_CAEN WOOD._
Caen Wood (or Ken Wood, as Lord Mansfield always spelt it), lying between
the villages of Hampstead and Highgate, belongs to neither, but is
situated in the parish of St. Pancras, which adjoins Hampstead Heath at
the upper corner of Lord Mansfield’s demesne. Part of Caen Wood comes
out upon the Heath, from which it has been emparked, and the whole is so
nearly connected by neighbourhood and association with the local history
of Hampstead, that in writing of the one it is impossible to ignore the
other.
Ken Wood, a name which Loudon believed preserved the British one of
Kerns, or oak-woods, with which its site was anciently covered, is
thought by Lysons to be derived from that of some remote possessor, a
family of the name of Kentewoode having in bygone times held land in this
neighbourhood and in Kentish Town.
Mr. Lloyd quite recently, in a lecture entitled ‘Caen Wood and its
Associations,’ gives it as his opinion that the name comes from the
French Caen; and he says that in all probability the Conqueror gave the
property to a relation of his own, who, having lands at Caen in Normandy,
naturally called his new estate after that town. I give this suggestion,
which is very probable, for what it is worth.
In the time of Charles II., I learn from Somers’ Tracts, Ken Wood
was not the name of a part only, but of the whole remaining portion
of the great woods belonging to the See of London, part of the old
Forest of Middlesex, of which Park, with reason, imagines Ken Wood to
be a remnant.[194] It is situated in the Manor of Cantleowes, in the
north-east corner of the parish of St. Pancras, and ‘is a portion of one
of its four great manorial properties, viz., Cantleowes, Kentish Town,
St. Pancras, Somerstown, Ruggemere, Marylebone, and Tottenhall, Tottenham
Court Road.’[195]
Leaving the names of its more ancient proprietors to the dead past,
in 1640-42 Sir James Harrington resided at Ken Wood. He was an active
Commonwealth man, and fled beyond seas at the Restoration, having
narrowly escaped arrest. Subsequently we find Mr. John Bill, the younger,
whose father, John Bill, Esq., one of the King’s printers,[196] had been
sequestered for delinquency by the Long Parliament, writing to Sir Harry
Vane for his advice touching the purchase of the property, which he (Sir
Harry), then—1658—resident in his fine house on Hampstead Hill, knew all
about. He reports that the ‘estate of Ken Wood appears to him to require
handling well; the home demesne is particularly good, and capable of
much improvement, but _that little castle of ruinous brick and stone_
could only be used for materials to build another house. There are nearly
thirty acres of waste, as ponds, moate, etc., and a deal of trees to
be cut down, and many serious expenses to be considered.’ He adds that
it is not worth by £100 the price asked for it, and advises his friend
not to purchase—advice which appears to have met with the usual fate of
counsel that runs counter to the inclination of the client, for two years
afterwards (1660) Mr. John Bill the younger purchased the estate. It then
consisted of 280 acres of land, well covered with timber, and the house
is described as a ‘capital messuage of brick, wood, and plaster.’ That
‘little castle of ruinous brick and stone’ on the demesne must have been
a mere excrescence, a relic of more antique times. There were, besides,
eight cottages, a farmhouse, windmill, and fishponds.[197] The windmill
occupied the summit of what is now known as Parliament Hill, where, says
my authority, ‘the trench formed by the removal of its foundation is
still to be traced.’[198]
It was, no doubt, the Manor Mill, a source of much profit to the Lord,
‘the tenants being compelled to grind their corn there, at his own
price.’ Having ‘found a place that he could live in with comfort,’ as he
expresses it, Mr. John Bill married Diana, daughter of Mildmay, Earl of
Westmoreland, and widow of John Pelham, Esq., of Brokesly, Lincolnshire,
whose name the lady preferred and retained. The St. Pancras register for
1661 records the baptism of Diana, daughter of John Bill and Lady Pelham,
at Caen Wood, an event that inspired James Howell, the author of ‘Poems
on Several Choice and Various Subjects: Lond. 1663,’ to write one
‘Of Mrs. DIANA BILL,
Born and Baptized lately in Cane Wood,
Hard by Highgate.’
The title is sufficiently curious, and so are the lines that follow, for
which I refer my readers to Lysons, or Park.
I am reminded that Pepys in his Diary records that he and Lady Bill
(a well-bred but crooked woman) stood sponsors for a friend’s child.
Meanwhile Mr. Bill has been busy with his estate, and has surrounded
twenty-five acres of it with a brick wall. In 1661 occurred the strange
outbreak[199] of the Fifth Monarchy men, who, being driven out from
St. John’s and Hornsey Woods, took refuge in Cane Wood (as it was then
written). Here flew their banner, with its wild motto, ‘The King Jesus,
with their heads on the gate!’—that gate, as someone writes, that from
reign to reign ‘resembled a butchery with the heads and quarters of men.’
Here Venner, preacher and cooper, with his scanty handful of followers,
for three days in mid-winter, when Mr. Pepys’ pew was gay with rosemary
and bays, kept their woody stronghold, and prayed and starved, till
Raresby, ‘who wanted a little action,’ rode out with a band of soldiers
and surrounded them. Even then Venner, who fought desperately, would not
suffer himself to be taken till he was badly wounded, and most of his
party cut down or prisoners. In 1673, much to his wife’s (Lady Pelham)
satisfaction, we may be sure, the name of John Bill, Esq., appears in
the list of Middlesex gentry, an honour he survived for seven years,
dying at Caen Wood in 1680. He was buried in Hampstead Church. Their
only daughter—and, I believe, their only child, for in his will he
desired that the estate might be sold at the death of his wife—had in the
meantime married Captain Francis D’Arcy Savage, and died, his widow, May
23, 1726. She ‘lies buried,’ Park tells us, ‘against the north wall in
Barnes churchyard.’
Nine years after the death of Mr. Bill, the estate of Caen Wood was the
residence of a Mr. Withers; and some time prior to 1698 Mr. William
Bridges, Surveyor-General of the Ordnance, resided here.
When Mackey wrote his ‘Tour through England’ (1720), Ken Wood had become
the property of one Dale, an upholsterer, who is said to have bought it
out of the ‘Bubbles.’[200] His hold upon it appears to have been quite as
fleeting, for he very soon mortgaged it to Lord Hay for £1,575. Fifteen
years later we find his lordship bringing an action[201] to foreclose, on
the plea that he can neither get principal nor interest from him, and
that a second mortgage had been made to William, Lord Forbes, and the
mortgagee had suffered the house to go to ruin, had felled a quantity of
timber, and committed great waste. The end was that, after being allowed
six months to pay £1,907 7s. 6d. (October 24, 1724), the miserable
upholsterer found himself absolutely foreclosed of all equity of
redemption of the mortgaged property, and shortly after, February, 1725,
the same order was made against Lord Forbes, the second mortgagee. ‘This
is interesting,’ says Mr. Lloyd, ‘as showing the value of the property
167 years ago. It is set out as a messuage, pleasure-grounds, orchards,
kitchen-garden, paddock, and woodlands, with four ponds, covering 22
acres, together with £5 per annum parcel of £15 a year secured upon lease
granted to the Governors of the Waterworks. Yet, all this only brought
as much as would cover the first mortgage, under £2,000—little more than
£100 per acre; and yet within the last three years (1892) some 200 acres
of the adjoining bare land has been sold by Lord Mansfield for public
purposes at £1,000 per acre! and the vendor was so completely master
of the situation as to compel the erection of a fence by the public of
something approaching the value of the fee simple of the estate when it
was sold by order of the Court in 1724; and doubtless it would have sold
for more if cut up for building purposes.’
In the same year that Lord Hay recovered the estate the famous Duke of
Argyle purchased it; and at his death he left it to his nephew, Lord Bute.
Horace Walpole, his old schoolfellow, describes him as a man of taste,
who he thinks ‘meant well.’ He was said to be the favourite of the
Dowager Princess of Wales (mother of George III.), who, according to the
above authority, forced the King to employ him. He proved a weak and
incompetent Minister, who, in his desire to fuse all parties, offended
all. He married the only daughter of the celebrated Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu, the sometime friend and correspondent of Horace Walpole and
Pope, and, Court scandal apart, proved passably amiable in his domestic
relations.[202]
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in her letters to her daughter, tells her that
she well remembers Caen Wood (she spells it Kane Wood[203]) House, and
cannot wish her a more agreeable place. But in those days the house was
comparatively insignificant, and the gardens and grounds not nearly so
extensive or so well laid out as at present. Neither was it so secluded
or self-contained. The road to Highgate at this time came close up to the
principal entrance.
