UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH
As soon as the death of Charles I. upon the scaffold under the windows
of Whitehall Banqueting House left the Regicides in undisputed
possession of the Royal lands, new difficulties arose.
No one knew what to do with them. Hyde Park entered upon a period of
unexampled vicissitude. No doubt the sterner section of the Puritans,
who had now gained the upper hand, looked upon all the gallantries and
follies of which the Park had been a centre as so much devilment, and
would gladly have seen the place swept away.
It was a time when bartering was keen, and money sorely needed for
the service of the State. The spacious Park grounds must have been a
tempting bait to offer for sale. On the other hand, a numerous body of
the citizens would have been quite content to seize the Royal Parks
for their own unrestricted use, and were strongly adverse to their
being handed over for enclosure by the farmer or for destruction by the
builder.
For the moment, at least, the parks were saved. About three months
after the Royal tragedy the Council took the whole matter under their
consideration, with the result that the record of their proceedings
contains the following important decision:
“To report to the House that the Council think Whitehall House, St.
James’s Park, St. James’s House, Somerset House, Hampton Court, and the
Home Park, Theobalds, and the Park, Windsor, and the Little Park next
the House, Greenwich House and Park, and Hyde Park, ought to be kept
for the public use of the Commonwealth, and not sold.”
The Parliament, however, undertook the care of its new acquisitions
with bad grace. It was continually selling portions of its patrimony,
and where sales could not be effected it freely destroyed. Nothing
seems to have been done for Hyde Park while its ultimate fate remained
in suspense; meanwhile the populace used it for their own amusement.
Gradually the cover for game became less good as the invasion extended.
New areas were converted into grass lands.
The Park lost for ever its characteristics as a game preserve, which
for so long it had retained.
Wars and alarms continued to be the public state. Soon great
preparations were made for Cromwell’s departure for Ireland, and a
grant was given to William Yarvell, a carriage master, to put all
the horses provided for the campaign which could not be accommodated
in Marylebone into Hyde Park to graze. Again, in the following year,
a notice appears in the State Papers that Colonel Hammond received
two hundred horses, and was told to turn them out to grass, but this
permission was withdrawn the same year.
On Cromwell’s return to England, in the spring of 1650, from the scenes
of the bloody massacres by which he had subdued Ireland, he entered
London in triumph. When passing the old camp where he had reviewed his
Ironsides years before, multitudes of citizens came out to greet him.
The soldiers stationed there discharged a volley, big guns were fired,
and the people shouted and cheered all the way to Whitehall.
The fate of Hyde Park did not remain long undecided.
In spite of much haggling by the Council, the vandals of Parliament
succeeded in two or three years in obtaining their own way. London
lost its playground. The Park was condemned to be sold by order
of Parliament in 1652, and realised about £17,000. The “eligible”
property, as an enthusiastic auctioneer of to-day would probably
describe it, was divided into three lots, namely:
The Gravel-pit division was bought by Richard Wilcox for £4144.
The Kensington division, bought by a merchant, John Tracy, for £3906;
and
The Middle, Banqueting, and Old Lodge Divisions were purchased by
Anthony Deane, of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, for £9020.
Of this sum, £4899, 10s. was realised for the timber, so evidently the
Park must have been thickly wooded at that time. There were also sold
Tyburn Meadow and the enclosed meadow-land used for the deer, which
were numerous. These animals brought in the sum of £765, 6s. 2d., the
money being devoted to the Navy.
What Richard Wilcox may have done with the Gravel-pit division I have
not been able to discover. Possibly he dug more gravel-pits; if so,
they have long since been filled up, and all traces have disappeared.
The pits came into the possession of a man named Orme in the nineteenth
century, who amassed a fortune by selling gravel from them to Russia,
and the money he afterwards invested in building. It is probable that
Orme Square, the home of Sir Rowland Hill (father of the penny post)
for so many years, was named after him.
John Tracy, the merchant who had secured the Kensington division,
was evidently a man of ambitions. We know that he built two houses
at Knightsbridge within the Park area, from the fact that after the
Restoration he mentions them specifically in his petition to Charles II.
The public purchasers of Hyde Park under the Commonwealth had never
received any confirmation of their transaction from Parliament. From
the Royalist standpoint they were liable to arrest for having acquired
Crown lands, and knowing their peril they were only too glad to restore
them to the King. The Law Courts declared the purchases annulled. Tracy
pleaded absence abroad, and consequent ignorance of the condition of
things in England when he made the purchase, and begged that he might
be allowed to retain the two Knightsbridge houses. King Charles, being
an easy-going soul, let him have his way.
