharged soldier named Allen kept it
during the reign of George II. Allen somehow attracted the notice of the
King, who, upon learning that he had fought at Dettingen, asked what he
could do for him. Allen asked for the grant of the bit of land on which
his hut and apple stall stood, and the boon was granted. In 1784,
Allen’s representative sold the ground to Henry, Lord Apsley, who was
then Lord Chancellor, who thereon built a red brick house, which he is
said to have designed, and, having built the first floor, found that he
had forgotten any staircases to go up higher.
In 1820 it was purchased by the nation and settled on the great Arthur,
Duke of Wellington, and his heirs for ever, but it had to undergo many
alterations before it took its present shape. Many of my readers will
remember the bullet-proof iron shutters which were put up at every
window facing Piccadilly, after all the windows had been smashed by a
mob during the popular ferment caused by the Reform Bill. They were
never opened during the old Duke’s life, and were only taken down by his
son in 1856. The story of these iron shutters is thus told by the Rev.
R. Gleig, in his _Life of Arthur, Duke of Wellington_ (ed. 1864, p.
360):--
“The Duke was not in his place in the House of Lords on that memorable
day when the King went down to dissolve (prorogue) Parliament (April
22nd, 1831). He had been in attendance for some time previously at the
sick bed of the Duchess, and she expired just as the Park guns began to
fire. He was therefore ignorant of the state into which London had
fallen, till a surging crowd swept up from Westminster to Piccadilly,
shouting and yelling, and offering violence to all whom they suspected
of being anti-reformers. By-and-by, volleys of stones came crashing
through the windows at Apsley House, breaking them to pieces, and doing
injury to more than one valuable picture in the gallery. The Duke bore
the outrage as well as he could, but determined never to run a similar
risk again. He guarded his windows, as soon as quiet was restored, with
iron shutters, and left them there to the day of his death--a standing
memento of a nation’s ingratitude.”
The illustration representing the Duke looking out of his smashed
windows is taken from _Political Sketches by H.B._ (John Doyle), No.
267, June 10th, 1833, and is entitled “Taking an Airing in Hyde Park; a
portrait, Framed but not YET _Glazed_.”
Nearly opposite Apsley House, and at the top of Constitution Hill,
stands an Arch which was originally intended as a private entrance to
Buckingham Palace; but it was erected on its present site about 1828,
when Burton put up his screen at the entrance to Hyde Park. It is now
more generally known as the Wellington Arch, from its having been
surmounted by a colossal bronze equestrian statue of the great Duke, by
Matthew Cotes Wyatt, in 1846. This was the outcome of a public
subscription for the purpose, which is said to have amounted to £36,000.
So much ridicule, however, was heaped upon it, that it was taken
[Illustration: THE BROKEN WINDOWS AT APSLEY HOUSE, 1831.
Page 280.
]
down in January, 1883, and removed to Aldershot in August, 1884, where
it now is. A new statue on a pedestal supported by four soldiers, by Sir
J. E. Boehm, was afterwards erected on nearly the same spot, and was
unveiled by the Prince of Wales, on December 21, 1888.
St. George’s Hospital, which stands close by, owes its existence to some
dissension in the government of the Westminster Infirmary--and the
seceders, in 1733, took Lanesborough House, on the site of the present
hospital. The house being found too small, wings were added, and, even
then, want of space compelled the governors to pull it down and erect a
new one, which was finished in 1834--since when it has been much
enlarged.
Knightsbridge is a very old hamlet--adjacent to Hyde Park Corner and
thence running westward, bounded on the north by the Park. It is
supposed to have taken its name from a bridge over the Westbourne, which
ran across the road previous to its falling into the Thames at Chelsea.
In Ellis’s _Introduction to Norden’s Essex_, p. XV., he says that
Norden, describing in 1593 the bridges of most use in Middlesex,
“enumerates ‘Kinges bridge, commonly called Stone bridge, nere Hyde
parke corner, wher I wish noe true man to walke too late without good
garde, unless he can make his partie good, as dyd Sir H. Knyvet, Knight,
who valiantlye defended himselfe, ther being assaulted, and slew the
master theefe with his owne hands.’”
This bridge was as near as possible where Albert Gate now stands--one of
the mansions there being once occupied by George Hudson, the Railway
King, who bought it for £15,000. From being a small draper at York,
with his own savings and a legacy of £30,000, he amassed a large fortune
by promoting Railway Companies. When the Railway mania collapsed he
became very poor, but a few friends having subscribed £4800, they bought
him an annuity with it, on which he lived until his death, in 1871.
The Barracks for the Household Cavalry are also in Knightsbridge, and
not many years ago they were condemned as being unsanitary, and the
present magnificent block built in their stead. From them to Kensington
Gardens, there is nothing particular to note.
[Illustration]
LONDON:
PRINTED BY GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, LD.,
ST. JOHN’S HOUSE, CLERKENWELL, E.C.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Ancestor of the family of Mandeville, Earls of Essex.
