Queen Mary has not come down to us in a social light. The very idea of her as a Society personage seems grotesque.

“Bloody Mary” she was in her own time, and as such she will probably always be known. She rarely went far afield, and her only association with Hyde Park seems to have been the unusual number of people she hanged at Tyburn.

The park was still far remote from the town. Streets did not creep up to its precincts until quite a century and a half later. When Sir Thomas Wyatt marched with his rebels upon London, his ordnance was planted at Hyde Park Corner, and his men occupied the fields where now stand Grosvenor Square and the neighbourhood to the south.

It must be recollected that Sir Thomas Wyatt had raised his standard in Kent to protest against the Spanish marriage of Queen Mary. He had travelled slowly towards London after defeating the Queen’s forces at Rochester Bridge. He had wasted much time at Blackheath; and when at last (3rd February 1554) Wyatt and his army appeared in Southwark, they found the Queen and the citizens of London prepared, and London Bridge closed and fortified. He remained at Southwark shooting impotently and trying to get into London, until the 5th, when he started to march to the next bridge up the river (Kingston-on-Thames). The weather was wet and miry, Wyatt’s men disheartened, and he inept as a commander. They found Kingston Bridge broken and had to ferry across. They then marched all night through the rain without food, and, tired and wet, reached Hyde Park Corner early in the morning of the 7th. He posted his main body across the road at Hyde Park Corner, whilst the Queen’s forces were set at the top of the opposite hill where Devonshire House now stands. Wyatt himself, with five companies of men, seems to have turned down what is now Grosvenor Place, and to have gone along the Mall towards Charing Cross, a part of his men under Vaughan dividing from them and going towards Westminster, the object apparently being to attack Whitehall on both sides, from Charing Cross and from Westminster.

In an extract from the Diary of a Courtier (Sir E. Peckham, probably), published by the Camden Society, the following passage occurs:

“Here was no small ado in London, and likewise the Tower made great preparation of defence. By 10 of the clocke or somewhat more, the Earle of Pembroke had set his troopp of horsemen on the hill in the highway above the new bridge, over against St. James, his footemen was set in 2 battailes somewhat lower and nearer Charing X ... his ordnance being posted on the hill side. In the mean season Wyatt and his company planted his ordnance upon the hill beyond St. James over against the Park Corner; and himself after a few words spoken to his soldiers came down the olde Lane on foot, hard by the Court Gate of St. James, with 4 or 5 ensigns, Cuthbert Vaughan and about 2 ensigns turned down towards Westminster. The Earle of Pembroke hovered all this while without moving, until all was passed by, saving the tayle, upon which they dyd sett and cut off. The other marched forward and never stayed or returned to the ayde of their tayle. The great ordnance shott off freshly on bothe sydes. Wyatt’s ordnance over shott the troope of horsemen. The Queen’s ordnance one piece struck three of Wyatt’s Company in a rank upon their heads and slaying them, struck through the wall into the (Hyde) Park. More harm was not done by the great shott of neither partie. The Queen’s hole battaile of footmen standing stille, Wyatt passed along the wall towards Charing X, and here the said horsemen that were there, set upon part of them but were soone forced back.”

An account of this is also given in an extract from Brit. Mus. MSS. Add. 15215:

“And so came (Wyatt) that day toward St. James felde where was the Earle of Pembroke the Queen’s lieutenant, and my lord Privy Seal (the Earl of Bedford) and my Lord Paget, and my Lord Clynton which was Lord Marshal of the camp, with dyvers other Lords on horsebacke—which Lord Clynton gave the charge with the horsemen by the Park Corner about 12 of the clocke that day, and Wyatt so passed himself with a small company towards Charing X.”

Machyn’s Diary (Camden Society) records this battle of Hyde Park as well:

“The 7th day of February in the forenoon Wyatt with his army and ordnance were at Hyde Park Corner. There the Queen’s host met him with a great number of men at arms on horseback besides foot. By one of the clock the Queen’s men and Wyatt’s had a skirmish; there were many slain, but Master Wyatt took the way down by St. James’s with a great company and so to Charing Cross.”

