‘YOU SHOULD GO TO HOCKLEY IN THE HOLE, AND TO
MARYBONE, CHILD, TO LEARN VALOUR’: ON THE SOCIAL
LOGIC OF ANIMAL BAITING IN EARLY MODERN LONDON*
TOBIAS HUG
(UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK)
When Thomas Platter the younger travelled to London in 1599 he not only
visited the London apartments of Walter Cope to view his collection of
curiosities, but also seized the opportunity to attend a cockfight as well as a
bear and bull baiting in Southwark. He was awed by the way big mastiffs
were set on a bear, and later on a bull, and how a bunch of merry lads finally
flogged an old, blind bear which was tied to a stake.1 Platter wrote a detailed
description of the event, but the sobriety of his account as well as that of
many others leaves us wondering about the actual perception and
experience. This short article attempts to explore the social logic of these
experiences in order to understand how cockfights, bear and bull baiting
might reflect experiences and social features of everyday life in early modern
London.
Although the event seems to have been a novelty for the curious
traveller, these animal fights were common sports at that time and nothing
peculiar on which to spend much ink. England was not the only country
with such customs. Inflicting violence on animals was a universal
phenomenon: in Europe, similar animal baiting is known to have taken
place in Italy, Spain and France.2 Hans Jacob Wurmisser von Verdenheym,
who kept a diary for the Prince of Württemberg on his journey through
Europe in 1592, noted his Highness’ visit to a ‘baiting of bears and bulls,
and monkeys that ride on horseback’ during their stay in England, and
*
Mrs Peachum to Filch in John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera. As it is Acted at the Theatre-Royal in
Lincolns-Inn-Fields (London, 1728), Scene I, Air 5, p.7.
1
Thomas Platter, Thomas Platters des Jüngeren Englandfahrt im Jahre 1599, ed. Hans Hecht
(Halle, 1929).
2
On Italy, see Robert C. Davis, ‘The Trouble with Bulls: The Cacce dei Tori in Early
Modern Venice’, in Histoire Sociale/Social History 29 (1996), pp. 275-90; Robert C. Davis‚
The War of the Fists: Popular Culture and Public Violence in Late Renaissance Venice (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1994); Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1980); Martine Boiteux, ‘Chasse aux taureaux et jeux romains
à la Renaissance’, in Philippe Ariès and Jean-Claude Margolin (eds), Les jeux à la
Renaissance (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1982), pp. 33-53. On Spain see Adrian
Shubert, Death and Money in the Afternoon: A History of Spanish Bullfighting (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999); Timothy Mitchell, Blood Sport: A Social History of Spanish
Bullfighting (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991); Timothy Mitchell,
Violence and Piety in Spanish Folklore (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988).
On bull baiting in France see Yves-Marie Bercé, ‘Les courses de taureaux dans le SudOuest aquitain’, in Ariès and Margolin (eds), Les jeux à la Renaissance, pp. 19-31.
mentions similar baitings in Rome, Naples and Paris.3 In England, the
court, several cities and numerous noble families had their own bearwards.4
By the mid-sixteenth century bull and bear baiting had become
institutionalised entertainments at the London bear garden in Southwark
and were under the particular patronage of the monarch.5 They were
traditional Bankside sports, but in the seventeenth century beargardens
could also be found in Marylebone Gardens and at Hockley-in-the-Hole,
Clerkenwell.6 Cock-fights (‘mains’), on the other hand, were held at both
cockpits and public houses, or were staged at fairs and festivals.7 Like bull
and bear baiting, they drew large crowds and became increasingly
commercialised in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
There is plentiful evidence that these events were not only for the
pleasure of the lower classes but were enjoyed by a broad audience. Henry
Machyn reports bull and bear baiting as part of court balls, or as being
especially arranged for foreign ambassadors. In March 1559 a baiting took
place ‘at Mylle-end’ after a lavish meal with music and dancing. On 28
October 1561, there was at ‘Whyt-hall grett baytyng of the bull and bere for
the in-bassadurs of Franse that cam owtt if Scotland, the wyche the Quen(’s)
grace was ther, and her consell and mony nobull men’.8 The author of
Robert Laneham’s A Letter (1575) describes the visit of Queen Elizabeth I
to her favourite, the Earl of Leicester, at Kenilworth Castle in July 1575,
during which a bearbaiting took place: ‘It waz a sport very pleazaunt, of
théez beastz: to sée the bear with hiz pink nyez léering after hiz auauntage,
3
William B. Rye, England As Seen By Foreigners, in the Days of Elizabeth and James I, 4 vols
(London, 1865), II, p. 61.
