Bear-Baiting Histories: William Fitzstephen, Queen Elizabeth… and Who?

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]

  

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[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! ”

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