Bull running

The story, recorded by Richard Butcher in his The Survey and Antiquitie of Stamford Towne (1646), and described by Walsh as "patently fictional", relates how Warenne:...was looking out of his castle window one 13 November and spied out on the meadow two bulls fighting over a cow.

Earl Warenne joined the wild mêlée on horseback and so enjoyed himself that he gave to the butchers of Stamford that piece of mating ground, thereafter called "Bull-meadow", on condition that they replicate the event yearly thereafter.

[10][c] A similar origin-story involving a noble is found at Tutbury, Staffordshire, where the tradition was said to have been started by John of Gaunt shortly after he married his Spanish wife, Constance of Castile, in 1372, in an effort to remind her of her home.

[11][12] The story was first advanced—purely as speculation—by Robert Plot in his The Natural History of Stafford-Shire (1686), where he writes:...through the emulation in point of manhood, that has long been cherish't between the Staffordshire and Derbyshire men, perhaps as much mischief may have been done in the triall between them, as in the Jeu de Taureau or Bull-fighting practised at Valentia, Madrid, and many other places in Spain, whence perhaps this our Custom of Bull-running might be derived, and set up here by John of Gaunt, who was King of Castile and Leon, and Lord of the Honour of Tutbury; for why might not we receive this sport from the Spanyards, as well as they from the Romans and the Romans from the Greeks?

"[15] Walsh observed that the bull running that took place in November occurred in the calendar around Martinmas, which "traditionally marked the slaughtering time for the beef, swine and geese not being maintained through the winter on stored feed.

"[19] William Fitzstephen, writing in 1173, indicates that, in London at least, the animals to be slaughtered were often first used for sport: "[T]he youth are entertained in a morning with boars fighting to the last gasp, as likewise with hogs full tusked, intended to be converted into bacon; or game-bulls, and bears of a large bulk, are baited with dogs.