4
Records of Early English Drama: Coventry, ed. R. W. Ingram (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1981) records bearwards of Elizabeth I, James I, Charles I, several earls
and lords and the city itself. Queen Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester,
had their bearwards in Gloucester in the 1570s: see REED: Cumberland, Westmorland
Gloucestershire, ed. Audrey Douglas and Peter Greenfield (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1986), pp. 452, 448. More evidence of patrons and bearwards can be found in
several other volumes of the REED series.
5
See Christoph Daigl, ‘All the World is but a Bear-Baiting’: Das englische Hetztheater im 16. und
17. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Gesellschaft für Theatergeschichte, 1997), pp. 15, 133-35;
Edmund K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), II, pp.
355-379, 448-74; IV, p. 307.
6
Marylebone Gardens opened in 1650: Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert, The
London Encyclopædia (London: Macmillan, 1983), p. 501. See also Roy Porter, London: A
Social History (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996), p. 176.
7
Among the London cock pits were those at Westminster (the royal cockpit which was
formerly in St James’ Park), Drury Lane, Jewin Street, Shoe Lane and Birdcage Walk
(which was depicted by Hogarth). See also Delabere P. Blaine, An Encyclopædia of Rural
Sports, 2nd ed. (London, 1852), pp. 1210-1215.
8
The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant Taylor of London, ed. John G. Nichols
(London, 1848), pp. 191, 198, 270.
and the fors & experiens of the bear agayn to auoyd the assauts’.9 In order
to ‘gratify his Highness’, Frederick, Duke of Württemberg was entertained
with a baiting in the late sixteenth century. He was intrigued by the way the
dogs were caught by the bull’s horn and tossed in the air.10 In 1602, the
eighteen-year-old Philip Julius, Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, found
bearbaiting a ‘fine amusement’ (‘feine Lust’), particularly because of the welltrained dogs.11 Following a banquet in 1604, the Spanish ambassador Juan
Fernandez de Velasco looked out from the windows of Whitehall Palace
upon a square, where a ‘huge crowd had assembled’ to see the ‘King’s bears
fight with greyhounds’.12 In June 1610 King James I, Queen Anna, Prince
Henry, Princess Elizabeth, and the Duke of York, with ‘diuers great Lords,
and manie others, came to Tower to see a triall of the Lyons single valour,
against a great fierce Beare, which had kild a child, that was negligently left
in the Bear-house’.13 A French counsellor recorded a bear and bull bait in
1663, which was followed by an ape riding on a horse chased by dogs.14
And according to Abraham de la Pryme, Prince Lewis of Baden was being
entertained by William III in January 1694 with ‘bear’s baiting, bulls’ sport,
and cock fighting instituted for his diversion and recreation’.15
Baiting at court was usually linked to other entertainments. Similarly,
in small villages and towns, baitings were an integral part of communal
activities. As James Stokes states for Somerset, baiting had a communal
dimension and was linked to traditional festivities. Most baitings occurred
between May and October, ‘when most ales, wakes, and revels were held’,
often in connection with Ascension, Whitsun or Midsummer ales or the
feasts of local patron saints.16 In London, however, communal festivities
9
Frederick J. Furnivall, Captain Cox, His Ballads and Books; Or, Robert Laneham’s Letter
(London, 1871), p. 17. It has been suspected that that the Letter might not really be a
letter addressed to the London mercer Master Humphrey Martin, and not by its alleged
author. See, for example, David Scott, ‘William Patten and the Authorship of ‘Robert
Laneham’s Letter’ (1575)’, English Literary Renaissance 7:3 (1977), pp. 297-306. I am very
thankful to Jayne Archer for this reference.
