{"id":5292,"date":"2011-06-15T01:44:58","date_gmt":"2011-06-15T01:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tudorhistory.org\/blog\/?p=5292"},"modified":"2011-06-15T01:44:58","modified_gmt":"2011-06-15T01:44:58","slug":"of-arrows-maypoles-and-bears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tudorhistory.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/15\/of-arrows-maypoles-and-bears\/","title":{"rendered":"Of arrows, maypoles and&#8230; bears"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After musing about maypole-induced deaths in the article I linked to on Sunday, I found out through <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/magazine-13762313\" target=\"new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">this article from the BBC<\/a> that the truth was even stranger than I had imagined:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Maypole injuries were not only caused by careering into another country dancer. Thomas Alsopp of Coventry was standing in the former cemetery of the Coventry Greyfriars under a stone wall on 26 April 1558 when a maypole fell over.<\/p>\n<p>It hit the city wall and knocked a stone out of the top of it, which hit him on the left part of his head and penetrated his brain, killing him instantly. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And the bears I alluded to in the title:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Bears were part of the Tudor entertainment scene. There were performing bears and there were bears kept for the bloodthirsty attraction of bear-baiting. [&#8230;] But sometimes they escaped. A widow called Agnes Rapte was killed by Lord Bergavenny&#8217;s bear when it broke loose at his house at Birling, Kent in 1563. Another victim, Agnes Owen from Herefordshire, was killed in her bed by a runaway bear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/magazine-13762313\" target=\"new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">full article<\/a> for more stories of bizarre Tudor-era deaths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After musing about maypole-induced deaths in the article I linked to on Sunday, I found out through this article from the BBC that the truth was even stranger than I had imagined: Maypole injuries were not only caused by careering into another country dancer. Thomas Alsopp of Coventry was standing&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"continue-reading-button\"> <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/tudorhistory.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/15\/of-arrows-maypoles-and-bears\/\">Continue reading<i class=\"crycon-right-dir\"><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tudor-history-news-and-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tudorhistory.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tudorhistory.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tudorhistory.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tudorhistory.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tudorhistory.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tudorhistory.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tudorhistory.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tudorhistory.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tudorhistory.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}