A wood called Turner’s Wood adjoined it, which became in 1737 the site
of the very original and favourite place of amusement, New Georgia—a
tea-drinking house, and pleasure-grounds, with waterworks, and
various ingenious contrivances laid out, invented, and executed by a
sexagenarian, who appears to have had considerable mechanical skill,
and some humour in his application of it. The cottage, on which an
inscription set forth that he, Robert Caxton, had built it with his own
hands,[204] contained several rooms, in one of which a chair sank on a
person sitting in it, while another contained a pillory, into which, when
a gentleman put his head, he could only be extricated by a lady kissing
him—a grace which the free manners of the times allowed on the part of
maids or matrons without the fear of scandal or the police-courts. We
learn from contemporary writings that this contrivance became exceedingly
popular, and the _Connoisseur_[205] informs us ‘that it made a favourite
Sunday recreation of the citizens to put their necks into the pillory at
New Georgia.’[206]
But the close neighbourhood of this popular place of resort could
scarcely have added to the charms of Ken Wood or the peace of its noble
proprietor, and accordingly, some time subsequent to 1755, ‘for a cause
that did him honour’ (the payment of his debts), Lord Bute sold Ken Wood
to the then Attorney-General, the erewhile Mr. Murray of the Chicken
House.
Turner’s Wood, with the humorous cottage, garden, ponds, labyrinths,
etc., became absorbed in the grounds of that domain.[207]
Notwithstanding the sneers of Malone, it is impossible, in tracing the
career of Mr. Murray, not to agree with Boswell’s opinion of him, that
he was ‘no mere lawyer.’ The life-long friend and companion of some of
the greatest wits and writers of his time (and there were giants in those
days) must have had more in him than _good company_ to have deserved,
and retained, their friendship, or to have felt sympathy in their
society. There is more poetry in human nature than finds expression in
verse; the courage, faith, and self-reliance—precious but easily packed
possessions—that sat as lightly in the breast of the poor but well-born
boy as he himself upon the rough Scotch pony on which he made his two
months’ journey to the Metropolis, like the younger son in a fairy tale,
with three good gifts for his portion, have in themselves the elements of
poetry. He seems through life to have retained these gifts, and to have
owed to a strong will, brave heart, and noble ambition, the achievement
of eminence that has won him a historical name, independent of his
father’s, and has made that of Mansfield little less memorable than that
of Murray.
Roscoe tells us that his success was the legitimate and logical result
of the means he sedulously employed to secure it. Remembering his want
of wealth, the well-known predilections of his house for that of the
Stuarts, and his consequent want of influence with those in power, it is
pretty evident that in the early part of his professional life he had
no honours thrust upon him that he had not hardly and justly earned.
Ten years before the purchase of Ken Wood, in the ever historically
memorable 1745, we find Mr. Murray, then Solicitor-General, called
before the Privy Council and put to his purgation touching his suspected
Jacobite tendencies, being accused (though a Westminster boy at the
time) of having drunk the Pretender’s health upon his knees; and also
that on the trial of the Scotch rebels, instead of applying to them the
latter epithet, he had referred to them as ‘unfortunate gentlemen.’
Yet in the next year, when the heads of the Lords Lovat, Kilmarnock,
and Balmerino had fallen on Tower Hill, the astute Scotch lawyer
maintained his legal and social status; but when, eight years later, he
was made Attorney-General (1754), it is said that he was so afraid of
the accusation he had been called to answer before the Privy Council
being brought against him in the House of Commons that he offered his
Sovereign, George II., to resign his place, saying that ‘the person
who served His Majesty in that high office should not be suspected of
treason.’ ‘Sir,’ replied the King, ‘were I able to replace you with as
able a man as yourself, I might perhaps permit you to give up your place.’
A year afterwards he became Chief Justice of the King’s Bench (1755), and
entered the House as Baron Mansfield.
Recollecting his passionate admiration of the neighbourhood of Ken Wood
(I call it so because he did), his purchase of it reads like the crowning
chapter of a romance. It was Lord Mansfield who first declared that the
air of England was too pure for a slave to breathe, and that every man
who inspires it is free!—a decision pronounced in favour of a runaway
negro, James Somerset.[208]
He decided against the barbarous custom of wrecking then, and till
comparatively modern times, prevalent upon our coasts. He also favoured
freedom of religious opinion, gave literary copyright to authors,
and is said _to have been the founder of the commercial law of this
country_. But his liberality only extended to a certain limit. He took
the part of the Crown against the North Americans’ righteous resistance
to taxation[209] without representation; and he would have restricted
the liberty of the press. He had not sufficient magnanimity to forego
monopoly of his highly-paid offices, for it was said of him that ‘next
to the King he regarded the coinage,’ and had a keen appetite for
emoluments.[210]
About the years 1767-68 he had become so thoroughly unpopular, that
not only were the public prints filled with abuse of him, but the very
potters emphasized this feeling by making him figure disagreeably on
articles of pottery and porcelain. At a recent sale of ceramic ware,
I remember to have met with a curious example on a Chelsea porcelain
punch-bowl, which was painted with portraits of John Wilkes in a
shield surmounted by the British lion, with Lords Camden and Temple as
supporters, inscribed ‘Wilkes and Liberty!’ with the motto underneath,
‘Always ready in a good cause,’ and a pendent portrait of Lord Mansfield,
surmounted by a serpent, with George III. and the devil as supporters,
and underneath a motto, ‘Justice en pettee!’
But the silver-tongued Murray bore all this, and much more, with
apparent equanimity, and exhibited even to his political enemies a
heroic moderation. To his honour, he assisted in reversing the sentence
of outlawry against Wilkes, who had returned from abroad in 1767, and
had been chosen to represent Middlesex. On that occasion we find from
his speech that he was suffering from a similar persecution to that
complained of by the late Lord Chief Justice during a famous trial[211]:
‘Numerous crowds attending in and about the hall;’ ‘audacious addresses,
dictating to us from those they call the people the judgments to be
given;’ ‘reasons of policy being urged from danger to the kingdom by
commotions and general confusion.’ ‘I pass over,’ said his lordship,
‘many anonymous letters I have received.... The threats go farther than
the abuse; personal violence is denounced. I do not believe it. It is
not the genius of the worst men of this country in the worst times.
But I have set my mind at rest. The last end that can happen to any man
never comes too soon if he falls in support of the law and liberty of his
country ... for liberty is synonymous with law!’
[Illustration: _Lord W. Mansfield._]
In the ‘Historical Chronicle’ of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, under the
date of January 1, 1773, it is recorded: ‘This day the Right Hon. Lord
Mansfield entertained at his house at Caen Wood, near Hampstead, about
four hundred people, and gave each a half-crown and a quartern loaf after
dinner.’
Years of scarcity were but too common in the last century, and this
might have been one. Under any circumstances such seasonable hospitality
was calculated to make the donor popular with the masses, yet seven
years later, in the course of the Gordon Riots, when, under pretence
of religious zeal, the mob resented his lordship’s supposed favour of
Catholicism,[212] we find Horace Walpole writing to the Countess of
Ossory, June 7, 1780, that Lord Mansfield’s house in Bloomsbury was in
ashes, and that George Selwyn had just told him that 5,000 men were
marching on Kane Wood. ‘It is true,’ he adds, ‘and that 1,000 of the
Guards are gone after them.’ Then, by way of postscript: ‘Kane Wood is
saved! It will probably be a black night. I am decking myself with blue
ribbands like a May-day garland.’
But Horace Walpole was not alone in adopting blue ribands on that
occasion. Every wayfarer donned the same colour, and every house had a
blue flag or favour hung out. The very Jews inscribed on their dwellings,
‘This house true Protestant’; and chalk was in great request, affording
as it did an easy washable way of asserting ‘No Popery!’ The father of
Grimaldi chalked up, ‘No Religion!’
We already know the result of the raid on Ken Wood, and the enterprise of
the quick-witted landlord of the Spaniards.[213]
Literature still deplores the loss of his lordship’s fine library, his
splendid collection of law books and autograph letters, but most of all
his private notes and papers, which it is said had been accumulating for
fifty years.
[Illustration: _The Spaniards._]
All his contemporaries bear witness to the calmness and dignity with
which he bore this irreparable loss,[214] nor (for all that is said of
his love of money) would he accept of any pecuniary compensation for
it. His hard, inflexible animosity to his noble opponent, Lord Chatham,
whose death ‘he witnessed without compassion, whose funeral he refused
to attend, and when the House moved for a pension to be granted to
the widow and her children had kept silence, voting neither one way
nor the other,’[215] was the great moral blot on Lord Mansfield’s
character. But on this occasion of keen mental pain and bitter personal
disappointment—far beyond his great monetary loss—he exhibited no
vindictiveness against the perpetrators of it, and himself directed the
acquittal of Lord George Gordon.