Hyde Park saw brighter scenes under Elizabeth. Splendour and pageantry marked the age. The Parks, like everything else, were used for purposes of ostentatious display, with greater frequency than had been the case under Henry VIII. Hyde Park remained a close Royal preserve, but the general public began to see more of it.

Among other traits of her father, the Queen inherited his love of hunting, and herself killed deer in the Royal parks, as also on her stately progresses through the country when visiting her favourite nobles. Sometimes she stayed at Westminster, and made hunting expeditions from there to Hanworth and Oatlands. Lord Hunsdon, her cousin, she appointed Keeper of Hyde Park, in which office he received an allowance of fourpence a day, with the “herbage, pannage, and browse wood for deer.” During his tenure, 1596, the first review was held in the Park.

Of course, the visits to England of Elizabeth’s many admirers were made occasions for grand doings, hunts being enjoyed at the outlying parks of Hampton Court, Windsor, and also in Hyde Park. When John Casimir, Count Palatine of the Rhine and Duke of Bavaria, came over, he was entertained right royally, and Hyde Park was the scene of a great hunting party. It is related that the favoured guest “killed a barren doe with his piece, amongst three hundred other deer.”

Indeed, the confines of Hyde Park were kept pretty busy with hunts and executions, sometimes one, sometimes the other; for the great Queen had the Tudor abruptness of method in dealing with undesirable busybodies. There must have been many days, indeed, when Elizabeth rode with courtly grace along the paths, listening to the flatterer’s tongue, coquetting with one of her many suitors, her courtiers thronging around their Royal mistress, while just through field and wood some fellow-creature was ending his earthly career by her decree at Tyburn.

When, in 1581, Count John of Emden and Count Waldeck came to see the Royal lady, Elizabeth demanded from Lord Hunsdon a report respecting the game in Hyde Park, and was not at all pleased with the result. Whether birds and beasts increased thereafter is not told. A year later stands were erected in Marybone and Hyde Park for the Queen and her visitor and suitor, the Duke of Anjou, with his train, to view the chase. Probably, however, the results of the various hunting parties were unsatisfactory, for a record still exists among the State Papers of a command by Queen Elizabeth to the cooks of London as to the buying and selling of venison, forbidding them to purchase from unauthorised people in the city.

It was evidently supposed that the cooks were the chief offenders in the matter, and ordered their venison at a cheap rate purloined from her Majesty’s preserves. On 11th June 1585 we find Sir Thomas Pullyson, Lord Mayor of London, writing to Walsingham:

The bond was a surety of £40 each—an enormous sum in those days—given by each cook not to sell any manner of venison in or outside of the City. It is rather amusing to find that the theft of venison from the Royal Park was so highly punished in Elizabethan times, but the bond did not do away with poaching. How those old cooks would smile if they could see the pheasants, grouse, and partridges on sale in the best London shops, almost before there has been time for the cartridges to be fired on the opening days appointed by law, still less for the game to reach the London market.

Coaches came in with Elizabeth. There was no fashionable chronicler of the day to tell us exactly which were the favourite resorts of Society, but it would not be surprising if the rough roads cut in the spacious parks which extended so far from Whitehall were first put to use for carriage exercise by Elizabeth’s courtiers. Hyde Park has been the fashionable drive for centuries. One likes to think of those bumpy old contrivances, of colossal weight and build, with the stoutness of a farmer’s cart, as setting the fashion of driving in the park which has come down unbroken to the present year of grace. These vehicles afforded Elizabeth’s beruffed gallants and gorgeously attired dames an opportunity of airing themselves, and probably gave them as much pleasure, lumbersome though they were, as smart-horsed victorias and electric landaulettes give their occupants to-day.

