A Well-known story relates that one day Charles II. was returning from Hyde Park, where he was just as fond of walking as James Duke of York was of riding. He was attended by two courtiers only, and was crossing at Hyde Park Corner when he met James coming home from the hunt on Hounslow Heath. The Duke of York was driving in great style in his coach, with an escort of Royal Horse Guards. He stopped, stepped from his carriage to greet the King, and remonstrated with him for putting himself in danger by walking in the public highway attended by only two gentlemen.

“No kind of danger,” said Charles, “for I am sure that no man in England will take away my life to make you King!”

And King Charles, who knew men and women well, and concealed many a telling truth under his buoyant humour, was quite right. The three years of James II.’s misrule are doubtless full of interest to the historian, but they give little material for this volume, and may be passed over with a bare mention.

Society, however, pursued its way, and the daily drive and lounge survived during all the religious and political turmoil. Hyde Park remained the great rendezvous, though James was rarely seen there, and under the trees were discussed, as of old, the affairs of the Court, the plots of the Roman Catholics, precedence of great ladies, rivalries and jealousie, dress and equipage. A new excitement was added to the fashionable walk by a custom which began among the beaux and grandes dames of wearing masks in the Park, and by their means many intrigues were set afoot. Philip 2nd Earl of Chesterfield has left in his Letters a short correspondence with a masked lady with whom he had walked in the Park four times. She remained unknown. It was a point of honour not to attempt to identify a masked person unless the name was guessed outright.

What a curious thing it must have been to see men and women at all hours of the day walking or riding masked. They even went to theatres so disguised. These half-masks were called “visors,” and by some people “hide-blushes.”

Others found methods of gallantry more daring than this. From Nell Gwynne’s time—I do not know whether the Royal favourite’s previous and more honourable calling had anything to do with it—it had become the custom to buy oranges and cakes from orange-girls in Hyde Park. This custom lasted for many years. Constant mention is made of these girls in the gossip of the day, and they are reported to have carried more romantic wares than the yellow fruit, for they were often the chosen bearers of billets doux from gallants to their ladies, and vice versâ.

From the half concealment of a mask it was but a step for a great lady of a sportive turn to disguise herself as an orange girl and bear the burden of the basket, the true owner of which, washed, painted and powdered, and dressed out of recognition, mixed among the gay crowd and added to their bewilderment. The great figure of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough appears as one of those who found amusement in this very undignified change of station.

King James retired, unlamented, into exile, and his daughter Mary and William of Orange came over to take the English throne. Though great as a Queen, Mary seems to have been a somewhat unfilial daughter, if we accept Evelyn’s testimony when saying that she came into Whitehall “laughing and jolly as to a wedding, seeming quite transported,” or that other account of her routing about the Queen’s apartments, in and out of every room, in her night attire, before the household were astir in the morning.

The fashionable crowd about the Parks seemed less at ease, and no doubt there were numerous absentees. Men pursuing their daily duties, the merchant in the City, or the dandy of the day sauntering in the morning, on whom the slightest suspicion of Jacobitism rested, would be accosted by a gruff individual, shown a Privy Council warrant, and dragged off, ruffle, cravat, embroideries, and wig notwithstanding. An ignominious retreat from a gay scene or a busy world.

Writing in 1690 to her husband, William III., who was in Holland, Queen Mary says: “I was only last night in Hyde Park, for the first time since you went: it swarmed with those that are now ordered to be clapt up.”

Mary, unfortunately, was not able to convey much of her “jolliness” to the Park, where the lighter side of London life loved to assemble. King William suffered from asthma, and a damp riverside Palace at Westminster did not suit him. He was recommended to migrate to Kensington, near the Gravel Pits. This was far remote from the town; but possibly the dryness of the gravel soil settled the choice.

Ten years after his reign began, old Whitehall Palace was consumed in flames, and the severance was then complete. The King had bought a house and grounds from the Earl of Nottingham, and there raised the present building of Kensington Palace, wherein Queen Victoria was born.

Though still so near, Hyde Park saw little of them, for William was occupied in State affairs, and Queen Mary preferred the quietness of their private gardens. Thus whatever little tone and vigour remained in Society, soon disappeared, and a greater laxity made itself apparent. The Park, as it ceased to be a Royal preserve and properly cared for, became infested with undesirable characters, and Knightsbridge, which, as already mentioned, had always been looked on as a locality frequented by robbers, presented many hiding-places for footpads of the most desperate description. Hyde Park sank into a period of degradation unexampled either before or since.

Still it was an age of romance. It is rather amusing to read of the tax on bachelors. It must be remembered that at the beginning of the reign of William and Mary the population of England was only five and a half millions, and the revenue amounted to £1,400,000.

No wonder that in 1695 an Act was passed obliging all bachelors and widowers above twenty-five years old to pay a tax of one shilling yearly; a bachelor or widower duke, £12, 10s.; a marquis, £10 a year.

While attempting to increase the revenues, the only attempt made at municipal improvement during the reign seems to have been the lighting of the principal thoroughfares from St. James’s. Apparently William had little use for the Park but to pass through it and the Green Park on his way from Kensington to the town, and this he often had to do after sunset. The road was rough and dark; in fact, was altogether unsafe after nightfall. The King decided that, whatever the cost, it must be lighted. Accordingly he had about three hundred lamps placed along the way. But this was too great an expense in those days to be kept up except in the winter, and the spluttering oil-wick lamps only dimly lighted it for a few months of the year.

