HYDE PARK 
25 
Westminster, they were probably well cultivated by 
their tenants, and doubtless the game with which they 
abounded from early times afforded the Abbot some 
pleasant days’ sport and tasty meals. The first time 
any of the Manor became part of the royal demesne, 
was when the Abbot Islip exchanged 100 acres of what 
is now St. James’s Park, adjoining the royal lands, for 
Poughley in Berkshire, with Henry VIII. in 1531-2. 
This Abbot, who had an ingenious device to represent 
his name—a human eye and a cutting or “ slip ” of a tree 
—died in the Manor House of Neate or Neyte the 
same year. He gave up the lands from Charing Cross 
“ unto the Hospital of St. James in the fields ” (now 
St. James’s Palace), and the meadows between the 
Hospital and Westminster. Five years later, when the 
upheaval of the dissolution of the monasteries was 
taking place, the monks of Westminster were forced to 
take the lands of the Priory of Hurley—one of their own 
cells just dissolved—in exchange for the rest of the manor. 
Henry VIII., who loved sport, found these lands first- 
rate hunting-ground. From his palace at Westminster, 
through Hyde Park, right away to Hampstead, he had 
an almost uninterrupted stretch of country, where hares 
and herons, pheasants and partridges, could be pursued 
and preserved “ for his own disport and pastime.” 
Hyde Park was enclosed, or “ substancially empayled,” 
as an old writer states, and a large herd of deer kept 
there, and various proclamations show that the right 
of sport had to be jealously guarded. 
What a gay scene must Hyde Park have often wit¬ 
nessed in Elizabeth’s reign. The Queen, when not 
actually joining in the chase, watched the proceedings 
from the hunting pavilion, or “princelye standes therein,” 
