Great changes came over Hyde Park with the arrival of Charles II. in England.

All the purchases of Royal Lands were annulled as unlawful and the property was seized for the Crown. As the new King, once he had made his position secure, showed no desire to prevent his subjects sharing with himself the enjoyment of the parks, the step was most popular. Anthony Deane’s “porters with long staves”—presumably to trounce intruders who did not pay for entrance—were swept away, and again the public were free to pass in at their own will.

On the very spot where the Parliamentary troops had been massed, and Cromwell had harangued them, enormous crowds assembled to shout a welcome to the returned monarch.

That was a great day.

In order that the reception should be a thoroughly imposing one, all the representatives of the City attended. Troops were poured into the Park, and there was an Order by the new Council of State to the militia of London1

So, amid tumultuous rejoicings, and surrounded by all the glamour and pageantry of the restored Court, King Charles II. came back to England from his exile on the Continent. The breach from the sterner Puritan ideals was complete. The coarse spirit of the age, so long suppressed, broke out afresh in utter abandonment of all restraint, and with Charles II. there came a period of open licentiousness which happily is unexampled in our history—though, truth to tell, the scandals to which the Merry Monarch and his voluptuous courtiers gave rise in such profusion form piquant reading for people of later days.

Charles had no idea of restoring the Park to its original condition as a game preserve. Such liberties as his father had granted to the public he freely extended. The public took full advantage of them. The diaries of the day are packed with references to Hyde and St. James’s Parks, which at a bound again became the centre of all the gay and fashionable life of the town. To do him justice, Charles made no pretentions towards a love of sport. A cock-fight amused him, but rather he preferred the excitement of his flirtations, his amours, the races in the Ring, his birds, his spaniels, and his passion for gambling.

A few scattered portions of the pasture lands, however, seem to have been let out as farms. The Park was placed in the general care of the Duke of Gloucester, to whom a warrant was made “of the Custody of Hyde Park with all Houses, etc. belonging thereto; fee, 8d. per day.” Mr. James Hamilton—after whom Hamilton Place was named—was appointed Ranger. Some one with a money-making turn of mind evidently thought it would be a good plan to utilise land for growing fruit, and Hamilton began negotiations for enclosing a portion of the grounds as an orchard. Later in the reign some of the deer were restored to the Park, and an ornamental path and wall were made round it. A more substantial brick wall, 6½ feet high inside and 8 feet outside, was built by George I. to enclose the Park, and remained standing until 1828, when it was replaced by open iron railings.

Hamilton fared by no means badly with his Rangership, for on his retirement he received a pension of £850 a year, and a pension of £500 was granted to his widow to commence on his death, to be paid out of the clergy tenths or tithes in certain dioceses.

The fashion of the period was to resort to Hyde Park for a drive, but St. James’s Park, Spring Gardens, the Mulberry Gardens (on the present site of Buckingham Palace, which had been planted by James I. to encourage the silk industry) were the favourite places of recreation. Sports and games abounded in St. James’s, which, being close to Whitehall, was always held in the highest favour by the Merry Monarch, who loitered there mornings and afternoons, surrounded by his courtiers and mistresses. He extended its attractions, planting trees, laying out walks, and improving the canal, which, however, still remained straight and uninteresting. Cages with numerous species of birds were placed in the trees of Bird Cage Walk, then known as the Aviary. The King loved to feed and fondle these pets of his, coming with his pockets full of their favourite foods, his dogs following him. So numerous were the pet birds and so carefully tended by their Royal Master, that hemp-seed remained for a long time one of the items of expense in the bills of the Royal Mews.

The Mall was kept in splendid condition for the old game of Paile Maille, from which some say we derive the word Pall Mall, now the name of a neighbouring street, while the Royal Cockpit was again in constant use by the King and his courtiers. Dryden is said to have wandered in the Mulberry Gardens and eaten the fruit while he composed his verses.