This was rather a difference from our present-day lighting arrangements, which many people still consider totally insufficient. Vice flies before illumination. In this year of grace the Park is lighted with electric arc lamps as well as incandescent gas. The policy is to light up main roads and paths, but not the whole surface of the Park. Certain wide spaces, like the “Lecture Ground” near the Marble Arch, the road from the Marble Arch to Hyde Park Corner, and the Band Stand enclosure, are lighted by electricity.

When William and Mary increased the popularity of Kensington by going to live at the new Palace, they also improved the prospects of the ever enterprising light-handed fraternity. Social gatherings of all sorts took place, gambling was indulged in for high stakes, and ladies attending Court functions at St. James’s and private entertainments at Kensington had to pass along this dreary road, laden with jewels or the proceeds of the basset tables. The thieves were so active and daring that at last a guard-house had to be erected within the park, and the place patrolled, while on occasions of any Court functions the Park guard was doubled.

The London Post of 7th December 1699 records that

In ill-repute though it had become, “persons of quality” still enjoyed their afternoon drive in Hyde Park. Its worst side was reserved for the night. The gilded coaches, the painted women, and swaggering men, with their wigs, their long waistcoats and their swords, moving about among the trees, gave an appearance of festivity, even if the times were remarkably dull. Tom Brown’s Amusements Serious and Comical, published in 1700, gives a picture of Hyde Park manners near the close of William III.’s reign which is certainly not edifying. The author is supposed to be showing “an Indian” over London:

Even in broad daylight the fashionable throngs were liable to be subjected to annoyance. In the Post Boy of 7th June 1695 it says:

The law against hackney coaches survives, and they are still only allowed to cross between the Park and Kensington Gardens. Masked ladies and gallants have ceased to exist, although a music-hall performer, apparently wishing to attract attention and advertisement, drove through Hyde Park fully masked in 1906, and even plunged into the Serpentine to rescue a boy she presumed to be drowning. The modern policeman on duty probably had never heard of the old law forbidding masks to be worn in the Park, and let the good lady pass with a smile.

The deplorable condition into which affairs had fallen is duly admitted in the Act of Parliament passed in 1695, the preamble of which recites: “Whereas the crimes of burglary and breaking open of houses in a felonious manner, and the crime of stealing goods privately out of shops and warehouses, commonly called Shop-lifting, and the stealing of horses, are of late years much increased.” However, the method adopted for dealing with the growing evil shows how little the true means of diminishing crime and handling criminals was then understood. The Act provided that—

A fee of one shilling was charged for the enrolling of this certificate, which became known as the “Tyburn Ticket,” and acted as a small incentive to the righteous to bring the thief to the gallows. It remained in use for more than a century.

As late as 1772 the state of Hyde Park was so bad that a bell used to be rung at stated intervals in Kensington, to gather together people who had ventured from London and were wishing to return. When a sufficient number had assembled the party started eastwards, and were safely escorted through the lonely neighbourhood of Hyde Park by the guard. Mr. Horsley, the artist, mentions in his Memoirs that a friend of his childhood could remember this arrangement, and he himself knew the time the Park gates were closed at eight o’clock in the evenings.

London was, indeed, unsafe at night until well into the last century. In fact, when the great Duke of Wellington was speaking in the House of Lords in favour of the Police Act, he was able to quote—as proof of need of an efficient police force—that his mother’s coach had been stopped in Grosvenor Place, and valuables, money, and jewellery carried off.

Twice at least Queen Mary reviewed the troops in Hyde Park when her husband was absent on the Continent; not, it would seem, with very good grace. “I go,” she wrote to him, “to Hyde Park to see the Militia drawn out there next Monday; you may believe I go against my will.” It was necessary to keep well-drilled regiments in readiness for action in those troublous times, and this great open space formed an excellent manœuvring ground. James, on the French side of the Channel, was always a source of danger, while Jacobite risings might occur at any time, and William’s wars in the Netherlands were no light matter. In 1692 it was deemed wise to be ready for a French invasion, and trained bands in the Cities of London and Westminster were assembled to the number of ten thousand.

In the closing days of the year 1694, Queen Mary lay dying at Kensington Palace. News then spread but slowly. A man was seen lurking among the bushes and swampy thickets in Hyde Park and round Kensington Gardens. As darkness gathered he became somewhat bolder, and kept in sufficient communication with passers-by to find out how events were going. This vigil was kept in order that he might at once convey the news to James II. at St. Germains. Mary died in the early hours of the morning on 28th December, and long before daylight the Jesuit was making his way towards the coast to cross the Channel with the news for King James. It is related that the exile was in great grief, not only at his daughter’s death, but because there had been no reconciliation, nor was there even a message for him from the deathbed.

After William and Mary came Queen Anne. She was not the person to become a leader of society and raise its tone. She seldom did anything smart. A good, homely soul, wrapped up in her domestic surroundings, she tried hard to be an example to those about her, and help forward anything beneficial to her kingdom. But political personages rather than Society gathered round her. She took little interest in sport or games, and her drives in the Park were more for the benefit of her health than to attend social functions or big shows.

Poor Anne! The mother of nineteen children, all of whom died in infancy or early youth, those rows of little coffins in Westminster Abbey tell in heartbreaking accents the tragedy of her life. She was afflicted with gout, and, having lost her husband, to whom she was devoted, no wonder she found it easier to let Society take care of itself, and Sarah Jennings and Mrs. Masham rule over her.

Society did go on, but went too far and too fast.

There is an old Satire containing many quaint descriptions of the modes of the day in Hyde Park. It is too wordy to be reprinted in full, but the part here given will suffice for the purpose: