The roads in Hyde Park must have been rather like South African tracks at the present day, and driving at night was not free from danger even at a comparatively late date. Attacks from highwaymen were to be feared. Horace Walpole was robbed in November 1749, and the pistol shot was near enough to stun though not otherwise to injure him. The Duke of Grafton had his collar bone broken, and his coachman his leg, some ten years earlier, when, on his way from Kensington to "the New Gate to make some visits towards Grosvenor Square, the Chariot through the darkness of the Night was overset in driving along the Road and "fell" into a large deep pit."
