So far the cargoes of our ships have not greatly resembled those of the ships of Tarshish, but, if the peacocks are to seek, we can easily find the ivory, in the shape of combs, and as to the apes the _Clement_ of Rye in 1490 brought home four dozen baboons (_baboynes_). It must, however, be admitted that these baboons would not have found a home at the Zoo--they were in fact little grotesque figures, and in that sense the word occurs often in mediæval inventories. Edward III. had not only a number of pieces of plate with 'babewyns' upon them, but one cup described as gilt and enamelled with 'diverse babwynrie.' At the same time the real monkey was a common enough object; he figures in the margin of scores of illuminated manuscripts, playing innumerable pranks, not infrequently in the dress of a priest, a monk, or a friar. Monkeys were kept by many of the nobles, and when Thomas Becket went, as Chancellor of England, on an embassy to the court of France an ape sat on every pack horse of his gorgeous cavalcade. The merchandise of Venice in 1436 included 'Apes and japes and marmusettes tayled,' and so far was the ape a common import that at many seaports monkeys figured in the customs lists, the due at Norwich being 40_d._ each, no small sum. With the monkey in these lists is also found the bear, who at Norwich paid 42_d._ for admission to the country. Bears were even commoner sights than monkeys, for not only were there the performing bears in charge of itinerant showmen, but many of the poor brutes were kept for sport, to be baited by dogs. It was probably for purposes of sport that Sir John Bourchier, Earl of Bath, kept half-a-dozen bears, which after the Reformation he stabled in the dismantled priory of the Black Friars at Fisherton, near Salisbury. There they lived happily until, according to Harry Sutton, their keeper, John Davy and Agnes his wife with other naughty and evil-disposed persons broke into the close where they were kept, and Agnes, 'being thene of most wyckyd and damnable disposicion,' scattered poisoned bread on the ground and in the water where the bears drank. As a result three of the bears died, as did also a poor man's sow that drank of the pond; and a poor woman who washed her face in the water 'so swelled that she was like to have died,' which I take leave to think was an exaggeration on the part of Harry Sutton. There is always another side to every story, and according to John Davy he had a lease of part of the friary lands, and his wife was quite peaceably walking there when Sutton, to frighten her away, untied 'the grettyste and most terryble bere' and set him at her, whereat she being 'sore affrayed and abashed' ran away and in running fell over a sow, not the poor man's sow that died, but a sow of lead, and received a hurt from which she died. The two versions are singularly divergent, and if Sutton could show three dead bears and a sow in support of his story, Davy could show a dead wife in support of his.