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Hyde Park in the early Commonwealth – Its sale – Toll on horses and carriages – A hurling match – Cromwell’s accident – Attempts to shoot him in the Park – Notices against trespassers – The Park at the Restoration.

It was not until after the martyrdom of the King, and a little before Cromwell found himself strong enough to become Lord Protector of the three Kingdoms, that the Parks, etc., were sold. But on Dec. 31, 1652, was passed “An Act for the Exposing to Sale divers Castles, Houses, Parks, Lands and Hereditaments, Belonging to the late King, Queen, or Prince, Exempted from sale by a former Act:” and among them was “All that Park commonly called Hide Park, in the county of Middlesex, with all Houses, Woods and Perquisits thereunto belonging.”

At the beginning of the troubles between the King and Parliament, the exclusiveness of the Park grew somewhat lax, and it became a place of fashionable resort; but the sour, puritanical spirit of the times prevailed, and, in 1645, it was ordered “that Hyde Park and Spring Gardens should be kept shut, and no person be allowed to go into any of those places on the Lord’s day, fast and thanksgiving days, and hereof those that have the keeping of the said places are to take notice and see this order obeyed, as they will answer the contrary at their uttermost peril.” And, presumably, this order was acted on until 1649, when it was resolved that the London Parks – Whitehall, Hampton Court, the New Park at Richmond, Westminster Palace, Windsor Castle and Park, and Greenwich House and Park – should be the property of the Commonwealth, and thrown open to the public.

But in 1652, it was thought fit to sell Hyde Park, Greenwich House and Park, Windsor Park and Meadows, Cornbury Park, Oxon, Somerset House, and Vauxhall House and Grounds, for the benefit of the Navy, and duly sold they were. Three lots were made of Hyde Park – called the Gravel Pit division, or that part abutting on the Bayswater Road, which was very well wooded; the Kensington division, which lay on the south, which was principally pasture land; whilst the third comprised what were termed the Middle, which comprised the Ring, the Banqueting division – in which was the Cake House – near the present site of the Receiving House of the Royal Humane Society; and the Old Lodge division, which said Old Lodge was near Hyde Park Corner; and this third lot was very well wooded.

The first lot was bought by Richard Wilcox for the sum of £4144 11s.; the second was secured by John Tracy for £3906 7s. 6d.; and the third fetched £9020 8s. 2d., and became the property of Anthony Dean, a ship-builder, who let the right of pasture of his portion; and the lessees immediately began to recoup themselves by exacting a toll on the carriages and horses entering the Park. Says Evelyn, in his diary, under date of April 11, 1653, “I went to take the aire in Hide Park, where every coach was made to pay a shilling, and horse sixpence, by these sordid fellows who purchas’d it of the State as they were cal’d.”

This toll seems afterwards to have been raised, or it might only have been for the occasion, which was the first of May, when it was fashionable to be seen in the Park; for, in a letter dated May 2, 1654,18 J. B. informs Mr. Scudamore that “Yesterday, each coach (and, I believe, there were fifteen hundred) paid half-a-crown, and each horse one shilling. The benefit accrues to a brace of citizens, who have taken the herbage of the Park from Mr. Dean, to which they add this excise of beauty. There was a hurling in the paddock course by Cornish gentlemen, for the great solemnity of the day, which, indeed (to use my Lord Protector’s word), was great. When my Lord Protector’s coach came into the Park with Colonel Ingleby and my Lord’s daughters only (three of them, all in green-a) the coaches and horses flocked about them like some miracle. But they galloped (after the mode court pace now, and which they all use wherever they go, round and round the Park,) and all that great multitude hunted them, and caught them still at the turn, like a hare, and then made a lane with all reverent haste for them, and so after them again, that I never saw the like in my life.”