10
Frederick, Duke of W[ürt]temberg, A True and Faithful Narrative of the Bathing Excursion
(Tübingen, 1602), in William B. Rye, England As Seen By Foreigners, in the Days of Elizabeth
and James I, 4 vols (London, 1865), II, p. 46.
11
Diary of the Journey of Philip Julius, Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, Through England in the Year
1602, in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society: New Series 6 (London, 1892), 1-67, p. 17.
12
Rye, England, III, pp. 123-4.
13
John Stow and Edmond Howes, The Annales Or Generall Chronicle of England (London,
1615), p. 896.
14
Iournal des Voyages de Monsievr De Montconys, Conseiller du Roy en ses Conseils d’Estat & Priué,
& Lietenant Criminel au Siege Presidial de Lyon, 2 vols (Lyon, 1666), II, p. 72.
15
Robert W. Malcolmson, Popular Recreations in English Society 1700-1850 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 118.
16
James Stokes, ‘Bull and Bear Baiting in Somerset: The Gentles’ Sport’, in Alexandra F.
Johnston and Wim Hüsken (eds), English Parish Drama (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi
B.V., 1996), pp. 65-80.
associated with Midsummer and May Day declined or disappeared during
the reign of Elizabeth I, and gave way to more individual activities such as
the theatre. In the growing city, bull and bear baiting became an
institutionalised (and commercial) entertainment held in a very different
social setting that was more tightly controlled.17
Whereas baiting at the royal court was restricted to foreign and
domestic nobles, in the bear garden in Southwark it brought together
spectators from all kinds of social backgrounds. According to Philip
Stubbes, ‘Men, Wemen, and Children, both yonge and old, an infinit
number’ attended the baiting on the day the beargarden collapsed.18 Platter
and his travel companions went there on a Sunday together with the
‘Graven von Benthem’.19 Samuel Pepys went with his wife and Mary
Mercer to the beargarden in August 1666. There he met his friend James
Pearce, the naval surgeon, and observed a ‘very fine’ gentleman who went
‘into the pit and played his dog for a wager’. Yet Pepys also writes of the
‘woeful rude rabble’ who came to the bear garden to take pleasure from
prize fights.20 John Evelyn, a more refined man, went more reluctantly: in
June 1670, he notes in his diary, he was ‘forc’d to accompanie some friends
to the Bear-garden’.21 Pepys also watched cockfightings, which he observed
with equivocal feelings of both fascination and abhorrence. Shortly before
Christmas 1663 he was ‘directed by sight of bills upon the walls’ to a
cockfight in Shoe Lane, an area famous for such fights. He was surprised at
the audience, which ranged from members of Parliament to the ‘poorest
prentices, bakers, brewers, butchers, draymen, and what not; all these
fellows one with another in swearing, cursing, and betting’.22 Almost a
century later, in December 1762, James Boswell went to the cockpit and
watched a fight that lasted almost an hour. The Bear Garden, however, was
For festivities and communal identity, see also David Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion.
Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603-60 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987),
esp. p. 44; Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400-1700
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Steve Hindle, ‘A Sense of place? Becoming and
Belonging in the Rural Parish, 1550-1650’, in: Alexandra Shepard and Phil Withington
(eds), Communities in Early Modern England: Network, Place, Rhetoric (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2000), pp. 96-114.
17
See Ian W. Archer, The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 94.
