el and bloody beasts (either
brought over or kept up at home for the same purpose), without any collar
to defend their throats, and oftentimes there too they train them up in
fighting and wrestling with a man (having for the safeguard of his life
either a pikestaff, club, sword, privy coat), whereby they become the more
fierce and cruel unto strangers. The Caspians make so much account
sometimes of such great dogs, that every able man would nourish sundry of
them in his house of set purpose, to the end they should devour their
carcases after their deaths, thinking the dog's bellies to be the most
honourable sepulchres. The common people also followed the same rate, and
therefore there were tie dogs kept up by public ordinance, to devour them
after their deaths: by means whereof these beasts became the more eager,
and with great difficulty after a while restrained from falling upon the
living. But whither am I digressed? In returning therefore to our own, I
say that of mastiffs, some bark only with fierce and open mouth but will
not bite; but the cruelest do either not bark at all or bite before they
bark, and therefore are more to be feared than any of the other. They take
also their name of the word "mase" and "thief" (or "master-thief" if you
will), because they often stound and put such persons to their shifts in
towns and villages, and are the principal causes of their apprehension and
taking. The force which is in them surmounteth all belief, and the fast
hold which they take with their teeth exceedeth all credit: for three of
them against a bear, four against a lion, are sufficient to try mastries
with them. King Henry the Seventh, as the report goeth, commanded all such
curs to be hanged, because they durst presume to fight against the lion,
who is their king and sovereign. The like he did with an excellent falcon,
as some say, because he feared not hand-to-hand match with an eagle,
willing his falconers in his own presence to pluck off his head after he
was taken down, saying that it was not meet for any subject to offer such
wrong unto his lord and superior, wherein he had a further meaning. But if
King Henry the Seventh had lived in our time what would he have done to
our English mastiff, which alone and without any help at all pulled down
first a huge bear, then a pard, and last of all a lion, each after other
before the French King in one day, when the Lord Buckhurst was ambassador
unto him, and whereof if I sh