Hall, the chronicler of Henry VIII.’s time, inveighs against the fashion of making these sumptuous banqueting houses. They were not only a regal amusement, but the citizens built in their suburban gardens “many faire Summer houses ... some of them like Mid-summer Pageants, with Towers, Turrets, and Chimney tops, not so much for use or profit, as for shew and pleasure, and bewraying the vanity of men’s mindes, much unlike to the disposition of the ancient Citizens, who delighted in building of Hospitals and Almes-houses for the poore.” There stood in Marylebone parish a banqueting house where the Lord Mayor and aldermen dined when they inspected the conduits of the Tybourne. On one occasion they hunted a hare before dinner, and after, “they went to hunt the fox. There was a great cry for a mile, and at length the hounds killed him at the end of St. Giles.” During this run the hunt must have skirted the royal preserves of Marylebone. In Elizabeth’s time a hunting-party on 3rd February 1600 is recorded, in which the “Ambassador from the Emperor of Russia and the other Muscovites rode through the City of London to Marylebone Park, and there hunted at their pleasure, and shortly after returned homeward.” Marylebone was a retired spot for duels, and many took place there down to the time when duelling ceased. The quarrel which led to one in Elizabeth’s reign is most typical of that age. Sir Charles Blount, afterwards Earl of Devonshire, handsome and dashing, distinguished himself in the lists, and won the approbation 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.