18
Philip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses (1583), ed. Frederick J. Furnivall (London, 187779), p. 179. The bear garden in Paris Garden, Southwark, collapsed on Sunday 13
January 1583. See also John Dee, Private Diary of Dr. John Dee, and The Catalogue of His
Library of Manuscripts, ed. James Orchard Halliwell (London, 1842), p. 18. On Puritan
condemnation of Sabbath-breakers, see n 41.
19
Platter, Englandfahrt, p. 39.
20
The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews, 11 vols (London:
Harper Collins, 1970-83), VII, p. 246.
21
The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. De Beer, 6 vols (Oxford, 1955), III, p. 549.
22
The Diary of Samuel Pepys, IV, pp. 427-28.
also a centre for prizefighting. Pepys saw his first prize fight at the NewTheatre near the Strand. Even though he thought the audience ‘a woeful
rude rabble’, and the place filled with ‘such noises’ that he had a headache
for the rest of the day, he was ‘pleased for once with this sight’.23 A few
years later, in May 1667, Pepys recorded a prizefight between a butcher and
a waterman at the Bear Garden.24
The experience of animal baiting was shared throughout the country,
and made demands on every participant no matter what social background,
gender or even age they were. But what exactly attracted the huge crowds?
Most reporters considered prize fights and animal baits a pleasant
entertainment or ‘fine amusement’. In Charles Cotton’s Compleat Gamester
cock-fighting is described as ‘a sport or pastime so full of delight and
pleasure’.25 Most writers were impressed by the physical appearance and
power of the animals as well as by the dynamic of the fight: the bear in
particular seems to have fascinated contemporary witnesses. In folk
literature the bear appears generally as a hostile but gentle figure, and in
heraldry it often signifies ferocity in protection of kindred.26 The humanoid
features and the several different qualities attributed to it make the bear an
object of both awe and ridicule. On the one hand, bravery, endurance and
strength; on the other hand, clumsiness, gruffness, ill-temper, moroseness,
lust and vanity or even misanthropy and evil power were ascribed to him. 27
The author of Robert Laneham’s A Letter was fascinated by the pink eyes of
the bear, but then writes of ‘plucking & tugging, skratting & byting, by plain
tooth and nayll’ and of ‘such expens of blood and leather [that] waz thear
between them’. He enjoyed watching how the bear ‘woold pynch in an
oother too get frée: that if he wear taken onez, that what shyft, with byting,
with clawyng, with roring, tossing & tumbling, he woold woork too wynde
hym self from them: and when he waz lose, to shake hiz earz twyse or tryse
wyth the blud & the slauer aboout hiz fiznamy’.28 Platter observed the dogs’
perseverance and boldness, and how their mouths had to be opened by
23
The Diary of Samuel Pepys, IV, p. 168.
The Diary of Samuel Pepys, VIII, p. 239.
25
Charles Cotton, The Compleat Gamester: Or, Instructions how to play at billiards, trucks, bowls,
and chess. Together with all manner of usual and most Gentile Games either on cards or Dice. To which
is added, The Arts and Mysteries of Riding, Racing, Archery, and Cock-Fighting (London, 1674) p.
206. Pepys has added in the margin of his copy: ‘and of Barbarity’ (PL 714). See The
Diary of Samuel Pepys, IV, p. 427.
26
See Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Baggar,
1955), VI, pp. 55-6. In England, there were families who traced their descent from wild
animals. See Keith Thomas, Man and Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 15001800 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), p. 134.
27
In the Middle Ages he was often regarded as the personification of the devil, or related
to the seven deadly sins. But the bear was also part of the crest of nobles such as the
earls of Warwick.
28
Furnivall, Captain Cox, p. 17.
