probably pulled down. Part of the ground near which it stood, adjoining Apothecaries' Hall, is still called Playhouse Yard. PARIS GARDEN. RICHARD III., as appears by the original patent cited in the Annals of the Stage, (i. 35.) was the first of our Kings who appointed a royal Bearward, but nothing is said at so early a date of any public place in the vicinity of London, for the exhibition of bearbaiting or bull-baiting. The most ancient notice of Paris Garden as the scene of such amusements, that I have met with, is in a book of the expenses of the Northumberland family, where, under date of 17 Henry VIII., it is said that the Earl went to Paris Garden to behold the bearbaiting there. In 1544, the Duke of Naxera arrived in England, ambassador from Spain, and one of his suite wrote an account* of some passages in their travels, and especially during their stay of eight days in London: after speaking of the wild beasts in the Tower, he thus notices the sports at Paris Garden, although he does not mention the place by name. • On the other side of the town we have seen seven 'bears, some of them very large: they are driven into a circus, where they are confined by a long rope, * It is a fair MS. in Spanish, now deposited in the British Museum. An interesting paper, composed by Mr. Madden, the very learned keeper of the MSS. in the Museum, from this narrative, was recently read before the Antiquarian Society, but it is not yet printed. while large and courageous dogs are let loose upon 'them, as if to be devoured, and a fight takes place. It is not bad sport to witness the conflict. The 'large bears contend with three or four dogs, and 'sometimes one is victorious and sometimes the other: 6 the bears are ferocious and of great strength, and 'not only defend themselves with their teeth, but hug the dogs so closely with their fore-legs, that if they were not rescued by their masters they would 'be suffocated. At the same place a pony is baited, 'with a monkey on its back, defending itself against 'the dogs by kicking them; and the shrieks of the monkey, when he sees the dogs hanging from the < ears and neck of the pony, render the scene very ' laughable.' 6 In Pennant's London, the following stanzas are quoted, and are there said to have been written by one Crowley, a poet of the reign of Henry VIII.** He was a printer, and published, in 1550, One and thirty Epigrams, wherein are briefly touched so many ' abuses that may and ought to be put away.' 'What folly is this to keep with danger 'A great mastive dog, and fowle ouglie bear, And yet every Sunday they wil surely spend 'One peny or two, the Bearward's living to mend. * Edit. 1793, p. 43. I have not been able to meet with, or even to hear of, any copy of the original Epigram. 'At Paris Garden each Sunday a man shal not fail 'To find two or three hundred for the Bearward's vale. 'One halfpenny a piece they use for to give, 6 'When some have not more in their purses, I believe. • Wel, at the last day their conscience wil declare, 'That the poor ought to have al that they may spare. 'If you therefore give to see a bear fight, 'Be sure God his curse upon you wil light.' In one of the oldest existing plans of London, known by the name of Aggas's map *, two circles are marked out for Bull-baiting' and 'Bear-baiting,' at a short distance from each other, as if the two amusements were exhibited at separate places appropriated to each, and both within the manor of Paris Garden †. We are without information regarding the first erection of either ‡. It is said to have been completed some time before 1578. The original plates, of pewter, came into the hands of Vertue, and he printed off a number of copies with a new inscription: they now belong to the Society of Antiquaries, London. † Before 37 Henry VIII., when the monastery was dissolved, Paris Garden belonged to St. Saviour's, Bermondsey: by the Act 28 Henry VIII., c. 21, it was given to the King; and by another statute, in the same year, ch. 38, the manors of Paris Garden, Hyde, and others, were granted to the Queen. Malone, in a note on Henry VIII., Act v., Sc. 3, says that it was called Paris Garden, from Robert de Paris, who had a house and grounds there, in the reign of Richard II. He quotes, as his authorities, Blount's Glossographia, and Rot. Claus. 16 R. II., dors. ii. Stowe speaks of two bear-gardens, the old and the new, as if one of them had been erected within his memory. I quote the following from his original (Harl. MS., 544), because it is more full and particular than in the printed copy of his Survey, 1599. 'And to begynne at the west banque as afore, thus it folowith. On 6 There is little doubt that they were both in being at the period of which the writer of the MS. Chronicle, beginning in the reign of Edward VI. *, speaks when he says, that on Sunday, 9th December, 1554, ‘at ' after noon was a bere baytyng on the Banke-syde, ' and ther the grett blynd bere brake losse, and in ronnyng away he shakt a servyng man by the calff of the leg, and byt a gret pese away, and after by 'the hokyll bone, that within three days after he ded.' The same chronicler gives an account of several bearbaitings before Elizabeth at Whitehall; and, on one occasion (the 25th May, but the year is illegible), the French ambassadors were so delighted with the sport, that on the very next day they went to Paris Garden, with a guard of honour, to see it repeated: his words are these:— The 25 day [of May] they [the Ambas'sadors] were browght to the court with musyke to 6 dener, for ther was grett cher, and after dener to 'this banque is the beare gardens, in nomber twayne; to wite, the olde 'beare garden and the newe, places where in be kepte bears, bulls, and 'othar beastes, to be bayted at stakes for pleasure: also mastives to bayte them in severall kenells are there norished. Theis bears, bulls, ' and othar beastes, are ofte tymes there bayted in plots of ground scaf'folded about for the beholders to stand upon saffe.' * Cotton MSS., Vitellius, F. 5. I am inclined to think, from his dialect, as indicated by peculiar spelling, that the writer was a Scotchman. Paris Garden was a common place of resort in the reign of Mary, and among the Prices of Fares and Passages to be paide to Watermen,' printed by John Cawood, Prynter to the Quene's Majestie,' is the following: Item, that no whyrymanne, with a pare of ores, take for his fare from 'Pawles wharfe, Quene hithe, Parishe garden, or the blacke Fryers to 'Westminster, or White hal, or lyke distaunce to and fro, above iija.' 'bere and bull bayting, and the queene's grace and 'the ambassadors stud in the galere [at Whitehall] 'lokyng of the pastym till vj at nyght. The 26 day of May they whent from the byssopes howse to Powlls warff, and toke barge, and so to Parys garden, for ther was boyth bare and bull baytyng, ' and the capteyn with a xii of the gard, to kepe 6 rowm for them to see the baytyng.' According to John Field, Minister of the word of God,' the amphitheatre would hold above a thousand people;' and he states * that that number was collected on Sunday, January 13th, 1582-3, when one of the scaffolds fell, and five men and two women were killed, and more than one hundred and fifty persons injured. Stow,' in his Annals, referring to the same calamity, says that eight lives were lost, and adds that the scaffolds were old and underpropped.' Field observes that the gallery was double, and compassed the yard round about,' and that it was old and rotten,' so that the building in 1583 was no recent erection. Paris Garden was certainly at an early date employed also as a theatre for dramatic representations, and it seems to have been of an hexagonal shape. To show that plays were performed there, Dekker's Satiromastix, 1602, may be quoted, where Tucca asks Horace (so Ben Jonson was designated in this play), Thou hast been at the Paris Garden, hast not?' To which Horace replies, "Yes, Captain; I ha' 6 * In his Godly Exhortation, which he published on the occasion of this accident. |