Cromwell himself was present at this hurling match, according to the Moderate Intelligencer of April 26 – May 4, 1654. “This day there was a hurling match of a great ball by fifty Cornish gentlemen on the one side, and fifty on the other; one party played in red caps, and the other in white. There was present his Highness the Lord Protector, many of the Privy Council, and divers eminent gentlemen, to whose view was presented great agility of body, and most neat and exquisite wrestling at every meeting of one with the other, which was ordered with such dexterity, that it was to show more the strength, vigour and nimbleness of their bodies, than to endanger their persons. The ball they played withal was silver, and designed for that party which did win the goal.”

But, if Cromwell could drive the coach of State, he could not always manage to drive his own, and there is one memorable instance of his coming to grief in Hyde Park, in 1654, in endeavouring so to do, the story of which is thus told by General Ludlow (who was no friend to the Protector) in his Memoirs.19

“In the mean time, Cromwel having assumed the whole Power of the Nation to himself, and sent Ambassadors and Agents to Foreign States, was courted again by them, and presented with the Rarities of several Countries; amongst the rest the Duke of Holstein made him a Present of a Set of gray Frizeland Coach-Horses, with which taking the Air in the Park, attended only with his Secretary Thurlow, and Guard of Janizaries, he would needs take the place of the Coachman, not doubting but the three pair of Horses he was about to drive would prove as tame as the three Nations which were ridden by him: and, therefore, not contented with their ordinary pace, he lashed them very furiously. But they, unaccustomed to such a rough Driver, ran away in a Rage, and stop’d not till they had thrown him out of the box, with which Fall, his Pistol fired in his Pocket, tho without any hurt to himself; by which he might have been instructed how dangerous it was to intermeddle with those things wherein he had no Experience.”

In Thurloe’s State Papers (vol. ii. p, 652) there is another account of this accident, in a letter, dated October 16, 1654 (N.S.), from “The Dutch embassadors in England, to the States General.

My Lords, – After the sending away of our letters of last friday, we were acquainted the next morning, which we heard nothing of the night before, that about that time a mischance happened to the lord protector, which might have been, in all likelihood, very fatal unto him, if God had not wonderfully preserved him; as we are informed the manner of it to be thus. His highness, only accompanied with Secretary Thurloe and some few of his gentlemen and servants, went to take the air in Hyde Park, where he caused some dishes of meat to be brought; where he made his dinner, and, afterwards, had a desire to drive the coach himself, having put only the secretary into it, being those six horses, which the earl of Oldenburgh had presented unto his highness, who drove pretty handsomely for some time; but, at last, provoking those horses too much with the whip, they grew unruly, and run so fast that the postillion could not hold them in; whereby his highness was flung out of the coach box upon the pole, upon which he lay with his body, and, afterwards, fell upon the ground. His foot getting hold in the tackling, he was carried away a good while in that posture, during which a pistol went off in his pocket; but, at last, he got his foot clear, and so came to escape, the coach passing away without hurting him. He was presently brought home, and let blood; and, after some rest taken, he is now pretty well again. The secretary, being hurt on his ancle with leaping out of the coach, hath been forced to keep his chamber hitherto, and been unfit for any business; so that we have not been able to further or expedite any business this week.”

Larwood, in his Story of the London Parks, gives quotations from two poetical lampoons, which I have not been able to verify, and, therefore, give them on his authority. And, he says, there was a poem called The Jolt, by Sir John Birkenhead, treating of this accident. The first quotation he gives he does not say whence it is taken, and is as follows:

A pleasant allusion to his probable fate, for a criminal who was to be hanged, was taken to the gallows on a cart, and, the halter being round his neck, the horse was whipped, and the cart being drawn from under him, the unfortunate man was left swinging.

The other quotation, he says, occurs in a ballad called, “Old England is now a brave Barbary.”

Hyde Park seems to have been fraught with danger to the Protector, for in 1657 there was a plot to have assassinated him. The chief conspirators were a man named Sindercombe, or Fish, a cashiered quarter-master in Monk’s army, and another named Cecil, who turned approver; who in his evidence20 said,

“That the first time they rode forth to kill him, was the latter end of September last, (viz.) the Saturday after he had left going to Hampton Court.