One wonders if he came face to face in the hour of his calamity with the
memory of his own past want of mercy, and recognised in fire and the
devastation of his best-prized treasures the form of a protean Nemesis.
Not long after this event Mrs. Boscawen, writing to her friend Mrs.
Delany, tells her that she has called at Ken Wood; that Lord Mansfield
appears to bear his trial with great equanimity, but that Lady Mansfield
is looking very ill.
It was a happy thing for the Chief Justice that, like his neighbour
and friend Erskine (notwithstanding all their occasional professional
antagonism), he too found pleasure in simple things, especially in the
improvement of his grounds; and though not so ardent and practical an
arborist as Lord Erskine, several of the trees in the demesne are of his
plantings—especially the cedars of Lebanon, which make so interesting an
appearance in the grounds opposite the house. There are three of them,
planted at the angles of an equilateral triangle, and, unlike most cedars
of Lebanon, they grow from 50 to 60 feet high without branches. The trunk
of the largest measures in girth, just above the ground, 24 feet.[216]
Another source of relief from mental corrosion was his fondness for the
society of young persons, and it is pleasant to learn from a letter in
the correspondence of Mrs. Delany that twelve months after the Gordon
Riots he had recovered, if, indeed, he had ever lost, his accustomed
serenity.
This lady, then in her eighty-first year, was visiting Mrs. Boscawen
(widow of the Admiral) at Glanville, Colney Hatch, and she writes to her
niece under the date of July 23, 1781:
‘Last Friday Lady Mansfield and Miss Murray (grand-niece to the Lord
Chief Justice) came here from Kenwood, and invited Mrs. Boscawen and all
her guests to dine there yesterday, which we did. A most agreeable day it
proved, Lord Mansfield in charming spirits; and after dinner he invited
me to walk round his garden and through his wood; and by the time we
came back to tea it was eight o’clock. We had walked two miles at least,
and though I felt a little tired, the pleasure of the place and his
conversation made me not sensible of it till I came home.’
This walk was most probably the serpentine path which is mentioned by
Brewer, nearly two miles in extent, and which conducted round the most
interesting part of the grounds, and through the large and venerable
woods. In this perambulation some charming views occur, revealing
landscapes wholly unconnected with the demesne, but which add greatly to
its apparent extent and picturesqueness. Looking at an engraving of Caen
Wood House, taken after its restoration and enlargement by Robert Adam,
and subsequently Saunders, soon after it came into the possession of the
then Attorney-General, it looks a fitting home for learned leisure, or
the refreshment of one weary of the toil of public life. Handsome without
magnificence, lapped amongst bowery woods, with charming views, fine
gardens, water, and beautifully laid-out grounds. We read that within
the house the arrangements were more imposing than the exterior would
suggest, the rooms being large, lofty, and well proportioned.[217]
Amongst the pictures were several portraits of celebrated men, notably
two by Pope (who took lessons of Jarvis, the face-painter), the famous
head of Betterton, the actor, and the portrait of the poet himself.
After the burning of his lordship’s house in Bloomsbury Grove, hundreds
of persons called at Caen Wood to inquire if Pope’s portrait had been
saved.[218] Lord Mansfield lived to be eighty-six years of age, and
voluntarily resigned in 1788 (not a day, it was said, before it was
imperatively necessary for him to do so) the Lord Chief Justiceship of
the Court of King’s Bench, which he had held for thirty-two years.
[Illustration: _Caen Wood House._]
When Fanny Burney, on the occasion of her visit to Mrs. Crewe at
Hampstead, was taken by that lady to see, amongst other places of
interest, Caen Wood, she tells us Lord Mansfield had not been out of his
room for four years, though he continued to see his intimate friends.
His last years, she is careful to note, were brightened by the assiduous
attentions and tender care of his nieces, the Hon. Miss Murrays. He died
March, 1793.