Anthony Deane, who took by far the biggest share, set to work on the
notion that he could get his money back by making the people pay for
what they had hitherto freely enjoyed. He still kept up his land as
a park; but a charge was made for entrance, whereat there was much
discontent. Evelyn in his diary (April 1653) voices the universal
grumble:
“I went to take the aire in Hide Park, when every coach was made to
pay a shilling and every horse sixpence by the sordid fellow who has
purchas’d it of the State, as they were called.”
That shilling was worth about four times the present sum, so a drive
with a coach and pair was an expensive outing. Nevertheless, the Park
seemed fairly popular with the fashionable world, but not so much as
formerly, though necessarily more exclusive. A figure-head—a leader of
fashion—was sadly needed. Besides, the times were not favourable to
festivities. Here and there passages in private letters and extracts
from diaries permit us to peep at the social gatherings in Hyde Park
in the days of the Commonwealth; but they seem to have been dull,
dismal affairs, entirely lacking the abandon and freedom—not to say
licence—which set in after the Restoration.
Long before this a rival promenade had been opened for Society, and,
strangely enough, in a church. After the destruction of the Monasteries
the middle aisle of St. Paul’s Cathedral became both a market-place
and a common walk. When Hyde Park was taxed, and Spring Gardens closed
by Act of Parliament, “Paul’s Walk” came into still greater vogue, and
between the hours of eleven and twelve, and three and six, fashion of
all grades of Society met there, for the citizens wended their way to
the Cathedral for recreation, and to show off their gowns, and chat
with their friends instead of going west.
Yet even the Puritans had their moments of rejoicing when the dourest
of natures unbent.
The old custom of Maying, which had been abolished by the Puritans,
was revived in 1654. May Day was more generally observed than it had
been for many years, the people “going a-Maying” to Hyde Park in large
numbers.
One can easily conjure up the scene on a warm sunny day, merry,
tripping, dancing, laughing maids accompanied by their swains. These
young men were ’prentices in the City Companies, and donned their best
accordingly to go “a-Maying” with their ladyloves. The same old, old
story. Cupid was, and is, as powerful as his gloomy enemy Death, and
just as eternal.
There were no Bank Holidays then, but money was saved to buy finery,
new gowns were donned for the May games, and the difficulties of
transport made an outing to Hyde Park just as great a business to the
worker as a trip from London to the sea is to-day.
The poles were erected; they were gaily decorated with flags,
bunting, and flowers; pretty dances were performed around them, while
entanglement of ribbons provoked entanglement of hearts, and all made
merry in Hyde Park on May Day.
Maying began early in the morning with a service, and was looked upon
as a thanksgiving festival to celebrate the advent of spring and
disappearance of winter.
These May-Day games and rejoicings had their origin in pagan festivals,
and from the earliest days of England’s history they had probably been
a gala day for her people. In the days of Chaucer the King and Queen
and their courtiers took part in them, for the poet writes:
“Forth goeth all the Court, both most and
least, to fetch the flowers fresh.”
In the sixteenth century it was customary for the middle and lower
classes to go out at an early hour to gather flowers and hawthorn to
bring home at sunrise, with horn and tabor, singing and much merriment;
and the Robin Hood Games, perpetuating the adventures of Robin Hood,
formed a great feature in the May-Day pageants, Maid Marian, Friar
Tuck, Little John, and other characters disporting themselves among the
May garlands. Now that mediæval pageants are being revived all over
England, May-Day fêtes and dances may become common again.
Under the early Stuarts May Day continued to be a great national
holiday.
London kept it in later days in a fashion of its own. Until within the
nineteenth century it continued to be the festival of milkmaids and
chimney-sweeps.
A cow, much garlanded with flowers, was led by dairy women in light,
fantastic dresses, and wreathed with flowers, who would dance round
it, playing on musical instruments. Some of them used to polish up
their tin cans, others used to hire silver articles from pawnbrokers at
so much an hour. These used to be hung upon a frame which went over a
man’s head and shoulders, only his legs being visible, and as he joined
the dance, he was a somewhat comical apparition.
The sweeps were the last to keep up May Day in the Metropolis. A
band of them in character dress marched round the streets until
the middle of the century, accompanied by a man concealed in a
huge flower-be-trimmed frame, with a flag at the top, and known as
“Jack-in-the-Green.” This march was interrupted at times by dances
to a fife-and-drum accompaniment. Of course, the Act forbidding the
employment of boys and men for climbing chimneys, reduced the numbers
of these chimney-sweepers, and that as much as anything led to the
abolishment of their festival. During her residence in Portman Square,
Mrs. Montagu annually entertained the chimney-sweeps on May Day.
