Book Recommendations:
The Tower Menagerie: The Amazing 600-Year History of the Royal Collection of Wild and Ferocious Beasts Kept at the Tower of London from Roger Hahn
The Tower menagerie: comprising the natural history of the animals contained in that establishment; with anecdotes of their characters and history. Illustrated by portraits of each, taken from life, by William Harvey; and engraved on wood by Branston and Wright.
Also available on Project Gutenberg
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/53764/53764-h/53764-h.htm
John Stow’s Survey of London
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42959/42959-h/42959-h.htm
Matthew Paris and the Elephant
https://finerollshenry3.org.uk/redist/pdf/fm-06-2012.pdf
Rare Beasts, Birds, and the Calaboose, the Paris Review
By Laura Bannister September 22, 2016
Rough Transcript for Episode 112: The Tower Menagerie
Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network. I’m your host, Heather Teysko, and I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity. This is Episode 112, and we’re talking about the Tower Menagerie. The Tower whatnow? Yep, for over 600 years there was a menagerie – or zoo – at the Tower of London, and today I’m going to talk about that zoo in the Tudor period.
One final thing – if you like treats – and who doesn’t, really, I invite you to check out the Treasures from Bess Subscription Box that I’ve recently launched. It’s a monthly box filled with Tudor treats like books, jewelry, and special spa-like items, all inspired by Tudor history. $39.99/month including free shipping in the continental US. Check out TreasuresfromBess.com for more information, to see sample boxes, and learn more.
So if you visit the Tower of London now, you may notice the sculptures of animals – lions, and other animal installations. From the 1200’s to 1835, England’s first zoo what in the Tower of London. We’re going to talk today about that zoo, and especially what it was like during our Tudor period.
When you visit the Tower now, and you’re headed into the entrance from Tower Hill, there is an area that is built up now with cafe’s – that is the exact spot where the Tower Menagerie was once housed, and as you walk, take a moment to think about those zebras and elephants who were uprooted from their homes to be transported to London for the amusement of the King.
The very first zoo in England was started by Henry I, the fourth son of William the Conquerer, in 1100 in Oxford. Henry was interested in the stories of wild animals he heard, and let it be known that he was interested in collecting any kinds of strange animals that any other King could send him. Henry’s menagerie was used for Henry to hunt his animals – he would release them in order to then hunt and kill them.
Evidence has shown that John tried to start a menagerie as early as the 12-teens, when records show a payment to lion keepers, but the official opening date of the menagerie is 1235. That was when Henry III received a gift of three lions from the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, the King’s new brother in law. They were called leopards to match what was on the King’s heraldry, first displayed by King Richard I, but they were probably lions. The King put them in the Tower for safekeeping, and he decided to start a collection of rare animals – the first zoo. In 1252 a Norwegian polar bear arrived as a gift from the Norwegian King. To cut down on the expenses, they tied the bear outside near the river, with one very brave trainer, and allowed the bear to swim in the river to catch his own food. People visiting the city, and rowing down the river in a boat, may have witnessed the polar bear out in the river fishing. When the bear wasn’t fishing, it was muzzled and chained.
The next animal to arrive was the African Elephant, and here we have stories about the animal from Matthew Paris, a chronicler of the time who wrote his Great Chronicle, and included tales of the Tower elephant. He also drew the animal – an image which is still quite popular, and which I will link to in the show notes.
In 1229 he records an alliance between Frederick II, the aforementioned Holy Roman Emperor, and the Sultan of Babylon, which was sealed by an exchange of gifts. The Sultan’s gift was an elephant that he gave to Frederick.
Matthew then references the Elephant in England in his chronicle for 1255:
‘Of an elephant in England. About this same time, too, an elephant was sent to England
by the French king as a present to the king of England. We believe that this was the only elephant ever seen in England, or even in the countries on this side the Alps; wherefore the people flocked together to see the novel sight.” Other chroniclers also noted its arrival, but more briefly, and with little detail, although the London annals add that the elephant, a gift from the king of France, arrived in Lent 1255
Paris writes that the Elephant was a gift from the King of France, who had came to own it during his time on Crusade. He had seen the elephant himself, and his record, Chronica maiora (Cambridge, Corpus Christi, MS 16) he described its features, based on his own observations. The elephant was 10 years old, though we’re not sure how he knew that, 10 feet high, grey-ish black with a tough hide, and used its trunk to obtain food and drink.
It lived in a specially-constructed house at the Tower of London, 40 feet long by 20 feet wide, and its keeper was named Henry de Flor. It was incredibly expensive to take care of – the cost of upkeep of the elephant was one and a half times the salary of a knight during this period. The elephant was housed in a new house built specifically for it – 40 feet by 20 feet – and they dedicated one single keeper just for the care of the elephant. But it wasn’t meant to live in a cage in the Tower of London, and it died after just a few years. The lions managed to do better in the conditions, and there were many cubs born.
No one seemed to have any idea how to care for the animals – the only zookeeper who had any sort of previous animal experience was the last one in the 19th century. This was a period where ideas of wild animals were complicated. In some instances, animals were presumed to have the same moral compass as humans – something that even pets today are not assumed to have. There is one instance in France in 1457 where a sow and her piglets were literally put on trial for having killed a child. In the trial it was admitted that no one witnessed the piglets participating in the murder, and so they were found innocent while the sow was killed.