Lord Mansfield was noted for the charming quality of his voice—an
immense force in oratory, helping as it does to sway the feelings of the
audience. Pope is said to have had this charm in so remarkable a degree
that in his childhood he was called ‘the little nightingale,’ a term more
applicable to vocalization than to speaking, and, like Pope, Murray had
studied elocution.
[Illustration: _Hogarth._]
He is said to have had a greed for money-getting, and never to have
given an opinion gratis or unprofessionally. There is a story told of a
lady who, wishing to have the authority of his ideas upon the subject
of the French Revolution, inquired how he thought it would end, and
was answered that, ‘as the event was without precedent, so the end was
without prognostic,’ a sentence that could not have greatly added to her
enlightenment.
It was through Lord Mansfield’s suggestion that the Honourable Society
of Lincoln’s Inn are in possession of Hogarth’s picture of ‘Paul before
Felix.’ A legacy of £200 had been left to the Inn, and as the best way
of spending it his lordship recommended the Benchers to employ Hogarth to
paint them the picture, which hangs, or did hang, in the Benchers’ old
hall.
It is pleasant to record of Lord Mansfield that, at a time when the
criminal law of England was Draconic in its indiscriminating severity,
he, as a rule, leaned to the side of mercy. It was Lord Mansfield who
directed a jury to find a stolen trinket less in value than ten shillings
in order that the thief might escape capital punishment, to which the
jeweller who prosecuted demurred, asserting that the fashion of the thing
had cost him twice the money. ‘Gentlemen,’ replied the judge, with grave
solemnity, ‘we ourselves stand in need of mercy; let us not hang a man
for the fashion’s sake!’
His kinsman and successor, the second Earl of Mansfield, spent much
of his time at Hampstead, of which he was also a warm admirer; and
when, in the autumn of 1829, it became necessary for the freeholders
and copyholders to consider what measures should be taken for the
preservation of their own privileges, and the prevention of further
encroachments on the Heath, by breaking up and destroying the herbage,
for the digging and selling of sand, etc., and also to oppose the further
progress of what was called Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson’s Estate Bill, which
had actually arrived at its last stage in the House of Lords without
their knowledge,[219] and, consequently, without a voice being raised
against it, Lord Mansfield wrote to the committee promising to support
the opposition, and subscribing £50 towards the necessary expenses.
Six years later, in the summer of 1835, Caen Wood received the honour of
a royal visit, in the gaiety and gratulation of which event Hampstead
naturally shared. Their Majesties William IV. and his amiable Queen,
Adelaide, on whom kindness sat more easily than state, had announced
their intention of being present at a garden-party to be given by the
Earl and Countess of Mansfield, and forthwith the loyalty of the village,
whose church bells had not rung out on such an occasion since the passing
by of Queen Mary, wife of William III., in the summer of the year of
her death—1694—was put upon its mettle how best to demonstrate itself.
Eventually the exultation and excitement of the inhabitants, guided by
the good taste of the gentlemen (there were a hundred of them) who had
formed themselves into a committee of management, took the pretty form
of dressing the houses on the line of route from Rosslyn Hill to the
top of Heath Street with green boughs, flowers, and variegated lamps.
At the entrance of the Heath, just short of the White Stone Pond, the
decorations culminated in a triumphal arch, not quite as large as Temple
Bar, but far more ornamental. It spanned the road, and was draped with
the royal standard and St. George’s banner, and many other flags, the
bright colours of which, mingled with garlands and festoons of flowers
and greenery, lent themselves well to picturesque effect.[220]
On either side were enclosed recesses for the ladies privileged by rank
or courtesy to represent the élite of the neighbourhood; and here their
Majesties’ carriage was to pause while Colonel Bosanquet, chairman of
the committee, read a loyal address. The rejoicings were to end with a
pyrotechnic display upon the Heath and the illumination of the village.
The day was radiant, as days will sometimes be even in England in the
solstitial season, and Caen Wood, with its fifty acres of flower-garden
and pleasure-grounds, its leafy woods and park, and sheet of water,
broken by groups of trees, and crossed by an artificial bridge at a
distance, looked its very best, especially from the terrace along the
south front of the mansion, on which a state sofa had been prepared
for their Majesties. On this occasion the whole suite of apartments on
the ground-floor had been thrown open to the company, the principal
dining-room being reserved for the royal party.
