vex or molest John Brown, whom he calls "our trusty servant and bear-ward;" and whom, he says, "we have made master-guider and ruler of all our bears and apes to us appertaining within England and Wales;" speaking, at the same time, of the animals in terms of strong attachment:* and we may infer, from an anecdote mentioned by Burnet, that Elizabeth's father had a taste, also, for the same recreation.

The story is the more remarkable, as we find bruin unwittingly connected with an important transaction in the progress of the Reformation.

"Cranmer (says Burnet) went about that which the king had commanded, and made a book of the reasons that led him to oppose the Six Articles, in which the places out of the scriptures, the authorities of the ancient doctors, with the arguments drawn from these, were all digested in a good method. This he commanded the secretary to write out in a fair hand, that it might be given to the king. The secretary, returning with it from Croydon,

• Turner's Hist. Eng. v. iii. p. 578.

where the archbishop then was, to Lambeth, found the key of his chamber was carried away by the archbishop's almoner; so that he being obliged to go over to London, and not daring to trust the book to any other's keeping, carried it with himself; where both he and the book met with an unlooked-for encounter. Some others that were with him in the wherry, would needs go to the Southwark side, to look on a bear-baiting that was near the river, where the king was in person. The bear broke loose into the river, and the dogs after her. They that were in the boat leaped out, and left the poor secretary alone there. But the bear got into the boat, with the dogs about her, and sunk it. The secretary apprehending his life was in danger, did not mind his book, which was lost in the water. But, being quickly rescued and brought to land, he began to look for his book, and saw it floating in the river. So he desired the bear-ward to bring it to him; who took it up; but before he would restore it, put it into the hands of a priest who stood there, to see what it might contain. The priest, reading a little in it,

found it a confutation to the Six Articles; and told the bear-ward, that whosoever claimed it would be hanged for his pains. But the archbishop's secretary thinking to mend the matter, said it was his Lord's book. This made the bear-ward more intractable; for he was a spiteful. papist, and hated the archbishop: so that no offers nor intreaties could prevail with him to give it back. Whereupon Morice (that was the secretary's name) went and opened the matter to Cromwell the next day: Cromwell was then going to court, and he expected to find the bear-ward there, looking to deliver the book to some of Cranmer's enemies; he, therefore, ordered Morice to go along with him; where, as they had expected, they found the fellow, with the book about him: upon whom Cromwell called and took the book out of his hands, threatening him severely for his presumption in meddling with a privy-counsellor's book."*

* Hist. Reform. v. i. p. 265. The story is given more in detail by Fox, in Cromwell's life, inserted in his acts, &c, which may be found in the learned and estimable Dr. Wordsworth's "Ecclesiastic Bio

Other particulars are incidentally mentioned by our historians, from which we may collect how much gratification was derived by our unrefined ancestors from the baiting of poor bruin.

When Queen Mary visited her sister, the Princess Elizabeth, during her confinement at Hatfield House, on the next morning, after mass, a grand exhibition of bear-baiting was made for their amusement; with which, it is said, their Highnesses were right well content.* The same princess, soon after her accession to to the throne, gave a splendid dinner to the French ambassadors, who afterwards were entertained with the baiting of bulls and bears; and the queen herself stood with the ambassadors, looking on the pastime till six at

graphy," a work of uncommon interest aud utility, v. ii. p. 327. He says, "The secretary sat in the end of the wherry, up to the middle in water; to whom came the bear and all the dogs. The bear seeking,' as it were, aid and succour of him, came back with his hinder parts upon him; and so rushing upon him, the book was loosed from his girdle, and fell into the Thames out of his reach."

*Life of Sir Thos. Pope, sect. iii. p. 85.

night. The day following the same ambassadors went by water to Paris Garden,* where they saw another baiting of bulls and of bears; and again, twenty-seven years posterior to this entertainment, Queen Elizabeth received the

* Paul Hentzner, before quoted, gives the following particulars of the sports at Paris Garden, in London. There is a 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 great English bull-dogs; but not without great risk to the dogs, from the horns of the one, and the teeth of the other; and it sometimes happens that they are killed on the spot: fresh ones are immediately supplied in the place of those that are wounded and tired. To this entertainment, there often follows that of whipping a blinded bear; which is performed by five or six men, standing circularly with whips, which they exercise upon him without any mercy, as he cannot escape from them, because of his chain. At these spectacles, and every where else, the English are constantly smoaking tobacco." P. 67. A dreadful accident occurred at Paris Garden, during these exhibitions, in the twenty-fifth year of Elizabeth's reign. A great crowd of people being assembled there, on one Sunday evening, (for it was customary to profane the Sabbath in that way,) the whole theatre gave way, and fell to the ground; killing many and wounding more of the spectators.- John Field's Dec. God's Judgmer, &c. fol. 9.