That Hyde Park was looked upon as a rural resort for the courtiers and others who wished for greater seclusion than was to be found in St. James’s Park, is shown in Major Martin Hume’s Calendar of Spanish State Papers of Elizabeth (Record Office).

It was easy enough to take a drive in Hyde Park, but when the Queen moved farther afield, even for such a short distance as the seven or eight miles from Chelsea to Richmond, the arrangements required more attention. Preserved in the Records of the Stationers’ Company is the following letter:

Accordingly, on 30th “January 1588-9” (one may learn from Nichols) the Queen “travelled from Richmond to Chelsea and so to Westminster, and the Mayor, Aldermen, and Commoners of her Citie of London, in coates of velvet and chaines of golde, all on horsebacke, with the Captaines of the Cittie, to the number of fortie, betwixt five or six of the clock at torchlight.”

Foreigners say we English take our pleasures sadly; and so we do in this rushing age. It is well, therefore, that we are being made to realise what the pageantry of ancient times really meant when our land was known as “Merrie England.”

Latterly, our so-called “pageants” have been very tame—a few Venetian masts, some tawdry paper flowers, a little stained bunting, a multitude of dirty flags of all descriptions, and the route is ready.

This tinsel display reached such a pitch in America, that a few years ago an order was made forbidding tawdry decorations, and nothing is allowed but flags—a perfect sea of flags. It so chanced that I was in America during the last two Presidential campaigns, and both in New York and Chicago there were thousands, yes, tens of thousands of flags arranged most beautifully and producing a wonderful effect: nothing more majestic could be imagined, even sky-scrapers looked less hideous. The appearance of our quaint old English streets on such occasions could be much improved by such a systematic arrangement, instead of festoons of damp and draggled pink and green tissue paper we call decoration.

In olden times the houses along the route of a pageant were hung with silks, brocades, and costly cloths. The City Companies marched in gorgeous array along the ill-kept roads, which at an early date were gravelled for the honoured one to pass, just as they are sanded to-day for a Royal procession. The Tyburn waters were checked at the Conduits, and wine—red and white—flowed from them as the goodly company paced by with stately mien. At every landmark along the route were stationed groups of citizens in symbolic costumes. Each forming in itself a picture.

Every movement of Royalty was accompanied by pageantry, a very different state of affairs from these modern days, when the King of England hires a hansom off the rank, or the Prince of Wales strolls through the streets alone shopping. Edward VII. steps into his motor at Buckingham Palace absolutely unheeded by anyone, and starts for Newmarket. His life, except for public functions, is that of a private gentleman; big displays are few and far between, and even then seldom, if ever, reach the gorgeousness of olden times. Maybe our ancestors would be surprised at the great length of route traversed by present-day Royal personages in their Progresses, for it must be borne in mind that the pageants of old relate to a very limited London.

Apart from coronations, many records remain of mediÆval pageantry. Edward I., on his return from Palestine in 1274, found wine pouring from the Conduits, and handfuls of gold and silver were showered upon him as he passed. A little girl, dressed as an angel in spotless white, handed wine from the Conduit in Chepe to Richard II. and his Queen; Henry V., after his victory at Agincourt, was greeted at the north end of London Bridge by an “angelic host,” and another “heavenly choir” was stationed in Chepe, while virgins blew golden leaves upon him. When the child-king Henry VI. arrived in London from France in 1432, Enoch and Elias addressed him, while Nature, Grace, and Fortune, each attended by fourteen Virgins, showered gifts upon him.

But to Elizabeth belongs the crowning point of perfection in pageantry. She loved the pomp, the show, the acclamations of her people; she encouraged her subjects to vie with each other in the conception and execution of symbolic groups, asking the meaning of, and bestowing admiration on, the symbolic groups formed to do her honour. Charles I., after a sojourn in Scotland, was the hero of a pageant through London; Charles II. attended the Lord Mayor’s Show for many years, and as time passed this display was the chief remnant of those old Progresses our forbears so enjoyed.

