No stranger would ever think of entering Hyde Park without first casting
a look at Apsley House, the abode of "the" Duke; if he did, the statue
of Achilles, which seems stationed as if to point it out, would remind
him where he was. This is the very maze and centre of fashion; here the
pride and beauty of England may be seen upon their own stage; and on a
fine day, in what is called the "season" in town, no other spot in the
world can out-rival in rich display and chaste grandeur that which is
here presented. It far excels St. James's in pure rural scenery--there
is less of art and more of nature in its appearance, and this is
increased by the beauty of the Serpentine river. Then, be it remembered,
we are in the vicinity of "Tyburn Tree," the history of which has yet to
be written. We have often pictured, while wandering here in the
deepening twilight, the mouldering bodies of the stern Protector,
Ireton, and Bradshaw, dangling upon that "triple-tree" in the sunset of
a winter's evening, after they had been dragged out of their graves in
Westminster Abbey. This was indeed carrying revenge beyond the grave,
and is one of the blackest blots that stain the memory of the Merry
Monarch. Evelyn has a savage and unfeeling note in his "Diary" on the
revolting exhibition. "On the 30th of January," he says, "the carcases
of those rebels--Cromwell, Bradshaw, the judge who condemned his
Majesty, and Ireton (son-in-law to the Usurper)--were dragged out of
their superb tombs in Westminster, among the kings, to Tyburn, and
hanged on the gallows there from nine in the morning till six at night,
and then buried under that fatal and ignominious monument in a deep pit,
thousands who had seen them in all their pride being spectators."
Cromwell had a narrow escape in Hyde Park while driving his own coach;
the horses ran away, and the stern Protector was thrown off the box, and
falling on the pole, while his feet were entangled in the harness, he
was carried some distance. On this accident the old rhyming cavalier
Cleveland wrote the following lines: