“Have you the impudence to say that you will knock my dog down? You must first knock me down.”
A dispute followed, and cards were exchanged. A meeting was arranged at Primrose Hill, in which Colonel Montgomery was mortally wounded, and died almost immediately.
All this seems very trifling to modern ideas, and the grave consequences out of all proportion to the insult offered, yet it represents the spirit of the age.
Many well-known persons, besides those mentioned, figured as duellists in that time—Talbot, Townshend, Byron, Pitt, Fox, Canning, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Castlereagh, the Duke of York (1789), all had their “affairs of honour,” which were settled in the customary way. Nor must the Duke of Wellington be omitted. It was far into the nineteenth century before duelling ceased to be the fashion, and it is interesting to notice that as Hyde Park fell more and more into the hand of gardeners, and—with Tyburn removed—assumed a more respectable and safe reputation, so the duels fought became fewer.
Wimbledon Common was a popular spot for the purpose in the early nineteenth century. The last known duel fought between Englishmen in this country apparently took place in 1845, at Gosport, between Lieut. Hawkey, of the Royal Marines, and Mr. Seton, of the 11th Hussars, the latter being killed.
Duelling in Hyde Park is no more, and suicide of rare occurence, although there are often riding accidents to-day.
CHAPTER XII
THE PEOPLE’S PARK
The London Parks strike different people in different ways, and certainly a bailiff of the late well-known Yorkshire squire, Sir Tatton Sykes, looked upon them with different eyes from the ordinary mortal.