Those were the days of wigs and velvets and extravagance in men’s dress. They wore silk stockings with shoes, or long boots curling over at the top, embroidered coats, lace, frills, and plumed hats. Picturesque and beautiful was their attire. The women’s full skirts were made of handsome stuffs, and rivalry of splendour was still rampant. Verily an age of extravagance. The Ring long remained the chief social centre in the Park. It seems to have been but poorly laid out, judging by Wilson’s description, 1679, in his Memoirs, published many years afterwards:

Among the customs of the Stuart and early Hanoverian periods was that of issuing—in the absence of the voluminous Press of our time—“broadsides” and “satyrs” on leaflets, which were distributed through London, and “took off” the leading people and topics of the day. The Ring afforded a rich field for these so long as it lived, and held as important a place in that class of literature as Hyde Park does in our modern Society papers.

So much is said about the Park by the diarists Pepys and Evelyn, that the social life of the place may almost be pictured from their pages alone.

Pepys is always a delight. One may still see his famous MS. “Diary” in the Library of Magdalene College, Cambridge. It is in four or five volumes of shorthand, neatly written, with tidy margins, and the names of persons and places in well-formed letters in longhand. Presumably he did not intend it for publication, or he would not have written it in shorthand, and that of an extraordinarily complicated nature. Years elapsed before it was deciphered, and still more years passed before it became a classic in literature.

Samuel Pepys was the son of a tailor; but he became Secretary of the Admiralty, an appointment he filled most ably for many years. He was also President of the Royal Society. His mind was both as refined and as coarse as the age in which he lived. He jotted down the minutest details of the day. At his death he left his library to his old College, and, strange to relate, the double rows in the shelves were arranged by him according to size, and in no way according to subject, so that a tiny note-book of James I. in this remarkable collection comes number one.

John Evelyn, the contemporary of Pepys, has also left entries of his daily round for a period of about sixty years, made complete by a slight sketch of his life up to the time his Diary commences. He came from a good Surrey stock, Royalist to their heart’s core; but owing to the Great Rebellion he lived abroad for some years, returning to England in 1652, when he diligently wrote various books. Evelyn was later made a Fellow of the Royal Society, then newly founded, and now the most coveted position a man of science and learning can attain. From that time his work embraced various scientific subjects. Amongst them he laid before the Society observations on the growth of trees, which he afterwards fully discussed in Sylva. The early Reports of the Royal Society contain this quaint announcement: “Mr. Evelyn gave some account of the experiment recommended to him, of putting some flesh and blood in a vessel covered with flannel, in order to see what insects it would breed, and he observed that it bred nothing. He was requested by the Society to continue the Experiment.”

Bacteriologists who find such wondrous products and germs in blood must smile over his barren result.

As soon as the gaieties of the Park were revived we find Pepys to the fore, anxious to miss nothing. In the autumn of the Restoration year he writes:

In the following year the Diarists both refer to the May-Day demonstrations as unsurpassed. Pepys was obliged to be out of town on business, and again expresses his regret at not being “among the great gallants and ladies, which will be very fine”; while one detects in Evelyn’s note the Royalist’s satisfaction over the Restoration: “I went to Hide Park” (he says) “to take the air, where was His Majesty and an innumerable appearance of gallants and rich coaches, being now a time of universal festivity.”

Pepys was more fortunate in reaching the Park on May Day, 1663, but he was not pleased:

Hearts seemed light and Society gay, for the Diarist makes mention of several visits to the Park during that year; of the King and his mistress Lady Castlemaine, who finally died in poverty, greeting one another from their respective coaches “at every tour”; of a drive with Mrs. Pepys, wherein there was little pleasure on account of the dust, and one of the horses falling down and getting his leg over the pole; and another occasion when the worthy couple enjoyed the sight of a “store of coaches and good faces.” Only when Charles II. pulled up to speak to his friends—chiefly ladies—was the continuous string of carriages allowed to stop.