It is strange that the outcome of the Pageant Revival at Sherborne, 1904, by Louis N. Parker, the Master of Pageantry, should have heralded the “Pageant of London” to be held in 1909. No sooner was the idea mooted than ten, nay, twenty, thousand people came forward to take the parts selected.

The love of display is inherent in human nature. The Chinese, the Greeks, the Romans, and the savage of to-day all in turn have enjoyed beating drums, flaring torches, and “dressing up.” A revival such as we are having in London is of the greatest value. The man in the street at Sherborne, Warwick, St. Albans, Oxford, Bury St. Edmund’s, all learnt something of the history of their own towns through the pageants which have lately taken place in their midst.

These revivals in pageantry are a great history lesson, and as improving to the adult mind as the picture-book is to the child. We realise so much quicker what we see than what we hear or read.

Poor Elizabeth. Stout-hearted as any man when large matters of State called for her decision, and yet essentially feminine in her love of dress, her vanity, and coquetry. Dress became a truly serious burden of expense in her day, and she wisely regulated it by sumptuary laws to encourage thrift and common-sense among the masses. Costumes were ill-adapted for outdoor use, and if we could see again any of those splendid fÊtes in the Royal Park of which the Queen was the central figure, surrounded by her gallants and grand dames, we should probably smile at the preposterous awkwardness of everybody in that brilliant company, despite their magnificence. There is a wonderful picture of Elizabeth at the Lodge of Trinity College, Cambridge, the residence of the Master (Dr. Butler), wherein she appears so tightly laced as to have no interior organs at all, and her voluminous hoops, ruff, and sleeves cover all the canvas.

Largely it was outward show. Elizabeth has come down to us as a Queen possessing three thousand silken gowns and one chemise. She did not own a pair of silk stockings until 1560, when, after receiving some as a gift, she insisted on always wearing silken hose, and they became universal. Both ladies and gentlemen wore high-heeled shoes, and sometimes the heels measured over four inches. Fans were much used, people of rank having the handles inlaid with diamonds and precious stones, while those of the middle class adopted silver and ivory handles. Perfume was in great vogue.

Here is a vision of the Queen as we may imagine her at one of the fashionable crushes of the time:

“The ruff was profusely laced, plaited, and apparently divergent from a centre on the back of her neck; it was very broad, extending on each side of her face, with the extremities reposing on her bosom, from which rose two wings of lawn edged with jewels, stiffened with wire, and reaching to the top of her hair, which was moulded in the shape of a cushion and richly covered with gems. The stomacher was strait and broad, and though leaving the bosom bare, still formed a long waist by extending downwards; it was loaded with jewels and embossed gold, and was preposterously stiff and formal.”

Men’s ruffs never reached the extravagant size of the ladies’ attire, but they grew to such an extent that Elizabeth considered it necessary to order that any beyond “a nayle of a yard in depth” should be clipped. The edge of the ruff was called a “piccadilly,” as may be seen in several of the earlier dictionaries, hence the name of the fashionable street abutting on Hyde Park to-day. When there were practically no houses there, a ruff shop kept by a man named Higgins existed, and was called a “piccadilly.” Higgins is said to have made money, and built a row of houses to which he handed on the name. The term “Pickadilla” is applied to this district in Gerarde’s Herbal, where it is mentioned that “the small wild buglosse” was growing on the banks of the dry ditches “about Pickadilla.”

Queen Elizabeth was so anxious that she should not be surpassed in the beauty of her own dress, that in addition to her sumptuary laws regulating the clothes worn by the different classes of society, young and old alike, she personally snubbed anyone who she thought wore too rich a gown or too high a ruff. It is told of Lady Mary Howard that she appeared at Court in a velvet suit richly trimmed, Her Majesty looked at it carefully, and the next day sent privately for the robe, and, donning it herself, entered the room where Lady Mary and her other ladies were sitting. She then asked what they thought of her “new-fancied suit,” further inquiring of the owner if it were not too short. That chagrined lady delightedly answered in the affirmative. Whereupon the Sovereign gave a sharp retort that if it was too short for her, it was certainly too fine for Lady Mary, and she must never wear it more.

