bisport and pleasure and recreation; his Highness, therefore, straightly chargeth and commandeth all and singular his subjects, of what estate, degree, or condition soever they be, that they nor any of them do presume or attempt to hunt or to hawk, or in any means to take or kill any of the said game within the precincts aforesaid, as they tender his favour, and will eschew the imprisonment of their podies, and further punishment at his Majesty's will and pleasure." Had this attempt been strenuously insisted upon and carried through by the Crown, it might have proved more effectual than the frequent proclamations issued in subsequent reigns to prevent the extension of the buildings of the metropolis. New houses might have been pulled down, on the plea that they were encroachments upon the royal chase and interfered with the preservation of the game. This belt of royal hunting ground might have kept London cabined in within the liberties, or driven it across the Thames or down into the marshes of Essex. But Henry did not long survive, and in Edward's brief boy reign there were more serious matters to attend to than hunting, and Queen Mary hunted heretics, not hares, and Queen Elizabeth had too many reasons for keeping on good terms with the merchant-princes of London to insist upon a measure always so unpopular in England as an extension of the royal hunting reserves. So the plan, if ever seriously entertained, broke down, and the City Corporation hunted the hare at the head of the Conduit, where Conduit Street now stands, and killed the fox at the end of St. Giles's; and a flood of stone and mortar, leaving the royal parks isolated and far apart, like mountain peaks in the Deluge, rushed from London, covering the meres and brooks along which bluff Harry had sprung the heron and flown his hawk at her, and over the dry uplands where the quick-eared hare had trembled to hear the coming route of "Mayor, Aldermen, and many worshipful persons, the Masters and Wardens of the Twelve Companies, and the Chamberlain." This forgotten proclamation of Henry VIII. marks the turning of a tide. William the Conqueror made new forests. One of the most bitter causes of quarrel between Charles I. and his subjects was the attempt of that monarch to enclose some new lands within a large park he attempted to erect between Richmond and Hampton Court. William carried his point. Charles's attempt helped to cost him his life. Henry only failed. Henry's attempt was made under the culmination of the star of feudal times. Looking back, we can see that it was impossible that the public should long be kept from sharing with the monarch in the good things he took from the church. The parks are essentially part of our Protestant institutions, and a very pleasant part too. With these prefatory remarks we proceed to trace the separate adventures of each of the three parks, from the time they came into the possession of the Crown down to the present day. It will appear that each of them has its own peculiar character. St. James's, lying among palaces, and hedged round on all sides from a comparatively early period by the fashionable residences of the "West End," is the courtier. Hyde Park, not yet quite surrounded by the town, long, decidedly extending into a rural neighbourhood, is the "fine old country gentleman,” essentially stately and noble, and a courtier too on occasions, yet with a dash of rusticity. The Regent's Park is a more equivocal character, more difficult to describe: not a parvenu exactly, for its connection with royalty is as ancient as either of the others; not so unequivocally bon ton, for it has at times associated with curious society, and been kept in the back-ground; a sort of Falconbridge, perhaps, whose connection with royalty is rather irregular, but when once admitted within the circle can ruffle it with the best. But this is anticipating. 2. ST. JAMES'S PARK. In this we include the Green Park, a good quiet soul with a separate name, but without separate adventures or history. There are also some neighbouring patches of ground now detached which must be included in an account of St. James's Park, ancient and modern. It is impossible to saunter about St. James's Park without being struck by its beauties. If, however, any person wishes to enjoy them like a true epicure-to take as much of the beautiful and exclude as much of the commonplace as possible to heighten the pleasure of each succeeding morsel by a judicious regard to harmony in the order in which they succeed each other, it will be advisable to enter through the Green Park by the gate recently opened opposite Hamilton Place, at the west end of Piccadilly. Lounging (quick, business-like walking is only for those unamiable localities one wishes to get out of) onwards by the walk that descends close behind the Ranger's lodge, the eye passes along a vista between trees, at this moment covered with the first delicate verdure of spring, to rest upon a beautiful line of wood in the middle distance, out of which rise the towers of Westminster Abbey. Looking to the right as we advance, the royal standard of England—the most chastely gorgeous banner in the world—is floating at the foot of Constitution Hill. Immediately afterwards a massive corner of the Palace is