THE BEAR- AND BULL-BAITING RINGS
These "rings" later gave place to the Bear Garden. (From Agas's Map of London, representing the city as it was about 1560.)
At first, apparently, the baiting of bears was held in open places,[181] with the bear tied to a stake and the spectators crowding around, or at best standing on temporary scaffolds. But later, permanent amphitheatres were provided. In Braun and Hogenberg's Map of London, drawn between 1554 and 1558, and printed in 1572, we find two well-appointed amphitheatres, with stables and kennels attached, labeled respectively "The Bear Baiting" and "The Bull Baiting." When these amphitheatres were erected we do not know, but probably they do not antedate by much the middle of the century.[182]
It is to be noted that at this time neither "The Bull Baiting" nor "The Bear Baiting" is in the Manor of Paris Garden, but close by in the Liberty of the Clink. Yet the name "Paris Garden" continued to be used of the animal-baiting place for a century and more. Possibly the identification of bear-baiting with Paris Garden was of such long standing that Londoners could not readily adjust themselves to the change; they at first confused the terms "Bear Garden" and "Paris Garden," and later extended the term "Paris Garden" to include that section of the Clink devoted to the baiting of animals.
The two amphitheatres, it seems, were used until 1583, when a serious catastrophe put an end to one if not both of them. Stow, in his Annals, gives the following account of the accident:
The same thirteenth day of January, being Sunday, about four of the clock in the afternoon, the old and underpropped scaffolds round about the Bear Garden, commonly called Paris Garden, on the south side of the river of Thamis over against the city of London, overcharged with people, fell suddenly down, whereby to the number of eight persons, men and women, were slain, and many others sore hurt and bruised to the shortening of their lives.[183]
Stubbes, the Puritan, writes in his more heightened style:
Upon the 13 day of January last, being the Saboth day, Anno 1583, the people, men, women, and children, both young and old, an infinite number, flocking to those infamous places where these wicked exercises are usually practised (for they have their courts, gardens, and yards for the same purpose), when they were all come together and mounted aloft upon their scaffolds and galleries, and in the midst of all their jolity and pastime, all the whole building (not one stick standing) fell down with a most wonderful and fearful confusion. So that either two or three hundred men, women, and children (by estimation), whereof seven were killed dead, some were wounded, some lamed, and otherwise bruised and crushed almost to death. Some had their brains dashed out, some their heads all to-squashed, some their legs broken, some their arms, some their backs, some their shoulders, some one hurt, some another.[184]
The building, which the Reverend John Field described as "old and rotten,"[185] was a complete ruin; "not a stick was left so high as the bear was fastened to." The Puritan preachers loudly denounced the unholy spectacles, pointing to the catastrophe as a clear warning from the Almighty; and the city authorities earnestly besought the Privy Council to put an end to such performances. Yet the owners of the building set to work at once, and soon had erected a new house, stronger and larger and more pretentious than before. The Lord Mayor, in some indignation, wrote to the Privy Council on July 3, 1583, that "the scaffolds are new builded, and the multitudes on the Saboth day called together in most excessive number."[186]