their places at the windows of the room which looked out upon a square, where a platform was raised, and a vast crowd had assembled to see the King's bears fight with greyhounds. This afforded great amusement. Presently a bull, tied to the end of a rope, was fiercely baited by dogs.'[1] James had introduced a new and dangerous element into the sport by using the lions which were kept in the Tower, and this also became the scene of baitings. On 5 March 1607 the Treasurer of the Chamber paid Henslowe and Alleyn no less than £30, partly for attendances with the game at Greenwich during the visit of the King of Denmark and at Whitehall during that of the Prince de Joinville, and partly for baiting of the lions in the Tower on three several occasions.[2] Stowe gives detailed descriptions of lion-baitings in 1604, 1605, 1609, and 1610, of which the first is interesting, because it was under the personal superintendence of Edward Alleyn, 'now sworne the Princes man and Maister of the Beare Garden'.[3]
But the profit of the thing, from the point of view of the Master of the Game, was not so much in the attendances at Court, as in the public baitings, which he and those holding licences from him were privileged to give with the bears and dogs, 'taken up' by virtue of the commission or bought at their own expense, during such times as these were not required for the royal service. These public spectacles were held at what was known as the Bear Garden, under conditions much resembling those of a theatre. They played a considerable part in the life of London; literature is full of allusions to them; and they are described with more or less detail in the narratives of many travellers from abroad. An early account is that from the Spanish of a secretary to the Duke of Najera, who visited Henry VIII in 1544.[4] He describes the bears as baited daily, with three or four dogs to each bear, in an enclosure where they were tied with ropes, and adds:
'Into the same place they brought a pony with an ape fastened on
its back, and to see the animal kicking amongst the dogs, with the
screams of the ape, beholding the curs hanging from the ears and neck
of the pony, is very laughable.'
In 1559 the same French ambassadors, who saw the baiting
at Whitehall, were taken on the following day to Paris
Garden, and 'ther was boyth bare and bull baytyng, and the
capten with a c. of the gard to kepe rowme for them to see
the baytyng'.[5] The next notice of any value is that of