seen between the trees nearer at hand. The walk here parts into two that on the left hand descending into what has all the appearance from this point of a woody dell; the other carrying us into an open space, where we have a view of the white marble arch in front of the Palace, surmounted by the standard on one side, the unobtrusively wealthy mansions of Piccadilly on the other, and the more decorated line of buildings which form the eastern boundary of the Green Park in front. The pictures on every hand are at this point perfect in regard to composition: the arrangement of trees, lawn, and architecture is simply elegant. Turning to the right hand, at the mansion of the Duke of Sutherland we come into St. James's Park, and crossing the mall enter the ornamented enclosure in front of the Palace. Once here, it is a matter of perfect indifference what way the loiterer turns-only, if it be possible, he ought to get upon the grass as soon as he can. From the side at which we have supposed him to enter, he catches through the trees as he moves along such partial glances of the Palace, or of the Government offices at the opposite end of the Park, as make pretty pictures out of very questionable architecture. Opposite him he has the majestic receptacle of the dead royalty of old England. If he prefer the opposite side of the central sheet of water, the most eligible point of view is on the rising near the angle at Buckingham Gate, affording a fine view, closed by the dome of St. Paul's. To return to our gourmand metaphor: after he has discussed these pièces de résistance he may fill up the interstices of his appetite by discussing, as hors d'oeuvres, the pretty vignettes of wood and water which present themselves to a saunterer round the canal. : This is the still life, but in the "enjoyment of prospects" the shifting of the human and other figures is the most material source of pleasure to the spectator. Along the track which we have been pursuing in imagination, there is rich variety from the glance and dash of equipages along Piccadilly to the pedestrians of the Green Park; thence to the stately, noiseless, sweep of the privileged vehicles of the nobility along the mall, enlivened by the occasional passage of a horseman, who rides as if the fate of empires depended on his keeping the appointment to which he is bound; and thence again into the ornamented enclosure, where, in the absence of other company, we are sure of the birds. There are worse companions than birds. We remember once hearing the most sparkling writer in the Northern Review' complain that he had not been able to sleep the whole of the preceding night. "What did you do, then?" asked a gentleman at his elbow, in a tone of intense sympathy. "I got up," said the invalid, with an air of languid pleasure, "went into the dressing-room, and talked with the parrot." And many an hour of pleasant intercourse may be spent with the water-fowl in St. James's Park, whether they be showing the ease with which habit has taught them to mingle in crowded society; or with their heads under their wings sleeping on the smooth water at eight o'clock in the morning—for like other inhabitants of the pleasure-seeking world of London, they have acquired bad habits of late rising; or in the intoxication of returning spring, wheeling in pursuit of each other in long circles over-head, then rushing down into their native elements, and ploughing long furrows in it on St. Valentine's Day. St. James's Park, with its exquisite finish, surrounded on all sides by buildings, scarcely disturbed by vehicles or horsemen, always wears in our eyes a drawingroom character: it is a sort of in-doors rurality, and such it has been ever since we have records of it as a public haunt. Its history falls naturally into three epochs :-from the first enclosure of the Park by Henry VIII. to its reformation under the auspices of Le Notre, under Charles II.; from the time of the merry monarch till the abolition of the old formal canal by George IV. and Nash; and the era in which we have the pleasure to exist. The history of the first of these periods ought to be written by an author like Niebuhr, who feels himself put out by facts and contemporary narratives, and builds up a story more true than truth out of hints in old fragments of laws, treaties, and charters. At least the materials are too scanty to admit of treating it in any other fashion. out of During the reigns of Elizabeth and the first two Stuarts, St. James's Park can only be considered as a nursery for deer and an appendage to the tilt-yard. The frequent allusions to it as a place of rendezvous by the dramatists of the age of Charles II. are sought for in vain in Shakspere and his contemporaries, with whom St. Paul's occupies its place. It could not well be otherwise. A visit to the Palace at Westminster was then going out of London, and to have gone the Palace into the Park would have been in the way of pleasure-hunting a work of supererogation-gilding refined gold. A passage occurs in Pepys's Diary' which enables us to form an idea of the comparative seclusion of the Park in these days. The date of the entry is not much earlier than that of the notice of the alterations made by Charles II., which ushered in the second period of the