Belsize became a fashionable rendezvous. In July 1721 the Prince and Princess of Wales, attended by several persons of rank, dined at the house, and were entertained with hunting and other diversions. In June, 1722, on the occasion of a wild deer hunt, three or four hundred coaches brought down the “Nobility and Gentry” from town. Athletic sports were introduced, and the proprietor gave a plate of several guineas to be run for by eleven footmen (1721). Gambling and intrigue were the less wholesome results of this influx of the nobility and gentry. In May 1722 the Justices took steps to prevent the unlawful gaming, while in the same year “A serious Person of Quality” published a satire called _Belsize House_, in which he undertook to expose “the Fops and Beaux who daily frequent that Academy,” and also the “characters of the women who make this an exchange for assignations.” This house, which is a nuisance to the land Doth near a park and handsome garden stand Fronting the road, betwixt a range of trees Which is perfumed with a Hampstead breeze. The Welsh Ambassador has many ways Fool’s pence, while summer season holds, to raise. For ’tis not only chocolate and tea, With ratafia, bring him company. Nor is it claret, Rhenish wine or sack The fond and rampant Lords and Ladies lack Or ven’son pasty for a certain dish With several varieties of fish; But hither they and other chubs resort To see the Welsh Ambassador make sport, Who in the art of hunting has the luck To kill in fatal corner tired buck, The which he roasts and stews and sometimes bakes, Whereby His Excellency profit makes. He also on another element Does give his choused customers content With net or angling rod, to catch a dish Of trouts or carp or other sorts of fish. The Welsh Ambassador was the nickname of the proprietor, James Howell, an enterprising though not very reputable person, who had once been imprisoned for some offence in Newgate. Races[203] and similar amusements continued for several years to be provided, and music was performed every day during the season. In the spring of 1733 (31 May) a race was advertised for ponies twelve hands six inches high. The length of the race was six times round the course; “Mr. Treacle’s black pony,” which distinguished itself by winning the plate at Hampstead Heath in the previous year, being excluded. In 1736 a fat doe was advertised to be hunted to death by small beagles, beginning at nine in the morning, and sportsmen were invited to bring their own dogs, if “not too large.” In the same year (16 September) a boys’ race was run, beginning at three o’clock, six times round the course: a prize of one guinea was given to the winner, and half a guinea to the second runner. “Each person to pay sixpence coming in, and all persons sitting on the wall or getting over will be prosecuted.”