An old superstition that washing the face with dew on May Day was
beneficial to the complexion, existed to the end of the eighteenth
century. Mrs. Pepys on various occasions rose at four o’clock in the
morning—and once at three—to go and wash her face in the renowned May
dew—so her husband records.
To the restored May-Day scene in Hyde Park came Cromwell, then Lord
Protector, and many of his Privy Councillors—strange figures for such
company. It is told of the Protector that he looked on with keen
enjoyment at a hurling-match. The game is described as “a bowling of
a great ball of fifty Cornish gentlemen of one side and fifty of the
other; one party with red caps, and the other in white. The ball they
played withal was silver, and designed for that party which did win
the goal.” The ancient game, from which Hurlingham, now famous for its
fashion and its sports, takes its name, is still played each year at
Newquay, in Cornwall.
In a “Letter from John Barber to Mr. Scudamore,” dated “London, 2 Maij,
1654,” the following account of the scene is given:
“Yesterday each coach (and I believe there were 1500) payed 2: 6d.,
and each horse 1s., but yᵉ benefit accrewes to a brace of citizens who
have taken yᵉ herbage of yᵉ parke of Mr. Deane, to wᶜʰ they adde this
excise of beauty: there was a hurlinge in yᵉ paddock-course by Cornish
Gentlemen for yᵉ greate solemnity of yᵉ daye, wᶜʰ indeed (to use my
Lord protector’s word) was great: when my Lord protector’s coach came
into yᵉ Parke wᵗʰ Col. Ingoldsby and my lord’s daughters onely (3 of
them all in greene-a) the coaches and horses flock’d about them like
some miracle, but they gallop’d (after yᵉ mode court-pace now, and wᶜʰ
they all use where ever they goe) round and round yᵉ parke, and all
yᵗ great multitude hunted them and caught them still at yᵉ turne like
a hare, and then made a Lane wᵗʰ all reverent hast for them, and soe
after them againe, that I never saw yᵉ like in my life.”
Evelyn, still grumbling at the payment to be made, and with all the
disgust of a courtier at times so much out of joint, gives a little
picture of the Park a year before King Charles II. came back to the
throne, but he can say nothing good for it.
“... I did frequently in the spring accompany my Lord N. into a field
near the town, which they call Hyde Par: the place not unpleasant,
and which they use as our Course: but with nothing of that order,
equipage and splendour: being such an assemblage of wretched jades and
hackney-coaches, as, next a regiment of carmen, there is nothing which
approaches the resemblance.”
“A field near the town which they call Hyde Park.” What measureless
contempt is contained in that phrase! But Evelyn lived to enjoy
brighter scenes. He proceeds:
“This park was, it seems, used by the late King and nobility, for the
freshness of the air and the goodly prospect. But it is that which now,
besides all other excises, they pay for here in England; though it
be free in all the world beside: every coach and horse which enters,
buying his mouthful, and permission of the publican who has purchased
it: for which the entrance is guarded with porters with long staves.
The manner is, as the company returns, to alight at the Spring Gardens,
so called, in order to the Park, as our Tuilleries is to the Course.
The enclosure not disagreeable for the solemnesse of the Grove,
warbling of the birds; and as it opens into the spacious walks at St.
James’s. But the company walk in at such a rate, as you would think
the ladies were so many Atalantas, contending with their wooers: and,
my lord, there was no appearance that I should prove the Hippomenes;
who could, with very much ado, keep pace with them. But as fast as
they run, they stay there so long, as if they wanted not time to finish
the race; for it is usual here to find some of the young company till
midnight, and the thickets of the garden seem to be contrived to all
advantages of gallantry, after they have been refreshed with the
collation, which is here seldom omitted, at a certain _cabaret_ in
the middle of this paradise, where the forbidden fruits are certain
trifling tarts, neat’s tongues, salacious meats, and bad Rhenish: for
which the gallants pay sauce, as indeed they do at all such houses
throughout England. For they think it a piece of frugality beneath
them to bargain, or account for, what they eat in any place, however
unreasonably imposed on.”
Such feeble effort of would-be gallantry, at which Evelyn, himself a
somewhat precise person, so openly flouted, was yet sufficient to cause
pain to many good Puritans, though they were no longer able to suppress
it. The other day I came across a contemporary pamphlet, by a writer
who evidently had been much agitated by these terrible doings. Its full
title is:
“The Yellow Book, or a serious letter sent by a private Christian to
the Lady Consideration, the first of May 1656, which she is desired
to communicate in _Hide-Park_ to the Gallants of the Times, a little
after Sun-set; also a brief account of the names of some vain persons
that intend to be there,” whose company the new ladies are desired to
forbear. It begins:
“Lady, I am informed fine Mrs. Dust, Madam Spot, and my Lady Paint are
to meet in Hide-Park this afternoon; much of pride will be there,” and
so on to considerable length, with many a befitting admonition.