Park's history: "1660, July 22nd. Went to walk in the inward park, but could not get in; one man was basted by the keeper for carrying some people over on his back through the water." If the reader will consult one of the earlier maps of London, he will find a long, narrow, four-cornered piece of water introduced behind the tilt-yard, extending nearly from side to side of the Park, at right angles to the direction of the canal constructed in the time of Charles II. This apparently is the piece of water across which the crowd attempted to get themselves smuggled on the occasion referred to by Pepys into "the inward park.” So long as the tilt-yard maintained its interest, the space beyond it would have few attractions for the gazing public. On either side of the park there was a place of resort preferred by the loungers of the times anterior to the RestorationSpring Garden and the Mulberry Garden. The period at which Spring Garden was enclosed and laid out is uncertain. The clump of houses which still bears the name, indicates its limits with tolerable A servant of the Court was allowed in the time of Charles I. to keep an ordinary and bowling-green in it. An idea of the aspect of the garden at that time may be gathered from a letter of Mr. Garrard to the Earl of Stafford in 1634:-" The bowling-green in the Spring Gardens was put down one day by the King's command; but by the intercession of the Queen it was reprieved for this year; but hereafter it shall be no common bowling place. There was kept an ordinary of six shillings a meal (where the King's proclamation allows but two elsewhere), continual bibbing and drinking wine under all trees; two or three quarrels every week. It was grown scandalous and insufferable; besides, my Lord Digby being reprehended for striking in the King's Garden, he said he took it for a common bowling place." The King carried his point, for in a subsequent letter Mr. Garrard says:-" Since the Spring Garden was put down, we have, by a servant of the Lord Chamberlain's, a new Spring Garden erected in the fields behind the Meuse, where is built a fair house and two bowling-greens, made to entertain gamesters and bowlers to an excessive rate; for I believe it has cost him 400/.; a dear undertaking for a gentleman barber." The gardens must, however, have been re-opened at a later period, for Evelyn has this entry in his diary, 13th June, 1649:-"Dined with Sir John Owen: and afterwards I treated divers ladies of my relations in Spring Gardens." They were again shut up under Oliver Cromwell, as we learn from the same source: 13th June, 1649. Lady Gerrard treated us at Mulberry Garden, now the only place of refreshment about the town for persons of the best quality to be exceedingly cheated at; Cromwell and his partisans having shut up and seized on Spring Gardens, which till now had been the usual rendezvous for ladies and gallants at this season." The Restoration again gave them to the public, in evidence of which a passage from a writer of the 17th century* may be cited, which bears more properly upon a later period of Park history, but being introduced here will prevent the necessity of recurring to this branch of the subject:-"The inclosure (Spring Gardens) is not disagreeable, for the solemness of the grove, the warbling of the birds, and as it opens into the spacious walk at St. James's; but the company walk in at such a rate, you would think all the ladies were so many Atalantas contending with their wooers; but as they run, they stay so long as if they wanted time to finish the race for it is usual to find some of the young company here till midnight." The Mulberry Garden was planted by order of James I., who attempted in 1608 to produce silk in England, and to that end imported many hundred thousand mulberry-trees from France, some of which were planted under his own inspection, and the rest dispersed through all the counties with circular letters directing the planting of the trees, and giving instructions for the breeding and feeding of silk-worms. In 1629 a grant was made to Walter, Lord Aston, &c., of "the custody of the garden, mulberry-trees, and silk-worms, near St. James's, in the county of Middlesex." How soon after this the silk-worms disappeared, and the gardens were opened to the gay world in the manner indicated by the above quotation from Evelyn, does not appear. He does not speak of the opening of the Mulberry Gardens as any thing new. A passage in Pepys's 'Diary,' not long after the Restoration, mentions a visit to these gardens, but speaks rather disparagingly of their attractions. Buckingham House, which stood where the central part of the palace now stands, was erected by John Duke of Buckingham in 1703, and the Mulberry Garden attached to the house as private property. Previously Arlington House, and a building to which the name of Tart-hall is given in some old plans, occupied the same site. These buildings seem to indicate the period at which the Mulberry Gardens ceased to be a place of public resort. Some indications exist of St. James's having become to a certain extent a favourite lounge during or immediately previous to the civil war. Dr. King observes, "The fate of things lies always in the dark: * Quoted, but not named, in Brayley's 'Middlesex.' |