Of course, as Queen Elizabeth had sandy-coloured hair, that also became the fashion, and ladies dyed their tresses and painted their faces. This curious old Queen, with her enamelled complexion and darkened eyes, her love of dress, her endless admirers, her hard-hearted and level-headed administration, is reported to have danced an Irish jig only a few days before her death.

Pinched and old, and yet rouged to the eyes—for she was vain to the last—Elizabeth disappears from the scene she had so adorned, and James VI. of Scotland rides into London—in hunting costume, “a doublet, green as the grass he stood on, with a feather in his cap, and horn by his side”—to claim the English throne. On the way he had delayed his progress to make two or three sporting expeditions from the great houses at which he stayed. Clearly this was a type of monarch under whom Hyde Park would be put to other uses than the shows and fÊtes and fashionable dallyings of Elizabeth. So it quickly proved. His first act of authority over the Royal demesne was to appoint Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, Keeper of Hyde Park for life, with significant instructions. The Queen, his predecessor, being a woman, had been too lenient; he now wished closer supervision, more careful preservation of the game, and a smart eye to be kept on poachers.

Hyde Park again became the closest of Royal preserves, maintained for hunting alone. An occasional passage met with in contemporary letters shows how strictly the forest laws were enforced. Osborne, writing of this time in 1658, long after James’s death, says of the game laws instituted by that monarch:

“Nay, I dare boldly say one Man might with more safety have killed another than a raskall-Deare; but if a Stagge had been knowne to have miscarried, and the authour fled, a Proclamation with a description of the party had been presently penned by the Attourney-generall, and the penalty of His Majesty’s displeasure (by which was understood the Star-Chamber) threatened against all that did abet comfort or relieve him. Thus satyricall, or if you please Tragicall, was this sylvan Prince, against Dear-Killers and indulgent to man-slayers.”

A deer was of more value than a man, and a mole was apparently of importance. Among the State Papers is a Warrant issued the day after Christmas, 1603, authorising the Vice-Chamberlain to pay Richard Hampton, official Mole-taker in St. James’s Park, and the gardens and grounds at Westminster, Greenwich, Richmond, and Hampton Court, the fee of fourpence a day and twenty shillings yearly for livery. A man had just resigned the post, which was evidently considered a lucrative one, as there were several applications for it.

James I. was a good sportsman, even down to cock-fighting, for he restored the cockpit which Elizabeth had been at particular pains to abolish, and appointed a Cockmaster for breeding, feeding, and managing the King’s game-cocks. But this was an occasional pastime. He enjoyed many a manlier diversion in the excitement of the hunt, refreshing himself between times at the Banqueting House erected in the middle of Hyde Park, with a deep draught of good sack ere he returned to the Palace of Whitehall. When his Queen was visited by her brother, the King of Denmark, a series of Royal entertainments were arranged for him. In an old MS. preserved in the Harleian Miscellany a full description of some of these occasions is given, and it may be read that:

“... In the morning very early, being Saturday (Aug. 2nd, 1606), they hunted in the park of St. James, and killed a buck. Then passed they on to Hyde Park, where they hunted with great delight, spending the rest of the forenoon in following their pastime; and about the time of dinner they returned and there dined; and about four o’clock, their barges being by commandment ready at the privy stairs, they went by water to Greenwich.”

To the sporting proclivities of James I. we owe a Book of Sports, in which the Royal writer authorised all those who had been to their own parish church, to indulge in “sports on the Lord’s Day,” including dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, May games, morrice dances, and setting up of Maypoles; though bull and bear baiting, interludes, and bowls, were prohibited. The King ordered the book to be read in the churches, but the Primate absolutely refused to do so. About twenty years later, news of deer escaping from the Old Park at Wimbledon, and having been killed, reached Charles I. He therefore forbade any person to go into his woods carrying a gun, or engine, to take, or destroy the game, and if any presumed after notice given in the churches, to come thus provided, the King would have them punished.

