page_title: Bear-baiting
section_title: Great Britain
hierarchical_section_title: Bear-baiting / History / Europe / Great Britain
caption_attribution_description: English: a painting of a bear baiting by dogs from the 1600s
context_page_description: Bear-baiting is a blood sport involving the worrying or tormenting of bears with dogs. It may also involve pitting a bear against another animal.
context_section_description: Bear-baiting was popular from the 12th until the 19th century. From the sixteenth century, many bears were maintained for baiting. In its best-known form, arenas for this purpose were called bear-gardens, consisting of a circular high fenced area, the "pit", and raised seating for spectators. A post would be set in the ground towards the edge of the pit and the bear chained to it, either by the leg or neck. Several well-trained fighting or baiting dogs, usually Old English Bulldogs, would then be set on it, being replaced as they got tired or were wounded or killed. In some cases the bear was let loose, allowing it to chase after animals or people. For a long time, the main bear-garden in London was the Paris Garden, that section of the Bankside lying to the west of The Clink, at Southwark.
  Henry VIII was a fan and had a bear pit constructed at his Palace of Whitehall. Elizabeth  I was also fond of the entertainment; it featured regularly in her tours. When an attempt was made to ban bear-baiting on Sundays, she overruled Parliament. Robert Laneham's letter describes the spectacle presented by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester at Kenilworth Castle in 1575:
  Thursday, the fourteenth of July, and the sixth day of her Majesty are coming, a great sort of bandogs [mastiff] was then tied in the outer court and thirteen bears in the inner . . .
  Well, the bears were brought forth into the court, the dogs set to them, to argue the points even face to face. They had learned counsel also on both parts, what may they be counted partial that are retained but to one side? I know not. Very fierce, both one and the other, and eager in an argument. If the dog in pleading would pluck the bear by the throat, the bear with traverse would claw him again by the scalp, confess and a list, but avoid it could not that was bound to the bar, and his counsel told him that it could be to him no policy in pleading.
  Therefore, with fending & proving, with plucking and tugging, scratching and biting, by plain tooth and nail on one side and the other, such expense of blood and leather [skin] was there between them, as a month licking (I think) will not recover, and yet remain as far out as ever they were.
  
  It was a very pleasant sport, of these beasts, to see the bear with his pink eyes leering after his enemies approach, the nimbleness and wait [wait] of the dog to take his advantage, and the force and experience of the bear again to avoid the assaults. If he were bitten in one place, how he would pinch in another to get free, that if he were taken once, then what shift, with biting, with clawing, with roaring, tossing and tumbling, he would work to wind himself free from them. And when he was loose, to shake his ears twice or thrice with the blood and the slather about his physiognomy, was a matter of goodly relief. 
  Variations involved other animals being baited, especially bulls. Bull-baiting was a contest which was similar to bear baiting in which the bull was chained to a stake by one hind leg or by the neck and worried by dogs. The whipping of a blinded bear was another variation of bear-baiting. Also, on one curious occasion, a pony with an ape tied to its back was baited; a spectator described that "... with the screaming of the ape, beholding the curs hanging from the ears and neck of the pony, is very laughable".
  Attempts to end the entertainment were first made in the Kingdom of England by the Puritans, with little effect. The deaths of several spectators, when a stand collapsed at the Paris Gardens on 12 January 1583, was viewed by early Puritans as a sign of God's anger, though not primarily because of the cruelty but because the bear-baiting was taking place on a Sunday. One bear named Sackerson was written into in a Shakespearean comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor.
  Baiting was banned by the Puritans during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the resultant Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, which ended in 1660.  By the late 17th  century "the conscience of cultivated people seems to have been touched". By the 18th century bear-ba
caption: A painting of about 1650 by Abraham Hondius of a bear-baiting
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