In Bridgeward Without there was a district called Paris Garden; this, and the celebrated Hockley in the Hole, were in the sixteenth century the great resorts of the amateurs in bear-baiting and other cruel sports, which cast a stain upon the society of that period--a society in a transition state, but recently emerged from barbarism, and with all the tastes of a semi-barbarous people. Sunday was the grand day for these displays, until a frightful occurrence which took place in 1582. A more than usually exciting bait had been announced, and a prodigious concourse of people assembled. When the sport was at its highest, and the air rung with blasphemy, the whole of the scaffolding on which the people stood gave way, crushing many to death, and wounding many more. This was considered as a judgment of the Almighty on these Sabbath-breakers, and gave rise to a general prohibition of profane pastime on the Sabbath. Soon after the accession of Elizabeth to the throne, she gave a splendid banquet to the French embassadors, who were afterward entertained with the baiting of bulls and bears (May 25, 1559). The day following, the embassadors went by water to Paris Garden, where they patronized another performance of the same kind. Hentzer, after describing from observation a very spirited and bloody baiting, adds, "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 can not escape because of his chain. He defends himself with all his strength and skill, throwing down all that come within his reach and are not active enough to get out of it, and tearing their whips out of their hands and breaking them." Laneham, in his account of the reception of Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth, in 1575, gives a very graphic account of the "righte royalle pastimes." "It was a sport very pleasant to see the bear, with his pink eyes learing after his enemies' approach; the nimbleness and wait of the dog to take his advantage, and the force and experience of the bear again to avoid his assaults. If he were bitten in one place, how he would pinch in another to get free; that if he were taken once, then by what shift with biting, with clawing, with roaring, with tossing and tumbling he would work and wind himself from them, and when he was loose, to shake his ears twice or thrice with the blood and the slaver hanging about his physiognomy."