For all Medieval and Tudor times were fascinating,
energetic, and, for the nobility at least, filled with pageantry, they were
also brutal and cruel. Among the daily
spectacles presented to the citizens of London, and other large cities, was the
steady schedule of public hangings. On
occasion, the spectacle was heightened with drawing and quartering. The strongest stomach today would likely find
the evisceration of a living being and presentation of their internal organs
deeply distressing. In the pre-modern
West, it was moral entertainment for the whole family.
Only somewhat less frequent were animal-baiting shows. The great favorite was bear-baiting. A bear was secured to a heavy stake anchored
in the ground while ferocious mastiff dogs were unleased upon it. Owners who had lent their dogs to an event
did not wish to lose them so they were often pulled back if they were getting
the worst of it and new dogs given their place.
The longer the bear kept its ferocity (and life), the more likely the
game would be ended — often after hours
— the bear being valuable because it might be the star of another particularly
raucous bout.
A veteran bear was named by Shakespeare’s time, and the
character Slender, from The Merry Wives of Windsor, brags of having the
famous bear named “Sackerson loose, twenty times; and [having] taken him by the
chain”. In a play of 1607, a popular
bear named “George Stone” is mentioned.
The earliest mention of the sport which the various
histories are aware is still that of William Fitzstephen in his 1174 Description
of the Most Noble City of London.[1] It is listed among the common sports of the
time. A translation follows.
In the winter holidays, the youth are entertained in a
morning with boars fighting to the last gasp, as likewise with hogs full
tusked, intended to be converted into bacon; or game-bulls, and bears of a
large bulk, are baited with dogs.[2]
Fitzstephen’s is one of the two historical citations listed
in most encyclopedia descriptions of the sport.
The other is Nichol’s description of the festivities surrounding the
arrival of the French Ambassador Montmorency to England in May of 1559.
The 25th, they were brought to Court with musick to dinner,
and after a splendid dinner, they were entertained with the baiting of bears
and bulls with English dogs. The Queen's Grace herself and the Ambassadors
stood in the gallery looking on the pastime till six at night.[3]
The Queen herself seems to have found the spectacle
exhilarating. It is unlikely that it
would have been chosen for such an august occasion without her approval.
The next day, the ambassadorial party was treated to a
public bear-baiting at Paris Garden. The
Queen is not mentioned among the party.
As it turns out, Fitzstephen does not establish the earliest
occasion that bear-baiting is recorded to have been practiced in England. Some 20 years after his account of London, Lamberti
Ardensis, a Flemish Presbyter, composed the last word to his own chronicle of
Flanders.
In it Lamberti mentions a voyage of Arnold II, lord of Ardre, to visit his liege
lord King William Rufus, son of William the conqueror under whom he had
acquired English lands in lieu of his participation in the invasion of
1066. The visit occurred shortly before
Arnold joined the First Crusade, in 1096.
Among the many great spectacles to which he was treated
during his visit, Arnold brought one back with him introducing it for the first
time to Flanders.
He went to England, where in those days
the king
lived, admired huge great bears
which he procured from the king.
Whence he brought provisions and well-disposed items from
throughout his lands in England back to Ardre.
These he paraded before the people, and snarling dogs,… All were astonished by the spectacle and made
festive. Thereafter, the populous
watched on feast days the snarling dogs let free to circle their prey and the
bear handler compel it to fight them back,…[4]
We learn from this that bear-baiting was already common no
later than 1096. It did not originate in
the Flanders region from which the Normans fared. It was customary, then, among the
pre-invasion Saxons and adopted by the conquerors after the invasion.
Being a liege lord, Arnold granted concession rights to bake
bread to hand out to the people so they could build their excitement feeding the
bears before they stood rapt watching the great beasts engage in battle. Whether this, too, was imported from England
I cannot say.
We also learn that bear-baiting was still highly popular in
Ardre some 100 years later when Lamberti Ardensis was writing his history. Much to the old Presbyter’s credit, he
wished that it had never arrived. He
found it barbaric and unspeakably cruel to the bears.[5]
[1] Descriptio
Nobilissimae Ciuitatis Londoniae (1174)
[2] Fitz-Stephen's
Description the City of London, Newly translated from the Latin Original
(1772). Anonymous ed. 50.
[3]
Nichols, John. Progresses, Public Processions, &c. of Queen Elizabeth
(1823), I.67.
[4] Chronique de Guines et D’Ardre
Par Lambert, curé d’Ardre (1855), 301ff.
secessit in Angliam , ubi per aliquos dies cum
rege moram faciens, miræ
magnitudinis ursum
ab eodem rege impetravit.
Quem , provisis et bene dispositis
per terram suum in Angliâ rebus, secum reduxit in Ardeam. Quo adducto et coram populo demonstrato, et
canibus oblatrato,... mirati sunt universi et in spectaculo laeti facti sunt et
jocundi. Posteà vero , cùm populus in
festis diebus eum canibus oblatrari libenter inspîceret et desideraret et
ursarius instinctu domini quandocumque renuerat…
[5] Lambert, 301. “Sed væ ursi ludo per
quem Ardensis populus illusus est et ludificatus, et in malum usum et pravam
consuetudinem attractus et corruptus! ”
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- Becoming Tycho Brahe. April 21, 2020. "Like so many cult figures from Medieval and Tudor times, the myth of the astronomer Tycho Brahe bears only a passing relationship to the facts."
- Plague Dogs in 16th Century London. April 7, 2020. "In his account of the sources and effects of pestilences, from his enormously popular poem De Rerum Natura, the Roman author Titus Lucretius Carus noted that dogs caught pestilences as well."
- Feast of St. Michael, September 29: Beginning of the English Year. September 29, 2019. "Those who have read my “Thousand Years of English Terms” may recall that the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels (a.k.a. “Michaelmas”), on September 29, marked the beginning to the English legal and business year."
- A Most Curious Account of the Funeral of Queen Elizabeth I: April 28, 1603. April 28, 2019. “Once it was clear that James I would face no serious challenges, Cecil and the others could begin to give attention to the matter of the Queen’s funeral.”
- Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
- Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
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