But in the reign of Henry VIII. it is again called a village, by which designation it continued to be called even in our own times, long after it had outgrown the dimensions of one, just as a beloved child when grown up retains the pet name given to it in infancy; and truly Hampstead continues to be the best-beloved of all the City suburbs.
A stone in the north aisle of the old church, dated 1658, recorded that John Baxter, Gent., had made it incumbent on the owners of a house ‘in Hamstede Streete, where Mr. Netmaker dwelleth’ (no other street apparently existed to make a prefix necessary), to pay the sum of £3 yearly to the poor of the parish. Someone of importance, no doubt, occupied the moated mansion and demesne of Caen Wood, and there are records of other great men and rich City merchants resident in the upland hamlet. A peep at the parish register,[4] the earliest date in which is 1560, affords us a clue to the growth of the population.
Subsequent to the above date, 1580-89, the baptisms averaged 13³⁄₁₀, the burials 6⅒. At the close of 1680-89 the baptisms amounted to 33⅗, the burials to 65⁹⁄₁₀, an excess accounted for by the visitation of the Plague (1664-65).
Towards the close of the eighteenth century (1790-99) the baptisms averaged 99⅗, the burials 141⅗,[5] a slow but steady growth, marvellously increased in modern times.
After the Great Plague, change of air in the summer season became an article of faith with the inhabitants of London, and an annual sojourn of some weeks in the country or at the seaside an established custom with all who could afford it, a custom which resulted on the part of the wealthy merchants and citizens in the hire or purchase of a country retreat in one or other of the suburbs.
Hampstead, towards the end of the Commonwealth, combined the advantages of ‘Air and Hill, and Well and School,’ and these favourable circumstances, added to its easy distance from London, recommended it to the City fathers and mothers, and made it, of all the rural villages in the neighbourhood of town, the most popular.
Though its high-pitched situation precluded at that period, and for a long time after, such an increase of buildings as lower situations were afflicted with, its position, fine air, and beautiful prospects made it much sought, and in the times of the Stuarts many notable persons in connection with the Court had houses here. Sir Henry Vane built his fine mansion on what was then called Hampstead Hill, and J. Bills, Esq., son of the printer to His Majesty, resided at Caen Wood; while my Lord Wotton had his country-house at Belsize. After the Restoration we find Sir Geoffrey Palmer, Attorney-General, residing at Hampstead, where he died, May 1, 1670, and though Pepys does not mention it, Sir George Downing, Secretary to the Treasury, who so often appears in the ‘Diary,’ and whom Pepys stigmatizes as a ‘sider with all times and changes,’ resided here, and had his house broken into and robbed (1685). From the St. James’s Gazette, published by authority, I find that, amongst other articles of which the thieves deprived Sir George, were the following items: ‘A large agate about the bigness of a crown piece, with Cupid and Venus and Vulcan engraved on it. A blue sapphire seal, set in gold, enamelled, with an old man and woman’s head engraved on it. A pomander,[6] set in gold. A locket, with fourteen diamonds and a crystal in the middle, engraved with two Cupids holding a heart over a cypher.’ This catalogue appeals to the sympathies of every lover of delightful bric-à-brac, but one fears the advertisement of them failed to recover the charming items, some of which may even yet find their way to one of the table-cases in South Kensington.
Every year appears to have added to the favour of Hampstead as a summer resort, a fact that was not lost upon the inhabitants, who were not slow to realize the benefit of these annual incursions.