What was deemed most remarkable of all, however, was a performance in which Marocco walked backwards, “the while turning in circles,” when Banks ordered him to do so.
We are told that upon witnessing this performance a proportion of the audience was so deeply affected that several people dared not remain. Consequently one is less surprised at reading that when, later, Banks and his pupil gave a performance in Rome, both man and horse were pronounced to be in league with the devil and ordered to be publicly burnt as magicians, which monstrous sentence was duly carried out.
In justice let it be said that this act of barbarity—the direct outcome of the pitiable ignorance of the age—created intense indignation in England, while in Italy it stirred up a strong feeling of resentment.
Attempts were made later to create the impression that political wirepullers had been at work, and that man and horse had been sacrificed expressly to make bad blood between the British Court and the Vatican, if not between England and Italy, but there is no reason for believing that the agitators achieved their purpose.
Nor, indeed, is it certain that Banks' death sentence was pronounced by the Pope, or by his order. That the man had come to be looked upon as a magician, however, in every part of Italy where his horse had been exhibited, apparently is beyond dispute.
Though strolling players of many sorts were, as we know, plentiful in Elizabeth's reign, it seems more than likely that the exhibition given by Marocco may directly have inaugurated in England the practice of training animals to perform tricks of the same sort for public shows.
Certainly we hear soon after Marocco's tragic end that exhibitions of performing animals were advertised to take place in different parts of the country, and from that time onward incidental allusions to entertainments of the kind that we to-day call circuses are to be found in some of the old books.
There mention is made of the methods employed in order to train the animals to their owners' satisfaction, methods barbarous enough, in all conscience. Yet none took exception to them. For the tendency of the age, three centuries ago, and down probably to a much later period, was one of cruelty. The literature of the last three hundred years makes that but too apparent.