24
force in order to unbind them from the bull or bear, but also how they were
craftily thrown into the air.29 Evelyn, though ‘most heartily weary, of the
rude & dirty passetime’, was certainly impressed how a bull tossed a dog
into a lady’s lap. Writing about cocks, Boswell noted that they were ‘nicely
cut and dressed and armed with silver heels’; and that they fought ‘with
amazing bitterness and resolution [...] One pair fought three quarters of an
hour. The uproar and noise betting is prodigious.’30
The fights were visually and acoustically powerful events. While most
early accounts remain rather sober, in Pepys’, Evelyn’s and later Boswell’s
diary notes we find violence perceived and labelled as such. Pepys thought
it ‘a very rude and nasty pleasure’, and Evelyn called the baitings ‘butcherly
Sports, or rather barbarous cruelties’; Boswell, watching a cockfight in 1762,
felt ‘sorry for the poor cocks’.31 The combination of excitement, fascination
and abhorrence found in a few of the accounts mirrors the ambivalence of
the fight as a combination of art and unbridled frenzy. It was a bloody battle
of hate, brutality, violence and often death.
Animal fights do not only refer to human-animal relations.32 In
Worke for Armorours (1609), Thomas Dekker draws a parallel between the
fights, social polarisation and fears of everyday life. This suggests that the
fights provided a ‘meta-social commentary’ on the fact that human beings
were related to each other in strict hierarchical ranks.33 First, the bear
garden is compared with the powerful metaphor of hell: ‘the beare (dragd to
the stake) shewed like a black rugged soule, that was Damned, and newly
committed to the infernall Charle [sic], the Dogges like so many Diuels,
inflicting torments upon it’. Dekker then goes on to compare the whipping
of a bear with that of ‘poore starued wretches to the whipping posts in
London’.34 An animal bravely fighting for its survival might thus serve as a
reminder of such cruel punishments, as well as of courage in adversity, thus
29
‘Dieser andere Baer [...] konte mitt den tapen die hundt so artig weg schlagen, dass sie
ihm nichts mochten angewinnen’: Platter, Englandfahrt, p. 40. [‘The bear [...] fended off
the dogs so craftily with his paws that they could not harm him’.
30
Quoted in Porter, London, p. 176.
31
The Diary of Samuel Pepys, VII, p. 246; The Diary of John Evelyn, III, p. 549. According to
Keith Thomas, growing concern about cruel treatment of animals ‘was one of the most
distinctive features of late-eighteenth-century English middle-class culture’: Thomas,
Man, ch. 5, p. 160. See also Richard Holt, Sport and the British: A Modern History (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1989).
32
Erica Fudge explores the meaning of the animal rather than focusing on the fights:
Perceiving Animals: Humans and Beasts in Early Modern English Culture (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 2002).
33
Clifford Geertz, ‘Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight’, in The Interpretation of
Cultures: Selected Essays (London: Hutchinson, 1975; orig. 1973), 412-53, p. 448.
34
Thomas Dekker, Worke for Armorours: Or, The Peace is Broken (London, 1609), sig. B1v.
For similarities between the treatment of animals and black people, see Marjorie Spiegel,
A Dreaded Comparison: Man and Animal Slavery (London: Heretic, 1988).