[2] A hide was 100 or 120 acres--as much land as one plough could
cultivate in a year.
[3] A Carucate was as much arable land as could be cultivated by one
plough in a year, with sufficient meadow and pasture for the team.
[4] A plough is the same as a Carucate.
[5] These were not slaves, but persons used and employed in the most
servile work, and belonging, both they and their children, and their
effects, to the lord of the soil, like the rest of the cattle or stock
upon it.
[6] A Virgate was from 8 to 16 acres of land.
[7] Bordars were peasants holding a little house, bigger than a
cottage, together with some land of husbandry.
[8] An History of the Church of St. Peter, Westminster, by R. Widmore,
1751.
[9] John of Gaunt, brother of Edward III., and titular King of Castile.
[10] Strype’s edit, of Stow’s Survey, ed. 1720. Book VI. p. 80.
[11] Lord Burghley, High Steward of Westminster.
[12] Who had formerly been a kind of companion to his wife.
[13] England under the reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, by P. E. Tytler.
Lond. 1839, vol i. p. 288.
[14] Illustrations of British History, etc., by E. Lodge. Lond. 1791,
vol. ii. p. 205.
[15] The Duke of Anjou and his Court.
[16] Keeper, whose duty was to shoot trespassing dogs, and foxes.
[17] His lodge.
[18] Correspondence of Lord Scudamore, Ambassador at Paris in 1635,
etc., privately printed.
[19] Vol. ii. p. 508.
[20] _Mercurius Politicus._ January 29-February 5, 1657.
[21] _Mercurius Politicus._ January 15-22, 1657, and _The Publick
Intelligencer_, January 19-26, 1657.
[22] _Mercurius Politicus._ February 12-19, 1657.
[23] “Amusements Serious and Comical, Calculated for the Meridian of
London.” Lond. 1700, p. 55.
[24] “Environs of London.” D. Lysons, 2nd ed. vol. ii. part i. p. 117.
[25] _Amelia_, by Hy. Fielding, ed. 1752. Book 5, ch. vi. p. 132.
[26] Brit. Mus. 515. 1. 2/215
[27] Richardson.
[28] The Duke of York, afterwards James II.
[29] Whenever “the tour” is mentioned, the “Ring” is meant which was
the most fashionable part.
[30] Rox. ii. 379.--Lutt. ii. 147.
[31] 1st Series, 2nd edition, 1862, p. 71.
[32] The age of the Prince Regent.
[33] Technically we were then at war with America--a war which began
June 18th, 1812, and was ended by the Peace of Ghent, December 24th,
1814.
[34] These mimic ships were drawn by artillery horses from the Thames
side to the Serpentine.
[35] _Morning Chronicle_, June 30, 1838; p. 4, c. 3.
[36] The “Book of Fame,” by Geoffrey Chaucer; printed by Caxton, 1486
(?)
[37] Dais.
[38] _Punch_, June 29, 1850.
[39] This was no mandarin, but the shipper of a Chinese junk, then on
exhibition, who had dressed himself gorgeously, and obtained admission
somehow.
[40] 6s. iv. 172.
[41] The writer saw the messenger returning from the King at
_Kensington_, and the execution.
[42] “Celebrities of London and Paris.” 3rd Series, 1865.
[43] The Bishop of Durham is a Prince Palatine, as well as a Bishop,
and on entering his palatinate used to be, and may be now, girt with a
sword.
[44] “A ramble thro’ Hyde Park; or, the Humours of the Camp.” London,
1722.
[45] Oil-cloth.
[46] Then called Buckingham House.
[47] Next in rank to gunners.
[48] Really, 841 cavalry and 7351 infantry.
[49] The barrels and locks of the muskets of that date were bright and
burnished. Browning military gun-barrels were not introduced till 1808.
[50] The then Chief Commissioner of Police.
[51] This Mr. Walpole denied in a letter to _The Times_, July 26th.
[52] So called because it was there that the Reform League used to
hold their meetings.
[53] 35 and 36 Vic. C. 15 (June 27, 1872); by which it is set forth
in the first Schedule, “That no person shall deliver, or invite any
person to deliver any public address in a park, except in accordance
with the rules of the park.”
[54] A police inspector specially active in pursuit of
Anarchists--knowing all their haunts, etc.
[55] Now Sir E. Lawson, Bart., editor of _The Daily Telegraph_.
[56] 1000_l._
[57] Then Chief Commissioner of Police.
[58] Probably meaning Sunday, 24th March.
[59] Now the French Embassy, and the London and County Banking Company.
[60] In a plan of “Part of Conduit Mead”--about 1720--the little
stream is called “Aye brook.”
[61] “Memoirs of the Embassy of the Marshal de Bassompierre to the
Court of England in 1626,” p. 138. Translated. Lond. 1819.