Hyde Park, Its History and Romance

by Mrs. Alec-Tweedie

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.

“Hyde Park” (writes Count de Grammont) “as every one knows, is to London what the Cours is to Paris. Nothing was then so much in Fashion during the fair Season as the taking the Air at the Ring, which was the ordinary Rendezvous of Magnificence and Beauty. Whoever had bright Eyes or a fine Equipage never failed to repair thither, and the King was extremely delighted with the place.”

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:

“Here the people of fashion take the diversion of the Ring. In a pretty high place, which lies very open; they have surrounded a circumference of two or three hundred paces diameter with a sorry kind of balustrade, or rather with postes placed upon stakes but three feet from the ground; and the coaches drive round this. When they have turned for some time round one way, they face about and turn tother: so rowls the world!”

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.