evoking empathy in the spectator. The image of the wheel of fortune
underlies Dekker’s allegory and reminds the contemporary that it could be
him next. It might be no coincidence that John Taylor, the Water-Poet,
included in his collection of tales and jokes about bulls and bears the story
Of a Fellow that was Whipt: ‘A criminal who was whipt at the cart-tail drew
backward whereupon a gentleman tells him: “do not draw back, but presse
forward, and thy execution and paines will be the sooner past and done”,
whereupon the rogue simply replied: “It is my turn now, when thou art
whip’d, do thou go as thou wilt, and now I will go as I please”’.35
The ambivalent status of the animals is also evident in their given
names. Taylor lists bulls’ names such as ‘Emperour’, ‘Goldilocks’, ‘Iugler’
and ‘Dash’. Yet the comparison between criminal and animal is more
apparent in the bears’ names.36 Some were called after popular heroes such
as Robin Hood and Don John, or after popular criminals such as Moll CutPurse. These names, which frequently occurred in May games, were not
only a forum for jokes and irony, but also a means of mediating social values
and order. Honour, as a means of organising society and its values, was at
stake whenever a gentleman let his bull or dogs fight in the Bear Garden, or
in cockfights, as well as in the prize fights between members of different
social groups. It is probably no coincidence that the cock, the bull and the
bear were associated with strong sexual power since the reaffirmation of
order and vitality through violence sometimes has a sexual component. 37
The blurring of prize fights and animal baiting hints at the close relationship
between the two sports, especially in terms of male honour. Pepys attended
quite a few such fights in the Bear Garden. In one of his visits he was
forced to slip through a backdoor in order not to be seen by a crowd of
sailors who poured into the venue. He found himself suddenly amidst the
bulls, but then got into the common pit where he watched, with his cloak
about his face, a bloody fight between a shoemaker and a butcher. Earlier in
the year he had watched a fight between a waterman and a butcher which
degenerated into a fierce battle between the two groups. Two years later he
was again pleased with a fight between a soldier and a ‘country fellow’, who
‘soundly beat the soldier, and cut him over the head’. Pepys always took
great pleasure in seeing these bloody battles among the rabble.38
35
John Taylor, Bull, Beare, and Horse, Cut, Curtaile, and Longtaile: With Tales, and Tales of Buls,
Clenches, and Flashes (London, 1638), in: The Works of John Taylor the Water Poet Not Included
in the Folio Volume of 1630 (Manchester: Spenser Society, 1876), p. 41.
36
John Taylor provides a list of names of the bears that were played at that time: Taylor,
Bull, Beare, and Horse, pp. 61-2.
37
Geertz notes the same dual sense of the word ‘cock’ in English and in Balinese: Geertz,
‘Deep Play’, pp. 417-8.
38
The Diary of Samuel Pepys, VIII, p. 430; IX, pp. 516-17. A brawl about the dogs broke
out between butchers and bakers during a bullfight in October 1620 in Chester. The
bullbaiting was an official farewell for retiring mayors: see, for instance, REED: Chester,
ed. Lawrence M. Clopper (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), pp. 331-32.
That such fights had a strong social meaning can also be assumed
from the fact that large sums were paid for these activities, in particular for
bets at cockfights. Pepys was astonished to see ‘how people of this poor
rank, that look as if they had no bread to put in their mouths, shall bet 3 or
4l at one bet and lose it, and yet bet as much the next battell, as they call
every make of two cocks – so that one of them will lose 10 or 20l at a
meeting’.39 But apart from risking one’s honour, watching a fight involved
several other perils. The spectator was confined to the beargarden and thus
at the mercy of the animals, which might attack.40 Puritan pressure might
even have made some feel unsure about God’s punishment for attending
baiting and other entertainments on Sundays. Among others, Phillip
Stubbes, who condemned any violation of the Sabbath, considered the
collapse of the Bear Garden a godly punishment.41
The bloodshed of the fights might symbolically represent human
blood. As Geertz notes, in the fight between ‘man and beast, good and evil,
ego and id, the creative power of aroused masculinity and the destructive
power of loosened animality fuse in a bloody drama of hatred, cruelty,
violence, and death’.42 But Geertz considers the massacre of the fights not a
portrayal of how human beings literally treat each other, but rather the way
they perceive their behaviour from a certain angle.43 The angle of
perception depends on social status.
Are the animal fights to be seen as publicly sanctioned violence, and
as a mechanism against the threat of social disorder? Are we then to assume
that spectators unconsciously associated the animal with the human? The
close relation between punishments and animal baiting as well as the fact
that public punishments evoked similar collective involvement makes this
assumption possible.44 However, to regard baiting as the dramatic struggle
between rich and poor, and as a reflection of social polarisation – as
Dekker’s text might suggest – or even of gender relations, is too narrow an
39
The Diary of Samuel Pepys, IV, pp. 427-28.
