32 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



themselves, and I took them and we to the lodge : and at 

 the door did give them a syllabub and other things, cost 

 me 12S. and pretty merry." 



What an amusing picture, not only of Hyde Park in 

 1669 but of human nature of all time! — the start, the 

 pride and delight with their new acquisition, the little 

 annoyances, the marred pleasures, the ungenerous dislike 

 of the less fortunate who could not afford coaches of 

 their own, whose ranks he had swelled the very last drive 

 he had taken. Then the little kindness and the refresh- 

 ment, so that the story ends merrily. 



The " Lodge " is but another name for the " Cheese- 

 cake House " or " Cake House," or as it was sometimes 

 called from the proprietor, the Gunter of those days, 

 " Price's Lodge." This house, which was a picturesque 

 feature, stood near the Ring, on the site of the present 

 building of the Humane Society, and must have been 

 the scene of many amusing incidents in the lives of 

 those who graced the Ring, in the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries. A little stream ran in front of 

 it, and the door was approached over planks. White 

 with beams of timber, latticed windows, and gabled roof, 

 a few flowers clustering near, with the water flowing by 

 its walls, the old house gave a special charm and rural 

 flavour to the tarts and cheesecakes and syllabub with 

 which the company regaled themselves. 



The gay sights and sounds in Hyde Park were 

 silenced during those terrible weeks, when the Great 

 Plague spread death and destruction through London. 

 As the summer advanced, and the havoc became more 

 and more appalling, many of the soldiers quartered in the 

 city, were marched out to encamp in Hyde Park. At 

 first it seemed as if they would escape the deadly 