“That the second time was when he rode to Kensington, and thence, the back way to London.

“The third time, when he went to Hide-Park in his coach.

“The fourth time, when he went to Turnham Green, and so by Acton home, at which time they rode forth to kill him, and resolved to break through all difficulties to effect it.

“The fifth time, when he rode into Hide-Park, where his Highness alighting, asked him, the said Cecil, whose horse that was he rode on, Sundercomb being then on the outside of the Park; and then Cecill was ready to have done it, but doubted, his horse having at that time got a cold.”

That they meant to kill the Protector there can be little doubt, and looked after their means of escape afterwards, for we read in the papers of the day21 how – “Once, they thought to have done their work as his Highness was taking the aire in Hide-Park; and, to make way for their Escape, they had, in one place, Filed off the Hinges of the Gates, and rode about with the train attending his Highness, with intent to have given him a fatall Charge, if he had chanced to have galloped out at any distance from the company.” They also had pulled down some of the fencing, so as to leave them another place of egress.

Sindercombe was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered; but, on the night previous to his execution, he found means to poison himself, and so cheated the gallows. The coroner’s jury found a verdict of felo de se,22 and “On the same day, February 17, Miles Sindercom aforesaid, being found to have murthered himself, his Body was, according to Law, drawn to the open place upon Tower Hill, at a Horses Taile, with his head foreward, and there, under the Scaffold of Common execution, a Hole being digg’d, he was turned in stark naked, and a stake, spiked with Iron, was driven through him into the earth; That part of the stake which remaines above ground, being all plated with Iron, which may stand as an example of terror to all Traytors for the time to come.”

Previous to this, it had been found necessary to protect the Park, by authority, as we see by two entries in the Journals of the House of Commons. “7 Oct., 1643. Ordered, That the Officers and Soldiers at the Courts of Guard be required not to permit any to cut down Trees or Woods in Hyde Park, or Maribone Park, but such as are authorized thereto by Ordinance of Parliament; and not to suffer any such persons to go out of the Works to cut the Woods in these two Parks, or to bring any from thence, but by Warrant from the Committees appointed for that Ordinance: and the Officers and Soldiers at the Courts of Guard are required, from time to time, to be aiding and assisting to Sir John Hippesley, a Member of this House, on all Occasions, to prevent the cutting down or destroying of the said Parks, unless it be by Authority of the Ordinance aforesaid.”

And there is another entry on Oct. 14, 1644. “Whereas Information hath been given, That several unruly and disorderly Persons have, in a tumultuous and riotous Manner, broken into Hide Park, pulled down the Pales to destroy his Majesty’s Deer and Wood there, notwithstanding strict Command hath been given to the Contrary: It is Ordered and Ordained, by the Lords and Commons in Parliament, That the said Park and Deer, and the Woods and Pales, belonging to the said Park, are hereby protected from the Violence of any Person or Persons whatever: and that no Soldier, or other, shall presume to pull down, or take away, any of the Pales belonging to the same, nor kill, or destroy, any Deer therein; or cut, fell, or carry away, any Wood growing in or about the said Park, or Mounds thereof. And it is further Ordered for the better Prevention of the Mischiefs aforesaid, That all Captains and Commanders of Guards and Forts near the said Park, shall give Notice of this Ordinance to the Soldiers under their several Commands: And that they themselves likewise do their Uttermost Endeavours, that this Ordinance shall be obeyed in all Points: And, lastly, that if any Others, not being Soldiers, shall offend contrary to this Ordinance, that the Keepers of the said Park, or some of them may charge any of his Majesty’s Officers with the said offenders: Who are to be brought before the Parliament, to be proceeded with according to their Demerits.”

When the King “came to his own again,” the gentlemen who had purchased Hyde Park, had to restore it to the Crown, on the grounds that the sale had never been ratified by Parliament: and an early Act of His Majesty’s was to build a wall around the Park, and re-stock a portion of it with deer.