Henry Machyn reports a blind bear attacking a serving man who died afterwards from
the wounds: The Diary of Henry Machyn, p. 78.
41
‘This wofull spectacle and heauie iudgement, pitifull to heare of, but most ruefull to
behold, did the Lord send down from Heauen’: Stubbes, Anatomie, p. 179. The accident
triggered off a series of publications about the disaster. See Alexandra Walsham,
Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 135-6.
42
Geertz, ‘Deep Play’, pp. 412-53, 421.
43
Geertz, ‘Deep Play’, pp. 412-53.
44
The theme of punishment occurs in the case of the baiting at the Tower watched by
the royal family, where the bear is punished with a fight against a lion for having killed a
child. See John Stow and Edmond Howes, The Annales Or Generall Chronicle of England
(London, 1615), p. 896. Punishment of animals is recorded in France, Northern
Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, and Italy: see Pieter Spierenburg, The Spectacle of Suffering.
Executions and the Evolution of Repression: From a Preindustrial Metropolis to the European
Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 79.
40
interpretation. Similar interpretations of the symbolic dimension of baiting
might possibly work for single (local) situations but not for the concept of
the fights as a whole. The fights had different meanings for different
people.45 In surviving accounts of the fights, it is difficult to get a clear idea
with which side the spectator sympathised. Of course, the owner of a
fighting bull, dog or cock obviously stood for his animal. The Oxford
student Thomas Crosfield noted how the master of a bull encouraged his
animal.46 The gentleman described by Pepys, who proudly went down into
the pit to let his dog fight, identified with the virtue of the animal he had
trained: the dog stood for his personality and social interests. In letting the
dog fight he risked his male honour, his pride and influence, and one might
argue that he put his public self symbolically and metaphorically on to the
battlefield. He identified with the dog’s toughness, and took pride in his
dog’s aggressive behaviour.47 An analogy between chivalric heroic feats and
animal fights was often drawn by contemporaries. As well as regarding
cocks as exemplary fighters, George Wilson backed up his defence of
cockfights in 1606 with a religious argument: the cock reminds us of Christ’s
sufferings, and the mutual sufferings of the cock and Christ explain the
intimate bonds between owner and animal.48 Considering suffering as an
inescapable part of human life – with the Book of Job as a common Leitmotif
of people’s painful stories – such human identification with the animal could
offer a further plausible explanation of the human fascination with these
fights. While the gentleman might have identified with his dog, an ordinary
spectator might have identified with the victim – and for both, the fight was
a reminder of the daily struggle for honour.
Tobias Hug is a Postgraduate Research Fellow in the Department of History, University
of Warwick, where he is working towards a Ph.D. on the representation and perception of
early modern English impostors. Tobias gained his MA in History at Zurich University,
and his research interests include historical anthropology and popular cultures in England
and Central Europe. To respond to this article, e-mail T.B.Hug@warwick.ac.uk
45
For example, James Stokes mentions cases in sixteenth-century Taunton, Somerset,
where bears were used to intimidate women. He also notes the presence of the bear as a
religious metaphor: Stokes, ‘Bull and Bear Baiting’, pp. 75-7. See also Fudge, Perceiving
Animals, pp. 15-18.
46
The Diary of Thomas Crosfield, ed. Frederick S. Boas (London, 1935), p. 85.
47
I suggest that Keith Thomas’s statement that English bulldogs ‘neatly united the twin
preoccupations of the eighteenth century ruling class: a concern with pedigree and
breeding, and a taste for aggressive war’ might also be applied to the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries: Thomas, Man, pp. 108-9.
48
George Wilson, The Commendation of Cocke and Cock-fighting (1606). The courage and
endurance of the cocks are seen as an example for soldiers (sig. B2r-B2v).