When Piccadilly was “the way to Redinge,” and before Buckingham House--the red-brick precursor of the present Palace--had risen on the site of Tart Hall, the site of the Green Park was waste land, with here and there a little ditch, and here and there a willow; and yet it has had “its scenes, its joys and crimes,” in common with every square foot of ground in the metropolis. We may be sure it felt the tread of armed men in 1554, when Wyatt’s rebellion threatened to upset the throne of “bloody Mary”; and a century later, in 1643 to be precise, cannot we in imagination see the crowd of men, women, and children streaming across it to give a helping hand in the formation of those fortifications which were to prevent a king from entering his capital? As to its crimes, it is certain that there were plenty of those committed when the guardianship of the peace was a very different thing from what we pampered mortals are accustomed to consider it. Why, the duels alone that were fought here would make matter for a good-sized chapter. Beau Fielding fights Sir Henry Colt, in 1696, and, they say, runs him through the body before he has time to draw his sword, but, nevertheless, gets disarmed himself; and “That thing of silk, Sporus,” as I have already indicated, meets William Pulteney here, some thirty years later, what time the Park had become so favourite a place for such encounters that it is specifically mentioned as “a rendezvous for duels,” in a guide to London of the period. Had Queen Caroline--that clever woman who managed George II. and ruled the kingdom with Walpole--had her way, a royal residence might now be actually in the Park. She did build a library here, practically where Stafford House now stands, but that is as far as she went. Her royal husband, who, with his many faults, was a brave man, and knew how to fight--and on foot, too, as he did at Dettingen--liked reviews of all things, and used to have his troops manœuvring about in the Park on all sorts of occasions. One such review is mentioned in 1747, when “the regiment (Sir Robert Rich’s Dragoons) made a very fine appearance, and his Majesty was greatly pleased with them,” we are told. The Duke of Cumberland’s Dragoons, which distinguished themselves, or otherwise, according to the Stuart or Hanoverian sympathies of the time, in “the ’45,” were out, for the same picturesque reason, some days later. Then there was that great celebration for the conclusion of the War of Succession, when a huge temple was erected, and fireworks blazed to the accompaniment of a military overture written by the illustrious Handel himself.