In certain manuscript notes entered in the Phillipps copy of Stow's Annals (1631), we read:
The Hope, on the Bankside, in Southwarke, commonly called the Bear Garden, a playhouse for stage-plays on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and for the baiting of Bears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the stage being made to take up and down when they please. It was built in the year 1610, and now pulled down to make tenements, by Thomas Walker, a petticoat-maker in Cannon Street, on Tuesday, the 25 day of March, 1656. Seven of Mr. Godfrey's bears, by the command of Thomas Pride, then high sheriff of Surrey, were then shot to death on Saturday the 9 day of February, 1655 [i.e. 1656], by a company of soldiers.[561]
The mistakes in the earlier part of this note are obvious, yet the latter part is so circumstantial that we cannot well doubt its general accuracy. The building, however, was not pulled down "to the ground," though its interior may have been converted into tenements.
At the Restoration, when the royal sport of bear-baiting was revived, the Hope was again fitted up as an amphitheatre and opened to the public. The Earl of Manchester, on September 29, 1664, wrote to the city authorities, requesting that the butchers be required, as of old, to provide food for the dogs and bears:
He had been informed by the Master of His Majesty's Game of Bears and Bulls, and others, that the Butchers' Company had formerly caused all their offal in Eastcheap and Newgate Market to be conveyed by the beadle of that Company unto two barrow houses, conveniently placed on the river side, for the provision and feeding of the King's Game of Bears, which custom had been interrupted in the late troubles when the bears were killed. His Majesty's game being now removed to the usual place on the Bankside, by Order of the Council, he recommended the Court of Aldermen to direct the Master and Wardens of the Butchers' Company to have their offal conveyed as formerly for the feeding of the bears, &c.[562]
For some years the Bear Garden flourished as it had in the days of Elizabeth and James. It was frequently visited by Samuel Pepys, who has left vivid accounts of several performances there. In his Diary, August 14, 1666, he writes:
After dinner with my wife and Mercer to the Bear-garden; where I have not been, I think, of many years, and saw some good sport of the bull's tossing of the dogs: one into the very boxes. But it is a very rude and nasty pleasure. We had a great many hectors in the same box with us (and one, very fine, went into the pit, and played his dog for a wager, which was a strange sport for a gentleman), where they drank wine, and drank Mercer's health first; which I pledged with my hat off.
John Evelyn, likewise, in his Diary, June 16, 1670, records a visit to the Bear Garden:
I went with some friends to the Bear Garden, where was cock-fighting, dog-fighting, bear- and bull-baiting, it being a famous day for all these butcherly sports, or rather barbarous cruelties. The bulls did exceeding well; but the Irish wolf-dog exceeded, which was a tall greyhound, a stately creature indeed, who beat a cruel mastiff. One of the bulls tossed a dog full into a lady's lap as she sat in one of the boxes at a considerable height from the arena. Two poor dogs were killed; and so all ended with the ape on horseback, and I most heartily weary of the rude and dirty pastime, which I had not seen, I think, in twenty years before.
On January 7, 1676, the Spanish Ambassador was entertained at the Bear Garden, as we learn from a warrant, dated March 28, 1676, for the payment of £10 "to James Davies, Esq., Master of His Majesty's Bears, Bulls, and Dogs, for making ready the rooms at the Bear Garden, and baiting of the bears before the Spanish Ambassador, the 7 January last, 1675 [6]."[563]