But the day of that season seems to have been a great Review held in Hyde Park on 4th July. Both Diarists write of this event, and as the entries are truly characteristic of the different style of the two journals, I give them both. First Evelyn:

It is left to Pepys to pourtray the lighter side:

A few days later Pepys describes another visit to Hyde Park:

Pepys was a man of many parts, and one of the most human of his kind. This wonderful Diary of his contains the moralising of a philosopher, mixed with descriptions of the skittish flirtations of the man about town, the deeper amours of the licentious Court, and the coarsest scandal and gossip, prices of various articles, political events, the weather, the servant question, and details of ladies’ gowns. He even sent a “poor fellow” to sit at the Duke of York’s playhouse to keep a seat for him, as messenger boys are sent to-day to secure seats in the pit.

When at this time the riding habit for ladies was first displayed in Hyde Park, Pepys writes:

On another occasion we find him discussing ladies’ dress with Lady Carteret:

In 1664 he thus speaks of Lady Castlemaine:

Poor Pepys, what a love of display and dress.

Gloves seem to have been a valued article of dress at this time. De Grammont mentions the fact that they were given as presents, and much store put upon them: “Martial gloves were then very much the fashion.” This rather flavours of reviews, but he does not refer to anything military, only to a famous firm of glovers in Paris, Martial by name, whose gloves—like all things French in those days—were in great request.

Pepys leaves behind him a graphic chronicle of the licentiousness and profligacy of the period, which had best be thrust aside, but his description of the Court generally may be quoted here:

It was about this time that Lord Arlington erected a house near the Mulberry Gardens, and during the Plague he brought the first pound of tea from Holland, which cost him thirty shillings; so that probably the first cup of tea drunk in England was enjoyed where Buckingham Palace now stands.

James Hamilton, the Ranger of Hyde Park, and John Birch, the Auditor of Excise, were, after much discussion, successful in the negotiations for their orchard, and in 1664 they received a grant “of 55 acres of land on the borders of the said park, to be planted with trees for eating-apples or cider, reserving a way through Westminster to Kensington, on condition of their enclosing and planting the ground at their own cost, paying a rental of £5, and giving half the apples” (which were to be redstreaks or pippins) “for the use of the King’s Household.” The State Papers also record that a lease of forty-one years of 55 acres in the north-west corner of Hyde Park, for growing apples, was granted on the above conditions.

But in the following year the Great Plague, more virulent and more fatal than ever, broke out and raged in London. Such a visitation, bad as the plagues had been in mediÆval times, had never been known. Panic ensued, and everyone who could do so left London and its suburbs. The Metropolis became a deserted city.

Hyde Park was made a plague camping-ground. Among those quartered within its boundaries were regiments of soldiers from the Tower and elsewhere. One of these men, evidently an amusing, observant fellow, without any poetical gifts, bethought himself to write a doggerel account of his experiences. It is an excellent picture of the time, and depicts the horrors of the Plague even as far afield as Hyde Park was at that day:

Hide Park Camp

Limnd out to the Life,

Truly and Impartially, for the Information and Satisfaction of such as were not Eye Witnesses, of the Souldiers’ sad sufferings, In that (never-to-be-forgotten) Year of our Lord God, one thousand six hundred and sixty-five.

Written by a fellow souldier and Sufferer
in the said Camp.

People were at their wits’ end to know what to do at the time of the Plague, but some laughed at a novel proposal made in London while the scourge was raging, that a vessel should be freighted with peeled onions and sail along the Thames to absorb the infection of the air; after which it should proceed to sea and throw them overboard.

But an unexpected disinfectant followed in the Great Fire, which stamped out the contagion so well that never again has London been visited by the plague. A half-witted Frenchman swung on the gallows at Tyburn on his own confession of having started the conflagration, though when making his final exit from this world he denied it.

This Frenchman was named Robert Hubert. In the opinion of many he was a madman, but in spite of this an inscription was placed on the Monument that the Great Fire was the result of a Papist conspiracy. This was removed by James II., but replaced by William III. and remained until 1830, when it was finally done away with.

In the same year as the Fire, and almost before its flames were quenched, the gay world resumed the daily drive to the Park, and we again find Pepys joining a colleague at the Admiralty and adjourning thither in a coach to secure a quiet tÊte-À-tÊte on some State question. We read of him attending a theatre or conducting his favourite actress or another of his amours, for a drive in the Park, or refreshment at the Lodge. Syllabub was greatly in fashion at Cake House. It was composed of milk whipped up with wine and sugar, or cream whipped with cider.

