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 Midsummer 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."
