22 



THE NEW BOOK OF THE DOG. 



which prohibited the keeping of all other 

 breeds by unprivileged persons, permitted 

 the Mastiff to come within the precincts of 

 a forest, imposing, however, the condition 

 that every such dog should have the claws 

 of the fore feet removed close to the skin. 

 A scrutiny was held every third year to 

 ascertain that this law was strictly obeyed. 

 The name Mastiff was probably applied 

 to any massively built dog. It is not easy 

 to trace the true breed amid the various 

 names which it owned. Molossus, Alan, 

 Alaunt, Tie-dog, Bandog (or Band-dog), 

 were among the number. In the " Knight's 

 Tale " Chaucer refers to it as the Alaunt : 



" Aboute his char ther wenten whyte Alaunts, 

 Twenty and mo, as grete as any steer, 

 To hunten at the leoun or the deer, 

 And folwed him, with mosel faste ybounde, 

 Colers of gold, and torets fyled rounde." 



The names Tie-dog and Bandog intimate 

 that the Mastiff was commonly kept for 

 guard, but many were specially trained 

 for baiting bears, imported lions, and bulls. 

 The sport of bear-baiting reached its glory 

 in the sixteenth century. Queen Elizabeth 

 was fond of witnessing these displays of 

 animal conflict, and during her progresses 

 through her realm a bear-baiting was a 

 customary entertainment at the places 

 such as Kenilworth and Hatfield at which 

 she rested. Three trained Mastiffs were 

 accounted a fair match against a bear, 

 four against a lion ; but Lord Buckhurst, 

 Elizabeth's ambassador to France in 1572, 

 owned a great Mastiff which, unassisted, 

 successfully baited a bear, a leopard, and 

 a lion, and pulled them all down. 



In the representations of the Mastiff in 

 the paintings of the sixteenth and seven- 

 teenth centuries, the dog was usually shown 

 with a white blaze up the face and an 

 undershot jaw, the ears were cropped and 

 the tail was shortened. Barnaby Googe in 

 1631 gave a description of the Bandog for the 

 house which enables us to apprehend what 

 it was like in the time of Charles I. a 

 monarch who admired and kept the breed. 



" First, the Mastie that keepeth the 

 house. For this purpose you must provide 



you such a one as hath a large and mightie 

 body, a great and shrill voyce, that both 

 with his barking he may discover, and with 

 his sight dismaye the theefe, yea, being 

 not scene, with the horror of his voice put 

 him to flight. His stature must be neither 

 long nor short, but well set ; his head, great ; 

 his eyes, sharp and fiery, either browne or 

 grey ; his lippes, blackish, neither turning 

 up nor hanging too much down ; his 

 mouth black and wide ; his neather jaw, 

 fat, and coming out of it on either side a 

 fang appearing more outward than his 

 other teeth ; his upper teeth even with his 

 neather, not hanging too much over, sharpe, 

 and hidden with his lippes ; his counten- 

 ance, like a lion ; his brest, great and shag 

 hayrd ; his shoulders, broad ; his legges, 

 bigge ; his tayle, short ; his feet, very 

 great. His disposition must neither be 

 too gentle nor too curst, that he neither 

 faune upon a theefe nor flee upon his 

 friends ; very waking ; no gadder abroad, 

 nor lavish of his mouth, barking without 

 cause ; neither maketh it any matter 

 though he be not swifte, for he is but to 

 fight at home, and to give warning of the 

 enemie." 



Coming to more recent times, there is 

 constant record of the Mastiff having been 

 kept and carefully bred for many generations 

 in certain old families. One of the oldest 

 strains of Mastiffs was that of Lyme Hall, 

 in Cheshire. They were large, powerful 

 dogs, and longer in muzzle than those 

 which we are now accustomed to see. 

 Mr. Kingdon, who was an ardent Mastiff 

 breeder fifty years ago, maintained that 

 this strain had been preserved without any 

 outcross whatever. On the other hand, 

 it has been argued that this is a statement 

 impossible to prove, as no record of pedi- 

 grees was kept. One well-known breeder 

 of former years goes further than this, 

 and states that Mr. Legh had admitted to 

 him that an outcross had been resorted to. 



Another old and valuable strain was 

 that of the Mastiffs kept by the Duke of 

 Devonshire at Chats worth. It is to these 

 two strains that the dogs of the present 

 day trace back. 



