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:
“Right Honourable,
“Here yesterday I received this from Her Majesty’s most honorable prime [minister] advertising me that her Highness was informed that venison that was ordinarily sold by ye cookes of London was often stole—To the great destruction of the game—Commanding me thereby to take severall bondes of —— the yeere of all the cookes in London not to buy or sell any venison hereafter uppon payne of forfayture of the same bondes; neither to receive any venison to bake without keeping note of their names that shall deliver the same unto them. Whereupon presently I called the wardens of the Cookes before me, advertising them each. Requiring them to raise their whole company to appeare befor me to the end I might take bondes.”
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.