In 1252, a King's Polar Bear Went Fishing in the River Thames

In 1252, a polar bear went fishing in the River Thames in London. It belonged to King Henry III of England, who had received the white bear as a gift from the King of Norway, and royal orders show that London paid fourpence a day to feed the animal and its keeper at the Tower of London.

The giver was almost certainly Haakon IV, who ruled Norway from 1217 to 1263 and, as Britannica notes, signed a trade treaty with Henry in 1217 and later brought Greenland, home to polar bears, under Norwegian rule. Historic Royal Palaces, the charity that runs the Tower today, describes the gift as "a magnificent white bear, presumably a polar bear" in its history of the Tower menagerie.

The bear joined a collection that had started in 1235, when the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II sent Henry three "leopards". They were probably lions, but heraldry of the time called the lions on the English royal arms leopards. Those animals inspired Henry to keep a royal zoo inside the fortress on the Thames.

Feeding a large Arctic predator was not cheap, so Henry passed the bill on. The sheriffs of London were told to pay fourpence a day "for our white bear in the Tower of London, and his keeper", an order quoted in 1852 by Charles Dickens's magazine Household Words. That sum covered both the animal and the man who looked after it.

In 1253 the king went further. A new order told the sheriffs to provide a muzzle and an iron chain to hold the bear on land, and "a long and strong cord to hold this bear when fishing in the water of Thames". The Latin original, "unam longam et fortem cordam, ad tenendum eum ursum piscantem in aqua Tamisiae", is printed in the 1866 book Memorials of the Tower of London by Lord de Ros, digitised by Tufts University.

So the bear was taken out on a leash, waded into the river and hunted for fish while Londoners watched. Historic Royal Palaces says it was muzzled and chained on land but allowed to swim and hunt, held by a collar and a "stout cord" so it could not escape.

Henry's zoo kept growing. In 1255 Louis IX of France sent an elephant, and Londoners flocked to see it. It received its own house of 40 by 20 feet and a dedicated keeper, but it died after about two years. The monk and chronicler Matthew Paris drew the animal, and his sketch still survives in a manuscript at the British Library.

The menagerie lasted about six centuries. Edward I later built the Lion Tower at the western entrance to house the animals, and by 1622 the collection included eagles, pumas, a tiger and a jackal. In 1831, William IV ordered the animals out, and many went to the new Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park, today's London Zoo. The last were gone by 1835.

The bear is not forgotten. In 2010 Historic Royal Palaces commissioned the artist Kendra Haste to make wire sculptures of the menagerie animals, and a polar bear is among them, standing close to where the real one once lived.

Sources: Historic Royal Palaces, The Tower of London Menagerie; Lord de Ros, Memorials of the Tower of London (1866), Tufts Digital Library; Household Words, vol. V (1852); Britannica, Haakon IV. Cover: polar bear on the shore, USFWS, public domain.jpg).