If we look back to the _Court Journal_ of that day, we shall find that
the six carriages, in the last of which, drawn by four white horses,
were the King and Queen, entered the village of Hampstead a little after
4 p.m. The parochial authorities had met them at the boundary of the
parish; charity children were drawn up in ranks and had saluted them;
and the spectators all along the line of road from Tottenham Court Road
to Chalk Farm had made the air resonant with hearty cheers, which were
caught up and continued all the way to Caen Wood.
A royal salute notified their Majesties’ arrival at Hampstead. A moment
after hurrying avant-couriers appear on the edge of the Heath. The
band of the 1st Life Guards struck up the National Hymn, the tiers of
elegantly-dressed women rose on either side of the triumphal arch, at the
entrance of which the royal carriage stopped, the steps were let down,
and Colonel Bosanquet and a deputation of the committee approached. The
Colonel, bowing profoundly, laid a white-gloved hand on the carriage
door, and, apologizing for arresting their Majesties’ progress, read
the address of the loyal inhabitants of Hampstead. Whereupon the King
answered that he received with pleasure on the part of himself and
the Queen the loyal expressions of the inhabitants of all classes of
the parish and ‘beautiful village of Hampstead.’ Let that phrase be
remembered as an unpremeditated pearl of praise from the lips of Majesty,
in sight of the loveliness of views expanding on both sides of him, an
echo intensified, as it were, of Constable’s ‘sweet Hampstead.’
Thence to Caen Wood, as we have said, the route was a popular ovation,
the way lined with spectators and carriages that were filled with them.
At Mansfield House—so we find it called at this date, their Majesties
were received at the north entrance by Lord and Lady Mansfield, the
Ladies Murray, and Lord Stormont, then a boy of seven years of age; while
a brilliant company (700 in number) gathered in the grounds, where tents
and marquees shone white upon the lawns. Small boats, decked with flags,
floated on the water or glided to and fro, giving colour and animation to
its surface. The woods echoed to the notes of the Styrian Hunters[221]
and the Coldstream band; and subsequent to the banquet, when the twilight
deepened into dusk, and the lake, boats and bridge appeared outlined with
coloured lights, and many of the trees entwined with them, the whole
resembled fairyland. Their Majesties remained till past ten o’clock, and
departed amidst the same enthusiastic crowds of loyal people and the same
manifestations of popular regard, every house in the ‘beautiful village’
along the line of road vying with its neighbour in illuminated devices,
ciphers, etc.
At Caen Wood the ‘pleasures of the place,’ the dance music of Weippert’s
band, the delicious strains of the Coldstreams, and various other devices
of delight, kept the company enthralled till
‘Some stars the tranquil brow of heaven still crowned;
The birds upon the trees sang one by one.
Dark night had flown, bright day was not yet come.’
This was the first and last semi-state visit of royalty to Hampstead.
The drive along the Broad Walk and by Caen Wood and Fitzroy Farm is said
to have been a favourite one with Queen Victoria in her early days, on
which a strict privacy was observed. But on philanthropical occasions,
when the Divine gift of charity is supposed to be largely moved by the
honour of presenting purses to royal receivers of them, kind-hearted
Princes and Princesses have never been wanting; and once, on the occasion
of a benevolent and unforgotten function by those who witnessed it, the
opening of Vane House as an asylum for soldiers’ daughters, the Prince
Consort himself inaugurated it, and was right loyally received.
But of late years neither the ‘beautiful village’ of Hampstead nor the
sylvan beauty of Caen Wood had power to lure the third Lord Mansfield,
who was High Constable of Scone, from his Northern palace for more than
three months in the year. In the absence of the proprietor, this charming
demesne—one of the brightest jewels, as it were, in the coronet of his
ancestral honours—has been left to solitude and comparative neglect.
The late Lord Mansfield died at his Castle of Scone, August 2, 1898. He
was born February 20, 1806. Caen Wood House is now in the hands of his
grandson, Lord Stormont having died during his father’s lifetime.
In 1825 the peaceful shades of Caen Wood were the scene of a sad
domestic tragedy, for here, in a wood near the house, Colonel James
Hamilton Stanhope, who was on a visit to his father-in-law, the second
Lord Mansfield, committed suicide. The unhappy gentleman had long been
suffering from mental depression, the result of an unhealed gunshot wound
he had received at the siege of San Sebastian.
It is pleasant to hear that the present owner of the beautiful demesne is
likely to reside there more frequently than his predecessor.