was once worth £100 a year, could now not be let at all.[1] It is doubtful whether they got any relief. They had a new patent on 24 November 1608;[2] but about 1612 they sent up another petition in very similar terms. A grant of £42 10s. and 12d. a day had, indeed, been made them in March 1611 for keeping a lion and two white bears. But this was probably menagerie work and quite apart from the baiting. They continued as joint Masters until Henslowe's death in 1616, when the whole office passed to Alleyn in survivorship.[3]
When baiting seemed desirable to the soul of the sovereign, the 'game' was generally brought to the Court, wherever the Court might happen to be.[4] The rewards of the Treasurer of the Chamber were most often for attendances in the Christmas holidays or at Whitsuntide. But the game might be called for at any time to add lustre to the entertainment of an ambassador or other distinguished visitor to Court. Thus on 25 May 1559 French ambassadors dined with Elizabeth, 'and after dener to bear and bull baytyng, and the Quens grace and the embassadurs stod in the galere lokyng of the pastym tyll vj at nyght'.[5] Later French embassies of 1561, 1572, 1581, and 1599, and a Danish embassy of 1586 were similarly honoured.[6] The custom continued during the next reign. On 19 August 1604 there was a grand banquet at Whitehall for Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Constable of Castile, on the completion of peace between England and Spain, and thereafter a ball, and after the ball 'all then took
- ↑ Henslowe Papers, 104.
- ↑ This is recited in a warrant to one of their deputies in Henslowe Papers, 18.
- ↑ Henslowe, ii. 38. Dr. Greg gives many interesting details of the business, and of the relations of the Masters with their agents, for which I have not space. Others, of Bowes's time, are in Dasent, ix. 9; xiii. 101.
- ↑ Sydney Papers, ii. 194 (12 May 1600), 'This day she appointes to see a Frenchman doe feates upon a rope, in the Conduit court. To morrow she hath commanded the beares, the bull and the ape to be baited in the tiltyard. Upon Wednesday she will have solemn dawncing'; cf. Epicoene, iii. 1, 'Were you ever so much as look'd upon by a lord or a lady, before I married you, but on the Easter or Whitsun-holidays? and then out at the banqueting-house window, when Ned Whiting or George Stone were at the stake?' George Stone was killed during the visit of Christian of Denmark in 1606 (H. P. 105). The Court practice was followed by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen. Payments to the bearward of Paris Garden for pastime showed at the Conduit Heads are in Harrison, iv. 322.
- ↑ Machyn, 198.
- ↑ Ibid. 270; Nichols, Eliz. i. 305; ii. 469; Walsingham, Journal, 42; Boississe, i. 345. There is a spirited description of a baiting before Elizabeth at Kenilworth on 14 July 1575 in Laneham's Letter (Furnivall, Captain Cox, 17); but I do not suppose that these were the London bears. Leicester, whose cognizance was the bear and ragged staff, doubtless kept his own ursine establishment.
