London in the Time of the Tudors

by Walter Besant

To perfect the history of bull-baiting, I must tell you, that the famed dogs have crosses or roses of various coloured ribbon stuck with pitch on their foreheads, and such like the ladies are very ready to bestow on dogs or bull that do valiantly; and when ’tis stuck on the bull’s forehead, that dog is hollowed that fetches it off, though the true courage and art is to hold the bull by the nose ’till he roars, which a courageous bull scorns to do.

Often the men are tossed as well as the dogs; and men, bull, and dogs, seem exceedingly pleased, and as earnest at the sport as if it were for the lives or livelihoods. Many great wagers are laid on both sides, and great journeys will men and dogs go for such a diversion. I knew a gentleman that bought a bull in Hertfordshire on purpose to go a progress with him, at a great charge, into most of the great towns in the West of England.

This is a sport the English much delight in; and not only the baser sort, but the greatest lords and ladies.”

And here is Laneham on the sport of bear-baiting:—

“It waz a sport very pleazaunt of theez beasts; to see the bear with hiz pink eyez leering after hiz enemiez approch, the nimbleness and wayt of the dog to take hiz avauntage, and the fors and experiens of the bear agayn to avoyd the assaults; if he were bitten in one place, hoow he woold pynch in an oother too get free; that if he wear taken onez, then what shyft with byting, with clawyng, with roring, tossing and tumbling he woold woork too wynde hymself from them; and when he waz lose, to shake his earz twyse or thryse wyth the blud and slauer aboout his fiznamy, waz a matter of a goodly releef.”

We have already heard Hentzner on theatres, he has a word to say also on baiting:—

“There is still another place, built in the form of a Theatre, which serves for the baiting of bulls and bears; they are fastened behind, and then worried by those great English dogs and mastiffs, but not without great risk to the dogs from the teeth of the one and the horns of the other, and it sometimes happens they are killed on the spot; fresh ones are immediately supplied in the places of those that are wounded or tired. To this entertainment often follows that of whipping a blinded bear, which is performed by five or six men, standing in a circle with whips which they exercise upon him without any mercy; although he cannot escape from them because of his chain, he nevertheless defends himself vigorously, throwing down all who come within his reach and are not active enough to get out of it, tearing the whips out of their hands and breaking them. At these spectacles, and everywhere else, the English are constantly seen smoking the Nicotean weed, which in America is called Tobaca, and generally in this manner: they have pipes on purpose made of clay, into the farther end of which they put the herb, so dry that it may be rubbed into powder, and lighting it, they draw the smoke into their mouths, which they puff out again through their nostrils, along with plenty of phlegm and defluxion from the head. In these Theatres, fruits, such as apples, pears, and nuts, according to the season, are carried about to be sold, as well as wine and ale.”

But besides these cruel forms of so-called “sport,” there were more legitimate pleasures such as archery.

“During the holy days in summer,” Fitz Stephen says, “the young men exercise themselves in the sports of leaping, archery, etc.” The practice of archery was maintained in the City after the longbow had to give way before gun and cannon. As a pastime of the citizens only, no account of London would be complete without reference to archery. There were, as every one knows, two kinds of bow: the longbow and the crossbow. The former, for various reasons—its superiority in readiness of handling, lightness in carrying, range of flight and sureness of aim, caused it to be much more generally adopted in our armies than its rival. At Cressy, for instance, our men were armed with longbows, and the French with crossbows; when the rain fell the longbows could be easily covered up, the crossbow could not, so that the strings were wetted and the power of the weapon greatly injured. Edward the First, who had a great opinion of the longbow as the superior weapon, ordered, on the threat of war with France, every sheriff of a county to provide 500 white bows and as many bundles of arrows. Edward the Third issued repeated proclamations ordering the practice of archery. It would seem as if the word archery in the fourteenth century included the crossbow as well as the longbow, for Edward the Second, in 1314 (Riley, Memorials, p. 124), commanded the City of London to furnish 300 arbalesters “more powerful for defence,” and to provide them with “haketons, bacinets, collerettes, arbalests and quarels.” (The haketon was a jacket of quilted leather; the bacinet was a headpiece; the collerette, an iron collar for the protection of the throat; the arbalest is the crossbow; the quarel was the bolt.)

Richard the Second ordered that every man in his household should exercise himself as occasion should permit in archery. And in 1392 an Act was passed obliging all servants to practise archery on holydays. In 1417 Henry V. ascribed his victory at Agincourt chiefly to his archers, and orders the Sheriffs of the counties to pluck from every goose six wing-feathers for the improvement of the arrow. These feathers were the second, third, and fourth of each wing. Edward IV. ordered that Englishmen in Ireland and every Irishman living with Englishmen should be provided with a bow of his own height, which was to be made of yew, wych, hazel, ash, or alder. Butts were to be erected in every township, and the inhabitants were to practise on every feast day. The same king sent a thousand archers to the Duke of Burgundy, who was to pay them sixpence a day, about five shillings of our money. Nothing can prove more conclusively the estimation in which archers were held. The same king provided for his war both guns and bows. A great deal of yew was imported at this time; it came in the Venetian ships from Dalmatia and the countries on the eastern shores of the Adriatic.