REGENT’S PARK 
87 
distinguished himself in the lists, and won the approba¬ 
tion of Queen Elizabeth. She presented him with a 
chessman in gold, which he fastened on his arm with 
a crimson ribbon. This aroused the jealousy of Essex, 
who said with scorn, “ Now I perceive that every fool 
must have a favour.” Whereupon Blount challenged 
him. They met in Marylebone Park, and Essex was 
disarmed and wounded in the thigh. 
In Mary’s time the Park witnessed a warlike scene 
in connection with one of the organised attempts to 
dethrone the Queen. The indictment of Sir Nicholas 
Throgmorton for high treason, because he, with Sir 
Thomas Wyatt and others, “ conspired to depose and 
destroy the Queen,” states that “ the said Sir Nicholas 
plotted to take and hold the Tower, levy war in 
Kent, Devonshire, etc., and, with Sir Henry Isley and 
others, on 26 January 1554, rose with 2000 men, 
marched from Kent to Southwark, and by Brentford and 
Marylebone Park to London, the Queen being then at 
Westminster, but were overthrown by her army.” The 
incidents which centre round this Park are few. Even 
in the accounts of all the royal lands it does not often 
occur. In 1607 one item in the Domestic State 
Papers, a list of nine parks, from each of which four 
bucks were to be taken, includes Hyde Park, but 
Marylebone is not mentioned, and in orders to the 
keepers it does not often occur. 
During the Commonwealth it comes more into 
notice, from the sad fact that it was then sold and dis- 
parked, and the trees cut down. When Cromwell sold 
it to “ John Spencer of London, gent.,” the proceeds 
were settled on Col. Thomas Harrison’s regiment of 
dragoons for their pay. The existing Ranger, John 
