I’ve
been listening to a lot of podcasts lately (to the detriment of my audiobook
listening…). My mom recommended the Rex
Factor podcast, and it’s great. The gist
of it is, the hosts go through all the Kings and Queens of England and rate
them in different categories and determine if the monarch has the Rex
Factor. Presumably (because I’m not that
far yet) they’ll pit those who do have the Rex Factor against each other and
try and figure out who the best English monarch was. I think they’re doing Scotland now that they
have finished England, which should be cool too. All this to say: I heard about today’s topic
in a couple episodes of Rex Factor and decided to look into it further.
Throughout
history, monarchs have been exchanging crazy gifts as a way of showing how
powerful they are and to forge alliances.
This included food stuffs, gems, princesses (because really, you’re
giving away your daughter to another country in order to forge an alliance, and
what shows power more than that?), as well as all sorts of wild and exotic
animals. A lot of these animals were not
even natural to the country that was gifting them, and so it showed that
monarch’s wealth in that he could pay for this crazy animal to come from India
or Africa or wherever and just give it away.
Some animals signified the strength of the monarch giving it away as
well.
England
was given a lot of gifts of exotic animals over the years; as well as being
symbols of wealth and power for those gifting them, they were symbols of power for
the English monarch as well, often being purely “for the entertainment and
curiosity of the court” (1). Some
monarchs wanted to show off so much, they acquired exotic animals on their
own. William the Conqueror was the first
king to keep animals. His home,
Woodstock, was stocked with a number of exotic animals, though what kinds they
were isn’t known. William’s son, Henry I,
enclosed Woodstock’s grounds and expanded the collection of animals to
ultimately include “lions, leopards, lynxes, camels, owls and a porcupine” (2). These two were really just the king keeping
these animals because he wanted to, the gifted animals would begin later.
The
first records of what became known as The Tower Menagerie or The Royal Menagerie
began in 1204 with King John. John kept
his animals at the Tower of London, a practice that would continue for over
six-hundred years. We know John received
three boat loads of animals from Normandy, but we don’t know what they
were. We do know he had lions and bears,
though. The only way we know he really
had anything is because of bookkeeping records referencing them.
John’s son, Henry
III, is usually credited with the creation of the Menagerie, because we know so
much more about the amounts and kinds of animals he had. Henry III came to power in 1216; the first
known gifts of animals were in 1235.
Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, gave Henry III three lions or leopards
as a wedding gift upon Henry’s marriage to Eleanor of Provence. Frederick II had married Henry III’s sister,
Isabella, and “this gift was a sign of their alliance and friendship” (3). Frederick gave Henry three lions (or
leopards) because there were three lions on Henry’s shield; this emblem is
still used on English football and cricket patches.
In
1251 Henry III was given a “white bear” from King Haakon IV of Norway,
generally believed to be a polar bear, though that term was not in use
then. The bear was kept muzzled and
chained when it was on land, but was put on a large rope and was allowed to
fish in the Thames. The sheriffs had “to
pay fourpence a day towards the upkeep” of the bear (4).
The
sheriffs’ having to pay to keep the king’s animals is a recurring theme. Just three years later they had to pay to
build an elephant house at the Tower for the arrival of at least one, male,
African Elephant from King Louis IX of France.
The elephant obviously needed a lot more space than the lions did, and
so a forty foot long, wooden elephant house was built with the money from the
sheriffs. The elephant house eventually
was converted into prison cells.
In
1264, the animals were moved to the west end of the Tower of London. This new area had “rows of cages with arched
entrances, enclosed behind grilles. They were set in two storeys, and it
appears that the animals used the upper cages during the day and were moved to
the lower storey at night” (5). Most
popularly and in the long-term, the lions were kept here. Originally just the Bulwark, this part of the
Tower of London became known as Lion Tower under the reign of Edward I at the
beginning of the fourteenth century. Edward
I created the position, Master of the King’s Bears and Apes, later called
Keeper of the Lions and Leopards.
We’ll
skip ahead a few hundred years to the reign of Elizabeth I. At some point during his reign, Henri IV of
France had been sent an Indian elephant.
He found the elephant too expensive to feed, though, so he sent it on to
Elizabeth I. Elizabeth I is also the
first monarch to open the menagerie to the public; previously it had only been
for the enjoyment of the court. At the
time she opened it to the public, the menagerie included “lionesses, a lion, a
tiger, a lynx, a wolf, a porcupine and an eagle” (6). Under the reign of James I, public shows
included lions, bears, and dogs fighting as entertainment (7).
While
James I was king, the British Empire was expanding, and he received gifts accordingly. He received “a flying squirrel from Virginia,
a tiger, a lioness, five camels and an elephant” (8); the camels and elephant
were a gift from the King of Spain in 1623.