One medieval encyclopedia, The Bestiary, or the Book of Beasts, had some very strange ideas about animals. It was believed that the livers of mice got bigger on the full moon. Elephants were believed to live for three centuries with very little desire to reproduce.
So we have people taking care of the animals who have no idea what they’re doing. It’s a wonder more people weren’t injured or killed. During this time, all the animals were kept in a special tower that you needed to cross over a drawbridge to access – it was called the Lion Tower, and it was torn down in the 1800’s.
Where do we get this early information about the London menagerie? Well, it comes from our very dear friend John Stow, who wrote the great Survey of London – I’ve talked about him in other episodes and blog posts, and I shall continue to do so because he paints such vivid pictures of Tudor and Elizabethan London.
So in his chapter entitled Of Towers and Castles, he writes:
“But now for the Lion Tower and lions in England, the original, as I have read, was thus.
Henry I. built his manor of Wodstock, with a park, which he walled about with stone, seven miles in compass, destroying for the same divers villages, churches, and chapels; and this was the first park in England. He placed therein, besides great store of deer, divers strange beasts to be kept and nourished, such as were brought to him from far countries, as lions, leopards, linces, porpentines, and such other. More I read, that in the year 1235, Frederick the emperor sent to Henry III. three leopards, in token of his regal shield of arms, wherein three leopards were pictured; since the which time those lions and others have been kept in a part of this bulwark, now called the Lion Tower, and their keepers there lodged. King Edward II., in the 12th of his reign, commanded the sheriffs of London to pay to the keepers of the king’s leopard in the Tower of London sixpence the day for the sustenance of the leopard, and three-halfpence a day for diet for the said keeper, out of the fee farm of the said city. More, in the 16th of Edward III., one lion, one lioness, one leopard, and two cat lions, in the said Tower, were committed to the custody of Robert, the son of John Bowre.“
Then he goes on to talk about various important dates in the Tower history, as well as coinage and minting, and comes back to: “In the year 1485, John Earl of Oxford was made constable of the Tower, and had custody of the lions granted him.”
Up to this point the menagerie was only for the King and his important friends – not the public. In the 1420’s, a few people like ambassadors were allowed to visit the menagerie. By the Tudor period, giving animals was much more popular, and there were constantly new animals going into the menagerie. Henry and Elizabeth both received animals. Elizabeth I opened the menagerie up to the public for the first time. There was a small fee, of course, of money – or you could get in for free if you brought a cat or dog that could be fed to the lions.
When Elizabeth was crowned Queen, she orchestrated a bit of a show when she gave a thank you speech when leaving the Tower – the traditional place for monarchs to spend the night before being crowned. It was a hard place for her to be, given that her mother had been beheaded there, and she had been a prisoner there before, and she gave hearty thanks for having been delivered like Daniel, from the cruelty of the raging lions, and at that point, supposedly, the lions roared. Perfect timing.
James I had the lion tower reconstructed in 1604, with an exercise yard which he wanted to use especially to bait the lions with dogs. Then he would build a platform so that he could sit and watch the lions fighting the other animals. James then asked Shakespearean actor Edward Allyn, who was also the master of the royal game of bears and mastiff dogs, to get him two dogs to fight the lions. The lion grabbed the dogs, shaking them like rag dolls. The young Prince Henry, James’s son, begged his father to stop it, and took care of the surviving dog.
In 1623 James received an elephant from the King of Spain, and he was told that in the winter, the elephant would only drink wine. Beavers were only fed bread. As I said, no one seemed to have a clue. Though this is also a period when James kept in his personal zoo a native american person.
In the Great Fire of 1666 the animals survived, but Christopher Wren was tasked with building a new menagerie for them to live in – while he wasn’t busy with St Paul’s, it is assumed. The zookeeper, Robert Gill, had been part of the menagerie as his family had managed the animals since 1573. He seemed to really care about them, and at one point he petitioned the crown to not let a man called Thomas Ward to take the lions on a tour around the country.
There were risks to having the cages opened, and having more people in to see the animals. For example, inn 1686, supposedly a Norfolk woman named Mary Jenkinson took a friend to see the lions; the largest one reached out its paw, Mary touched it , and her flesh was ripped completely off of the bone. Her arm was amputated, and Mary died soon after.
In 1835 the zoo was closed – there was concern not just with the upkeep of the animals and the nuisance of it in the City, but also the treatment – the RSPCA was founded in 1824. So most of the animals going to the new Regent’s Park zoo, which is where the London zoo is still – with better conditions for the animals, and giving people a chance to actually learn about animals under trained keepers.
So I’m going to leave it there for this week – The book recommendation is by The Tower Menagerie: The Amazing 600-Year History of the Royal Collection of Wild and Ferocious Beasts Kept at the Tower of London from Roger Hahn
There are links on the website at Englandcast.com. And you can get in touch with me through the listener support line at 801 6TEYSKO or through twitter @teysko or facebook.com/englandcast.
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.
She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