Is it not a bit of delightful irony that the Lord’s Day Observance Act, abolishing all these revels, and under which even now tradesmen are occasionally fined for opening their shops on Sundays, was a gift to our generation from that austere monarch Charles II.?

Owing, no doubt, to the strict laws for its preservation made by James I., game seems to have much increased in the forest glades and about the marshes and rivulets in Hyde Park. Still the cooks appear to have been playing their old trick of trying to get venison cheap, for in 1619 the State Papers have a record that two men were found shooting deer in Hyde Park. They were captured by the keepers, and were hanged at Hyde Park Corner, as well as an unfortunate labourer whom they had employed to hold their dogs. One wet season played havoc with the deer in “Marybone” Park—known to-day as Regent’s Park—and a warrant was issued to the Keeper of Hyde Park to send three brace of bucks to help make up the deficiency.

A quaint manuscript is in existence, recording an outlay for the upkeep of Hyde Park at this period.

An order for the payment of these moneys follows in the handwriting of the Earl of Suffolk of the day.

With all his usurpations and vagaries and the pedantry of a narrow mind, one retains a lingering fondness for James I. He was the last of the line of British monarchs, going back to the earliest feudal times, with whom the love of hunting the wild animal in his native glades remained an absorbing passion. When he passed the way of all men Hyde Park underwent a great change. It ceased to be a close game preserve, and became for the first time a real centre of social enjoyment, such as we still find it. In the wilder parts hunting was practised, but Charles I. seems to have thrown the park—or at least a large part of it—open to all comers, with few limitations.

With the ill-fated Stuart King, rather than with Henry VIII., the park as a place of popular resort really begins.

Life out of doors became more safe, people took more pleasure in going about, locomotion became easier and money circulated more freely. As the fashionable world began to take the air farther afield than St. James’s Park and Pall Mall, more keepers, more lodges, and more accommodation were required in Hyde Park. Mention is made in the State Papers that on 20th November 1635, £800 was paid for building a new lodge in Hyde Park; and three years later there was a payment of £1123, 5s. 5d. for further work done at the new lodge, according to the estimate of the famous architect, Inigo Jones.

The area of the Park in which the fashion and beauty of Stuart London mostly foregathered was that which in after years became famous as “The Ring,” the precursor of modern racing.

From before the Restoration until far into the Georgian period it remained the great resort of all the beau monde. The site lay to the north of the present Serpentine, close by the ground now enclosed in the Ranger’s private gardens. Such a space—only 300 yards in diameter—seems too limited to be the rendezvous for the votaries of fashion, when we think of the crowds in Hyde Park to-day. But Society was then but a fraction of what the term represents in our time, and it will be seen that this was the case even after the Ring had long disappeared. The new tea-house to be opened about 1908, under the auspices of Mr. L. Harcourt, will stand upon the south-western corner of the “Ring.” It seems a pity that part of Crosby Hall, anyway the old banquetting hall, could not have been utilised for this object. By such means one of the most historical spots in London would have been kept in our midst. It would be curious should fashion again migrate to the spot which to Pepys and other gossips, two and a half centuries ago, was the centre of all the town’s attractions.

A lodge, built of timber and plaster and probably erected in the reign of James I., stood near by the Ring. It was first known as “Grave Maurice’s Head,” and there the people frequenting the Park obtained refreshment. It figures as “The Lodge” in Pepys’ accounts of his outings, but later was known as the Cheesecake House, probably from the fact of that special viand being sold there; another name was the “Lake House.”

There, amid the greenery, the gay world thronged. Cavaliers with waving plumes, some riding with spurs and swords, others in their new equipages, while bright-eyed ladies accompanied them to watch the races and the crowd. Gay gallants courted pretty wenches, smart diplomatists dropped secrets in the ears of beautiful women. Love-making and court intrigues were hatched in Hyde Park, and many a romance, many a comedy, was unfolded under the shade of the trees.

Of the social life of the times in which Hyde Park now began to play an important part, there is a delightful picture in a letter from one Mrs. Merricke to Mrs. Lydall, written on 21st January 1638. It is very modern in sentiment, although written nearly three hundred years ago. The poor lady was most anxious about her personal appearance, even in bed, and equally distressed that her library consisted of only two books. The letter runs:

Letter from Mrs. Merricke to Mrs. Lydall, 21st January 1638.

Driving and walking became daily more fashionable at the Piccadilly end of Hyde Park. The gay and frivolous George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, was wont to trip along in all his frills and frippery, or sitting stately in his coach drawn by six horses, joking with King Charles, and urging the monarch to some fresh imprudence. Many looked darkly on the silly intercourse between these two men. Charles, clinging to the ambitions of his powerful minister, with the obstinacy of a weak and incapable nature, was far advanced on the way to the scaffold, when John Fenton,—mixing with the crowds assembled at Portsmouth to witness Buckingham’s departure for France,—stabbed the favourite to the heart.

An incident of which much has been made, and which there is little reason to doubt was grossly exaggerated by the religious bigots of the time, associated Charles’s Queen, Henrietta Maria, with Hyde Park. The early years of his French marriage were certainly not happy, the meddling household of the Queen’s French attendants and Catholic priests being responsible for the luckless monarch’s domestic broils. His fierce hatred of their interference obtains expression in a letter to Buckingham, by virtue of which the lot were “sent packing.” It is addressed to his “faithful, constant, loving friend Steenie”:

Whatever his subsequent weakness, Charles I. was at least in early years of kingship a forceful letter-writer.

Shortly before this missive was dispatched, the King had been moved to intolerable anger by the accounts presented to him of the infamous treatment of his Queen by her Popish entourage. In the early summer of 1626, Henrietta had asked to spend a certain time in retirement and devotion. After a quiet day passed in the services of her church at the chapel in St. James’s Park, she turned into Hyde Park, directing her walk towards Tyburn, whether by intention or not remains unknown. In any case, it was quite probable that, especially impressed by her religious seclusion, she bethought herself of those who, not so many years before, had suffered as martyrs on that gruesome spot for the very religion she held so dear. She knelt to pray for them, and perhaps for strength to bear her own weary lot.

A week or two passed before the tale of her surreptitious visit to Tyburn reached the King. He was told that the Queen had been made to walk thither barefoot as a penance, and to offer up prayers for traitors who had ended their days on Tyburn gallows.

Whitelock’s Chronicle gives the Protestant version of the affair:

That this was the account generally accredited and sedulously fostered by the anti-Romish party in the State, is further shown by a letter preserved in the Harleian MSS., written by Mr. John Pory, a well-known public man, who had been a Member of Parliament in 1610. After relating the dismissal of the servants and priests, he says:

“No longer agon then upon St. James his day last, those hippocritical dogges made the pore Queen to walke afoot (some add barefoot) from her house at St. James to the gallowes at Tyborne, thereby to honor the Saint of the day in visiting that holy place, where so many Martyrs (forsooth) had shed their blood in defense of the Catholic cause. Had they not also made her to dable in the durte in a foul morning from Somersett House to St. James, her Luciferian Confessor riding allong by her in his Coach! Yea, they have made her to go barefoot, to spin, to eat her meat out of tryne dishes (wooden dishes), to waite at the table and serve her servants, with many other ridiculous and absurd penances.”

There is a picture of the Queen’s penance, of which a reproduction is here given. The Queen is seen kneeling by the triangular scaffold, whither she has been accompanied by her Father Confessor—presumably a Cardinal—in his coach and six.

Of the “triple tree” itself, its origin and use, there is much to be said in later chapters on Tyburn.

Strangely enough, when, in 1628, Charles I. raised the jointure of Henrietta Maria to £28,000, one of the manors assigned to her to produce the additional £6000 was that of Hyde.

As already said, the Park first became under Charles I. the fashionable society rendezvous. Its greatest attraction, maybe, was the racing in the Ring. The occasions, when organised meetings took place, were special scenes of gaiety, and were evidently thought important events, as even among the State Papers there is preserved the agreement for a race that took place there. Though admitting the public so freely, and himself mixing among them, Charles still looked upon the Royal Park as a personal possession, and exercised his full authority within it. It was on one of these occasions that the King, seeing a licentious Berkshire squire among the company, peremptorily ordered him out of its confines, speaking of him to the courtiers as an “ugly rascal.” This expression the squire overheard. He went away quietly; but vowed vengeance, and gradually embittered the whole of his county against the King. He had, indeed, his revenge, for writ large on Charles I.’s death-warrant was the name of the “ugly rascal.”

In the tumultuous years with which the reign closed, Hyde Park saw other scenes. There the Parliamentary troops mustered in stern array; there Essex lay waiting with a small force the threatened attack on London by King Charles, who was expected to march from Oxford to seize the capital. There came band after band of sturdy patriots to join the Roundhead army, and General Lambert added his men to those of his chief. Raw recruits were drilled into the celebrated train-bands, and in Hyde Park Cromwell reviewed his invincible Ironsides, his own particular force whom he had especially trained to meet the cavalry attacks of Prince Rupert.

In 1642 the inhabitants of the City of London made a large fortress with four bastions south-east of Hyde Park, on the ground now occupied by Hamilton Place. It was from part of this erection, which was called “Oliver’s Mount,” that Mount Street, Park Lane, takes its name.

The following year, as the civil strife was still waging fierce and hot between Royalists and Roundheads, three forts were constructed on Tyburn Road. It is quaint to think of impromptu fortresses built by an alarmed populace near Lancaster Gate and Oxford Street. The Perfect Diurnal, an invaluable record of the time, states that the anxiety of the citizens was such that thousands of men, women, servants, and children, many members of the Council of the City, well-known public men, and the trained bands from the Camp, together with feltmakers, shoemakers, and other tradesmen, all worked their best in throwing up these fortifications outside the City.

Samuel Butler, in his Hudibras, refers to this:

The women, and even ladies of rank and fortune, not only encouraged the men, but worked with their own hands. Dr. Nash mentions Lady Middlesex, Lady Foster, Lady Anne Walker, and Mrs. Dunch as having been particularly celebrated for their activity.

Again in the Perfect Diurnal of 4th January 1643, one reads:

So we may conclude that all was not peace among the troops encamped in the Park.

In the State Papers there are several references to Hyde Park, throwing sidelights on the life of the people of the day. For instance, after the Battle of Naseby every person of consequence who had been engaged in the struggle was strictly supervised, and it was necessary for all strangers to have a pass to enter the City of London.

The Earl of Northampton, wishing to cross to Holland, secured a pass to embark from London, and arriving at the fortress at Hyde Park Corner, then so called, but now the Marble Arch, duly handed it to the Captain commanding the Guard. That officer, finding the Earl was accompanied by five servants while his pass only allowed four, seized one of the horses. The Earl, detained much to his annoyance by this incident, petitioned the Committee of both Kingdoms to restore the animal. The Committee, although commending the Captain for close observance of duty, explained that as the Earl of Northampton was going beyond the seas he would need the horse, and therefore they wished it returned.

This examination at Hyde Park must have been very searching, for in the Perfect Diurnal of 5th January 1643, it is recorded that

These papers were handed to the Commons, and the Committee found them to be “of a very high and dangerous consequence.” The party, after having been stripped of all papers except their petition, had been allowed to proceed to Oxford, but a troop of “Dragouners” was sent to bring them back to Parliament, so back they came, done.