Sir Walter Raleigh's notes
First English dictionary
Letter about Guy Fawkes
The Gunpowder Plot
The head of Guy Fawkes
Shakespeare's King Lear
King James Bible
The Globe Theatre
Surgeons' tools
Chinese globe
Shakespeare's First Folio
Lotus Sutra
English Civil War scenes
Witch hunting
Execution of Charles I
Agreement of the People
Charles I's executioner
Early A - Z of London
Advert for a quack doctor
Oliver Cromwell as the Devil
A cure for the Plague
Robert Hooke, Micrographia
Great Fire of London map
Great Fire of London
Wren's plans after the fire
Theatrical figures
Dictionary of criminal slang
Games and pastimes
Habeas Corpus Act
Map of the moon
A London Rhinoceros
Henry Purcell
Locke's Two Treatises
East India Company
Account of a shipwreck
Map of South America
The frontispiece of this book shows the array of games that were popular in this period. Entertainments included card games, billiards, chess or dice. Music and dancing were also fashionable forms of entertainment and the more curious individual could visit free shows, curiosities, or even public executions. Animal baiting was a particularly well attended sport. These savage entertainments saw partially tamed bears, fierce dogs, and fiercer bulls, attack each other until the animals were left either wounded or dead. The royal palace could accommodate a royal baiting of bears and bulls, in the tiltyard, where it could be watched from a gallery. Ordinary people could attend cock-pits where, for a small amount of money, they could watch the event or bet on the cock fight.
Shelfmark: C.71.h.23