In Hyde Park on one occasion Cromwell very nearly lost his life. Some
beautiful Friesland horses had been presented to him by the Duke of
Holstein, and when taking the air in the Park, accompanied merely by
his Secretary and a small guard of janissaries, he became so infuriated
at the slowness of their pace that he exchanged places with the
coachman, and with great impatience thrashed the animals soundly to
make them quicken their speed. High-spirited, and not understanding
such rough usage, they promptly bolted, and, tearing along at a frantic
pace, threw the Protector off the box. As he fell his pistol went off
in his pocket, and his legs became so entangled in the harness that
the poor man was dangling from the pole for some seconds. However, he
received no substantial injury beyond a good shaking and some bruises.
A plot against his life was laid by two men named Syndercombe and
Cecill, who meant to assassinate him as he took daily exercise in Hyde
Park, as ordered by his physicians. The assassins’ fellow-conspirators
filed off the hinges of the Park gate in order to facilitate their
escape, but their scheme was unsuccessful.
Another experience the Protector had at the entrance to Hyde Park, was
an interview with George Fox, the founder of that great and good body
of “Friends” or Quakers. This enthusiast approached Cromwell’s coach
in spite of the protestations of his attendants, and, riding by the
vehicle, Fox rebuked its occupant for the harsh measures he was dealing
out to his political enemies. Fox rode thus to “James Park Gate,”
where, on his taking leave, Cromwell, who had already told his people
not to interfere with the Quaker, bade his reprover come and see him
again.
It was a bold act to reprove Cromwell.
In spite of the perils with which he met there, Cromwell was very
fond of Hyde Park. It must still have been delightfully wild, though
less picturesque than before the timber was cut down and the game
driven away. A few building sites were marked out and dwelling-houses
planned. Either no houses were built, or they have since been removed
and all traces obliterated, for no private residences exist in Hyde
Park, although there are a few fine ones in Regent’s Park, still
standing in their own grounds, notably those belonging to the Marquis
of Bute and Lord Aldenham. As late as 1658, land in the park was still
being offered for sale. There is an interesting advertisement in the
_Mercurius Politicus_ of 13-20th May in that year:
“This is to give notice That if any persons have a minde to imploy
their money in Building, they may have Four Acres of Ground, and a
convenient place to build on in Hide Park.”
Spring Gardens existed on the site and surroundings known by that name
to-day. It was probably so called in the reign of James I. from a
spring of water, which was arranged in order that when a certain spot
was trodden upon, a jet was thrown up all over the unlucky person. It
contained a pheasantry, shooting butts, a bowling green, and a bathing
pool, and soon became a popular place of resort, where refreshments
were obtainable by the fashionables of the day.
This custom of taking refreshments in Spring Gardens has continued to
our own time. It will be remembered that a couple of old dames kept
cows behind Carlton House Terrace until 1904, charging one penny for
a cup of warm milk direct from their kine. When the new Processional
Drive was being planned in memory of Queen Victoria, it was found that
their little booth and tethered cattle were in the way, and they were
told to move.
This the old dames refused to do, and after much talk, much
correspondence, and much fuss, King Edward VII., with his customary
kindliness, had a little kiosk built for them. So they are the sole
remaining trace of the refreshment booths in Spring Gardens, and
proudly print on their little paper bags that they were “Established
1623.”
A movement is on foot to reinstate refreshment booths in Hyde Park,
as we saw in the last chapter, by placing one on the site of the old
horse-racing Ring; but it is to be hoped many more will be opened on
the lines of the charming little tea kiosks that have been instituted
in Kensington Gardens,—a long-delayed reform that is much needed.
Tea and light refreshments in our parks would be a great boon to many.
Breakfast, luncheon, or tea in the open is very enjoyable, and even in
our queer climate (which is really the best in the world, God bless
it) could be enjoyed for several months every year, especially if wide
balconies were added to the little restaurants for shelter.
In 1777 the Marybone Tea Gardens were celebrated for just this kind of
thing. They were on the site of Devonshire Street, Devonshire Place,
and Beaumont Street. They were open for public breakfasts and evening
concerts to high-class, select company, fireworks being occasionally
introduced in the evenings. Mighty fashionable they were. Who knows but
we may soon have the same again at Hyde Park or Regent’s Park, instead
of having to go to Ranelagh, or Hurlingham, some miles from town, and
where it is necessary either to be, or to accompany, a member?