The spot was marked later by the Old Barge Stairs, which stood at the west end of that part of the Bank lying in front of the Garden, just as Paris Garden Stairs stood at its east end. But the barge was not necessarily at its moorings when Henry was baiting from it. Mr. Ordish suggests that it was the common use of Paris Garden Stairs by visitors to the baiting, which led to the name being transferred to the Bear Garden itself, without any one troubling to inquire very minutely whether it stood a little to the east or a little to the west of the landing.[1] On the whole, however, I regard it as reasonably probable that there was at one time a Bear Garden in the Liberty, which fixed the traditional name for the sport, even after it had been transferred farther along the Bank.[2] It may, perhaps, be a slight confirmation of this view that the 1627 survey of Paris Garden shows a space, apparently laid out as a garden and arranged as a circle within a square, which may represent the site. It stands nearly opposite Paris Garden Stairs in a triangular bit of ground between Holland Street and the lane leading to Copt Hall. This seems to have been rather a desolate region in Elizabeth's reign, at any rate when you got beyond the row of houses which lined the bank.[3] If there was a Bear Garden there, it had clearly been abandoned some little time before 1546, as the Stews were then 'the accustomed place'. Somewhat later, the maps of Höfnagel (c. 1560) and Agas (c. 1570) show, in addition to the Bull ring already mentioned, another ring marked 'The Beare bayting', standing immediately west of it, and like it in the Clink.[4] The animals at the stake are discernible in the rings, and to the south of each stretches a yard with a pond in the middle and kennelled dogs along the sides. It is in the Clink, too, that Norden in 1593 shows
- ↑ Ordish, 127.
- ↑ In Shaw v. Langley (1597) the Swan is described as 'in the oulde Parrisgardin', although there is no specific mention of baiting (E. S. xliii. 345, 355).
- ↑ Fleetwood, writing to Burghley on 13 July 1578 (Rendle, Antiquarian, vii. 274, from S. P. D. Eliz. cxxv. 21), describes intrigues of the French ambassador 'on the Thames side behind Paris Garden toward Lambeth, in the fields . . . I got a skuller to Paris Garden, but the place was dark and shadowed with trees, that one man cannot see another unless they have lynceos oculos or els cattes eys, shewing how admirable a place it was for such doings. The place is that boowre of conspiracies, it is the college of male cownsell. . . . There be certain virgulta or eightes of willows set by the Thames near that place; they grow now exceeding thick, and a notable covert for confederates to shrowd in; a milkmade lately did see the French ambassador land in that virgulta'.
- ↑ The ring, without a name, is also shown in Smith's drawing (1588), but this is probably based on one of the maps.
