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Lily had read up on bulldogs and didn’t like that they had such a sad history of being used for bullbaiting and all.

They gathered that it was a sort of bullbaiting dance.

Reaching gingerly for Significance, Gorer wonders what ever happened to the aggressive Englishmen of Elizabethan and 18th century cockfighting and bullbaiting days, and decides that lusty John Bull still exists, not cowed but merely caged.

At Chapel Wake, 1798, some law-defying reprobates started a bullbaiting on Snow Hill, but the Loyal Association of Volunteers turned out, and with drums beating and colours flying soon put the rebels to flight, pursuing them as far as Birmingham Heath, where the baiters got a beating, the Loyals returning home in triumph with the bull as a trophy.

Bullbaiting was prohibited in 1773 by Order in Council, and an Act was passed in 1835, to put a stop to all baiting of bulls, badgers, and bears.