3 o 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 ch a gravel way, yt would admitt of twelve if 
not more rowes of Coaches, w ch 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 £100 so dear in 
all my life ! ” 
