It must be remembered that with the commencement of the Tudor period new elements were to be seen at Court. Spain sent her Princess to wed in England, while Mary, the daughter of that same unhappy Catherine of Arragon, married her cousin Philip II. of Spain. Southern courtiers came in the royal trains. Spanish blood ran hot and quick in those rough and tumble days, rivalries deep and fierce raged in the hearts of the new English nobility. The rapier and dagger replaced the sword and buckler. Friends of one moment called each other out the next, and during Elizabeth’s reign the custom of duelling was much increased. Ben Jonson was imprisoned in 1593 for killing a brother-actor in a duel. He was tried for manslaughter, to which he pleaded guilty; he was then released, after being branded with what the London people called “the Tyburn T.”
Under James I. duelling was of constant occurrence. His courtiers, too, brought fresh trouble, for, though the Scots are generally regarded as a phlegmatic race, cool, long-headed, and well able to look after themselves, combats of this kind had long been a usual way of settling the fierce tribal feuds between the Highland clans.
The following incident shows one of the many little affairs of that sort with which James I. had to deal, while it also reveals the fact that, although we find no recorded duels in Hyde Park from the time of Bluff King Hal until 1693, that place was regarded as one of the habitual spots for such frays.
“Mary Middlemore, the favourite maid of Queen Anne of Denmark, was either reading or sewing in the Queen’s apartments at Greenwich Palace, when one of the King’s Scotch Gentlemen of the Bedchamber surprised her, and carried off a top-knot from her hair, despite all her remonstrances, and henceforth wore it twisted in his hat-band. Lord Herbert, who was panting for an opportunity of showing his knight-errantry, hearing the bitter complaints of the aggrieved damsel, demanded the return of the top-knot from the Scotch lover, who contumaciously refused to surrender it, on which Lord Herbert seized him by the throat and almost strangled him. These antagonists were dragged asunder by their friends, lest they should incur the penalty of losing their hands by striking in the Royal Palace. They exchanged a cartel to fight unto death in Hyde Park, but the King and the Council tamed their pugnacity with the wholesome infliction of a month’s confinement in the Tower.”
During the Great Rebellion duelling became quite a rare occurrence, still existing sufficiently, however, for Cromwell to pass an Act forbidding it. But under Charles II. it again became prevalent, and in spite of legislation against the custom, in 1712 it remained the fashion all through the Georgian period.
Naturally, when ladies were so often the cause of these encounters, duels formed one of the topics of interesting gossip in the correspondence of the day. We find in 1693 a duel which had taken place in Hyde Park, described in a letter to the Countess of Rutland (Rutland MSS.) in these words: “... A quarrel happening between two Yorkshire gentlemen, Sir William Reresby and Mr. Moyser, they have decided it in Hyde Park, being both wounded, but neither of them dangerously.”
Among the Harley papers at Welbeck Abbey, too, Sir Edward Harley, writing to Lady Harley in the reign of Charles II., informs her that “upon a quarrel begun at a masquerade a duel was fought between Sir Winston Churchill’s son and Mr. Fenwick. Churchill is sore hurt.”
No record exists whether this was fought in Hyde Park, but a space near the Ring was apparently a favourite spot, and Fielding in his novel Amelia lays the duel scene there. The seclusion of the place, the early hour, the non-existence of our well regulated modern police, the very difficulty of locomotion, and the dangerous character of the neighbourhood in the dusk and early dawn, all tended to make it easy for the parties to keep their meeting a secret.
Indeed, if one allows one’s imagination to run riot, there are even now spots in Hyde Park which lend themselves for the “setting” of such meetings. Strolling on a November afternoon near the site of the Ring, my thoughts wandering back through the centuries, I came to a grassy slope facing a group of silver birch trees. Their beautiful forms stood in bold relief against a background of dark shrubs. The setting sun—a red ball of fire—gave the haze, that adds so much to the picturesqueness of London, a hue that might have been the glow of a ruddy sunrise. Raindrops of yesterday glittered on the grass like dew. The sound of a distant carriage, and the little scene became peopled with creatures of the imagination,—two figures, chatting lightly and strolling to and fro among the trees; two others, pacing out a length, talking gravely meanwhile, and then examining some small objects in their hands. And soon all was ready. Their companions were summoned, and took their stand, exchanging coats for pistols. I felt like the heroine in an old novel who has surprised une affaire d’honneur, and—expecting each second to hear the shot—was ready to turn and flee with a thrill of horror, when the homely voices of the wild fowl on the Serpentine brought me back to reality and the twentieth century.
The fields behind Montague House (the present British Museum) especially that known as “The Field of the Forty Footsteps,” Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Covent Garden, Pall Mall, Bayswater Fields, Wimbledon Common, Putney Heath, Battersea Fields, have all had the reputation of duelling grounds, and as late as 1783 the open space behind the Foundling Hospital was chosen for an affray.