Pepys took his wife for frequent outings, enjoying the gossip round the Ring, dining at the “Pillars of Hercules”—an inn near the site of the present Apsley House—or eating a cheese-cake at the Lodge “with a tankard of milk”; experiencing a sense of shame at being seen in a hackney coach. “To Park in a hackney coach, so would not go into the Tour, but round the Park, and to the House, and there at the door eat and drank.”

His criticism of dress was strong to the last, for one of the first entries he makes after the return of “London” to Hyde Park was on 21st April 1666, and runs:

When the effect of the Plague and Fire had worn off, Hyde Park evidently became gayer and gayer. Our old Diarist, who, like all the gossips of the seventeenth century, was gifted with great powers of curiosity and criticism, gives a full account of May Day, 1667.

At this time a most eccentric figure played a conspicuous part in Society, in the person of the Duchess of Newcastle. Her attire and equipage were so peculiar that she never sallied forth without a crowd of boys and girls following to look at the quaint display. Such a sight would delight Pepys, who several times mentions, with genuine disappointment, the fact of not being able to see her properly on account of the crowd of onlookers who formed her escort. She was a great attraction in the Park on this May Day, for we read:

Reviews were held frequently. In the autumn of 1668, Pepys attended one of these: “Colonel the Duke of Monmouth in mighty rich clothes, but the well-ordering of the men I understand not,” he writes. A “thousand coaches” were present, for it was a gay sight. The soldiers on these occasions made a brave show with their Cavalier hats and bright coats, while even the horses were bedecked with ribbons on their heads, manes, and tails.

The next year saw the fulfilment of a long-deferred hope in Pepys’ fashionable life, for he then started his own coach. His words are too quaint to omit:

The new coach was put to frequent use. A fortnight later he writes:

This new purchase added much to Mr. and Mrs. Pepys’ enjoyment of the May-Day show, although their tempers were none of the best on that occasion, seemingly:

It was at a Review a few days after that Pepys “saw more, walking out of my coach as other gentlemen did, of a soldier’s trade than ever I did in my life; the men being mighty fine, and their commanders, particularly the Duke of Monmouth, but methought the trade but very easy as to the mustering of their men, but indifferently ready to perform what was commanded, in the handling of arms.” This entry is followed up by a bit of gossip such as Pepys dearly loved to retail:

The above quotations are among the closing entries of the old writer. That month of May often brought him to Hyde Park—“in our own coach” as he proudly indites. He drove there on Whit-Sunday, and twice took his wife for refreshment to “The World’s End,” which he describes as a drinking-house by the Park, at Knightsbridge; and both he and Evelyn mention the wonderful display of fireworks on the King’s birthday (29th May 1669).

Records and letters preserved by many of the noble families contain numerous references to the gaieties of Hyde Park under the Restoration.

In the Harley Papers at Welbeck Abbey, and the Rutland Manuscripts at Belvoir Castle, letters exist written by Edward Harley to his father, Sir Edward Harley, and from Lady Mary Bertie to her niece, describing in detail the review that was held in “Hide Parke” in honour of the visit of the Prince of Orange (afterwards William III.), then a youth of nineteen. Mr. Harley says: “Yesterday there was a review in Hyde Park of all the Guards, horse, foot, cannon, and pioneers, to entertain the Prince of Orange.”

Lady Rachel Russell writes to Lady Granby at Belvoir Castle:

This was another evidence of the love of everything French under the rÉgime of Charles II.

With another letter from the Rutland Papers, delightful and only a trifle scandalous, this chapter may be fitly closed. The little incident, told in such a matter-of-fact way, of her Grace of Sussex and Madame Mazarin going down to St. James’s Park with drawn swords under their night-gowns, and making “several fine passes” before an applauding circle of men, tells more of those times than pages of moralising. It is from Lady Chaworth to Lord Ross: