30 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



the Ring, or cheer the winner of a hotly-contested race. 

 Even during the sombre days of the Commonwealth sports 

 took place in the Park, but with the Restoration it became 

 much more the resort of all the fashionable world and the 

 scene of many more amusements. The parks were still 

 in those days for the Court and the wealthy or well-to-do 

 citizens only. Probably to many of the rabble and poorer 

 Londoners the nearest view obtained of Hyde Park would 

 be the tall trees within its fence or wall, which formed a 

 background to the revolting but most engrossing of 

 popular sights, the horrors of the gallows at Tyburn. 

 The idea of giving parks as recreation grounds for the 

 poor is such a novel one that no old writer would think 

 of noticing their absence in an age when bull-baiting and 

 cock fights were their highest form of amusement. 



The Ring was an enclosure with a railing round it 

 and a wide road. It is described as " a ring railed in, 

 round w*^^ a gravel way, yt would admitt of twelve if 

 not more rowes of Coaches, w*^*" the Gentry to take the 

 aire and see each other Comes and drives round and 

 round ; one row going Contrary to each other affords a 

 pleaseing diversion." 



The gay companies who assembled to drive round 

 and round the Ring, or watch races, sometimes met with 

 unusual excitement. On one occasion Hind, a famous 

 highwayman, for a wager rode into the Ring and robbed 

 a coach of a bag of money. He was hotly pursued across 

 the Park, but made his escape, "riding by St. James's," 

 which then, and until a much later date, was a sanctuary, 

 and no one except a traitor could be arrested within it. 

 So narrow an escape from justice did he have that he is 

 said to have exclaimed, " I never earned ;^ioo so dear in 

 all my life ! " 