James was so invested in his lions in particular that he created a
special nippled bottle so orphaned cubs could be fed. James I’s elephant was housed at St. James
rather than at the Tower of London and “was given wine daily from April to
September, as it was believed it couldn’t drink water at that time of year” (9). James I expanded the menagerie; because it
was now open to the public, James had viewing platforms installed.
Jumping
forward a bit again, in 1672 Christopher Wren supervised the building of a new
Lion House at the Tower. People were
still flocking in to see the animals and new structures were needed.
Along
with all the new visitors, misfortune streamed in. In 1686, Mary Jenkinson was petting a lion’s
paw “when it suddenly caught her arm ‘with his Claws and mouth, and most
miserably tore her Flesh from the Bone’” (10).
Mary’s arm was amputated, but she still died.
In
addition to animals harming humans, humans harmed the animals, whether through
intent or negligence. Many of the
animals had to travel great distances to get to England and then to the
Menagerie. People on the ships and in
England didn’t know how to take care of these exotic animals and so many died
on the voyages over. Once in England,
those that survived would still suffer due to their keepers just not knowing how
to handle them. Many animals were kept
in cages that were much too small and were fed food that wasn’t part of their
diet. In addition to the elephant
drinking wine mentioned above, some ostriches also suffered because of what
people thought their diet was. In the
late eighteenth century, two ostriches were sent from the Dey of Tunis. It was commonly believed at the time, for
whatever reason…, that ostriches could digest iron. In 1791, one of the ostriches died after
having eaten over eighty nails that were fed to it (11).
These
animals were on display to entertain, not to educate, and everyone suffered for
it. Leopards were made or allowed to
play with umbrellas; zebras were allowed to roam and one went into a soldier’s
canteen and proceeded to drink what was available; while still on the ship it
travelled over on, a baboon threw a nine-pound cannon ball at a young sailor
boy on the ship and killed him; a wolf escaped; a monkey bit a soldier’s leg; in
the 1780s monkeys were living in a completely furnished room, as if they were
people. Much like Mary Jenkinson above though,
according to the 1810 guidebook, one monkey tore part of a boy’s leg off and so
the monkeys were removed (12).
In
the early eighteenth century it cost three half pence to get in, or you could
bring a cat or dog to be fed to the lions.
At this time the menagerie had slipped in the number of animals it had;
there were really only lions, tigers, hyenas, and bears. When George IV became king in 1820 (though he
had been Prince Regent since 1811), he began rebuilding the menagerie. With the help of his Keeper, Alfred Cops,
George IV built the menagerie up from four animals (a lion, a panther, a tiger,
and “a grizzly bear called Martin” (13)) in 1821, up to over sixty species and
over two-hundred-eighty individual animals in 1828. New additions to the menagerie included “a
zebra, an alligator, a bearded griffin, a pig-faced baboon, an ocelot,
kangaroos and a Bornean bear” (14).
Alfred
Cops was a good Keeper. He seemed to
really care about the animals and knew a bit better how to care for them. He even brought some of his own animals to the
Tower when he moved in (Keepers of the Royal Menagerie lived up in Lion Tower). Despite all this, there were still accidents
with the animals. Cops himself had a boa
close around his neck once while trying to feed it. In early-mid 1830 a leopard attacked the
person who had come in to clean its exercise yard. In December 1830 a door was accidentally
raised “allowing a lion and a Bengal tiger and tigress to meet” (15). The animals fought for half an hour and were “only
separated by applying heated rods to the mouths and nostrils of the tigers who
were winning” (16); the lion still died a few days later.
It
was becoming apparent that the Tower was no longer suitable (if it really ever
was) for the keeping of animals and for crowds to come through to see
them. When William IV became king, he
really didn’t care about the menagerie, and so the animals were moved in
1831. The Zoological Society of London
at Regent’s Park received thirty-two animals beginning in 1831, and Dublin Zoo
and another zoo received others. By 1835
the last of the animals were transferred to Regent’s Park “after one of the
lions was accused of biting a soldier” (17). Only Alfred
Cops and his personal animals remained.
When Cops died in 1853, Lion Tower was torn down.
Despite
this, the monarchy continued to receive animals from other countries and still
does today. Queen Elizabeth II has
received jaguars and sloths from Brazil and was sent an elephant from Cameroon
as a wedding anniversary present (18).
In 2011, an art installation by Kendra Haste was on display at the Tower
of London. The wire lions, near where
Lion Tower stood, were a big hit; the display also included an elephant, polar
bear, and baboons.
2, 5 - Menagerie
3, 7, 10, 11, 12 - Tower of London - Tragic andSurprising Stories
4, 17 - Tower of London - Menagerie
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