Churches and Bears: Religious Tensions and Protests in Early Modern Lancashire

Article by James Mawdesley. Edited by Amy Calladine. Additional Research by Jon Park.

If you attended a church service in one parish on the fringes of Lancashire in 1622, you may have been surprised to find a bear attending the service. The manuscript preserved at the British Library in London states incredulously that a group of parishioners ‘brought a great bear into a church whilst the minister was preaching’. But, what was this unusual act all about? If it was a protest, as Alexandra Walsham has identified it, what was it a protest against?

To begin to answer these questions, the incomplete nature of Lancashire’s religious reformation may hold some clues. To anyone who has studied the English Reformation (or ‘Reformations’, for the Christopher Haigh fans amongst us), it has become something of a cliché to contrast the godly Protestant strongholds of south-eastern England and East Anglia with the remote and comparatively wild north, which was ‘backward’ in the sense that Catholicism continued to be adhered to by a significant minority of the population. More worryingly for the Lancashire godly, even amongst those that conformed to the Church of England, sports, recreations and rituals that were seen as promoting a path to Catholicism continued to be popular amongst the lower orders.

Frustrated by this situation, John White, sometime minister of the Lancashire parishes of Leyland and Eccles, wrote in 1608 that ‘Papists have been the ringleaders in riotous companies, in drunken meetings, in seditious assemblies and practices, and in profaning the Sabbath, in quarrels and brawls, in stage plays, greens, ales, and all heathenish customs’. In this extract, perhaps more significant than the list of vices which White reported as being practiced by Catholics was their labelling as ‘the ringleaders’; in other words, that they might lead astray potentially godly Protestants. This fear went to the heart of the Protestant worldview of a battle being fought between Christ and Antichrist, of which they, the godly, saw themselves as being at the forefront. For godly Protestants, ensuring good living and converting Catholics would help to ensure the victory of Christ.

Luc Racaut (a Sheffield History graduate now teaching at Newcastle University) has traced ‘puritan’ opposition to Sunday recreations in Lancashire during the later reign of Elizabeth I and the early reign of James I, between the years 1579 and 1616. He found that during the 1580s, the Lancashire ‘puritans’ (being those godly Protestants who wanted a religious practice ceremonially free of Catholic traces, but who, in this context, also wanted Sundays to be kept for religion and not for sports, recreations and rituals) attracted much sympathy from the government in London, as the godly’s campaigns against vices perceived as being particularly Catholic activities fitted in with the wider anti-Spanish concerns of the government. However, after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 had struck a blow to the international Catholic threat, ‘puritans’ themselves began to be seen as a danger to the stability and quiet of the state, as their opposition to. religious ceremony and Sunday recreations caused tensions in many parishes. Consequently, government encouragement of ‘puritans’ and their anti-Catholic attitudes waned.

Nevertheless, the Lancashire godly’s opposition to Sunday recreations did not wane accordingly, and magistrates and ministers continued to make their own efforts to prosecute profanations of the Sabbath. This culminated in August 1616, when the Lancashire magistrates meeting at Lancaster issued an order for the county whereby ‘there be no piping, dancing, bowling, bear [and] bull baiting or any other profanation upon any Sabbath day’.

This seems to have caused some tension within the county, which came to a head one year later, in August 1617, when James I passed through Lancashire as he returned from his progress to Scotland. James was made aware that the pursuance of Sunday sports and entertainments (which, when practiced after the evening church service, were technically legal) were being suppressed in the county by zealous magistrates and clerics. He asked the Bishop of Chester, Thomas Morton, who was with him in the county, to formulate a series of guidelines for the governing of Sunday recreations. Morton, who had himself had trouble with the county’s ‘puritans’ in ensuring their full conformity to the ceremonies of the Church of England, duly obliged, and after being amended by the King, these guidelines were enacted for the county by the end of the month. A revised version of the so-called Book of Sports was then issued nationally in May 1618. To add insult to injury for Lancashire’s ‘puritans’, the published Book gave an account of James’ visit, accusing both ‘Papists and Puritans’ of having ‘maliciously traduced and calumniated those our just and honourable proceedings’; in other words, the ‘puritans’ themselves had broken the law in suppressing Sunday recreations.

So, what does this mean for the church-attending bear that we met at the beginning of this article? Simply because a king who was often geographically distant from Lancashire issued an order to allow Sunday recreations did not necessarily mean that ‘puritan’ magistrates and ministers gave up their attempts to disrupt these recreations; after all, they were answerable to a higher authority than the king. Parish tensions undoubtedly continued, and in October 1633, Charles I felt the need to re-issue his father’s Book of Sports. Indeed, the bear’s visit to church should probably be seen within such a context of parish tensions, as the parishioners’ actions made a very visual statement against their minister, especially as the bear’s entrance into church took place during the sermon, which, to a godly minister, was central to their mission of winning souls for God.

However, the bear’s visit to church may not be quite so simple to interpret. Even The Book of Sports, whilst allowing archery and morris dancing, explicitly prohibited bear baiting on Sundays. Maybe these parishioners wanted an even wider definition of Sunday sports? Also, ‘recusants’ (those who failed to attend Church of England services, which was compulsory by law) were prohibited from partaking in Sunday recreations. This would have included many Catholics who refused to conform to the Church of England. Therefore, the bear could even have been a dramatic response to this, particularly if the minister was diligent in preventing recusant participation in Sunday recreations. In a county where religious relations were complex, even the simple act of taking one’s bear to church can be difficult to interpret.

*****

“Withal we do here account still as prohibited all unlawful games to be used upon Sundays only, as bear and bull-baitings, interludes and at all times in the meaner sort of people by law prohibited, bowling.” From Book of Sports

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