Progressive Party (United States, 1912)
The Progressive Party was a third party in the United States formed in 1912 by former President Theodore Roosevelt after he lost the presidential nomination of the Republican Party to his former protégé, incumbent President William Howard Taft. The new party was known for taking advanced positions on progressive reforms and attracting some leading reformers. After the party's defeat in the 1912 presidential election, it went into rapid decline, disappearing by 1918. The Progressive Party was popularly nicknamed the "Bull Moose Party" since Roosevelt often said that he felt "strong as a bull moose" both before and after an assassination attempt on the campaign trail.
Bull running
The earliest documented instance of bull running appears in 1389, among medieval guild records collected by Joshua Toulmin Smith. The document—from Stamford's "Gild of St. Martin"—states that "on the feast of St. Martin, this gild, by custom beyond reach of memory, has a bull; which bull is hunted [not "baited"] by dogs, and then sold; whereupon the bretheren and sisteren sit down to feast." The phrase "custom beyond reach of memory" leaves uncertainty about whether the custom pre-dated the guild—which was established by 1329—or was instituted by the guild itself. Local folklore in Stamford maintained that the tradition was begun by William de Warenne, 5th Earl of Surrey, during the reign of King John (1199—1216). 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:
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. The story was first advanced—purely as speculation—by Robert Plot in his "The Natural History of Stafford-Shire" (1686), where he writes:
Samuel Pegge, addressing the Society of Antiquaries in 1765, dismissed Plot's conjecture as "entirely mistaken", while lamenting that it had become received wisdom in the interim. While John of Gaunt had established a Court of Minstrels at Tutbury in 1381, the bull running appears instead to have been instituted by the prior of Tutbury Priory (founded c.1080 as a dependency of the abbey at Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives) as part of the Feast of the Assumption celebrations which, as early as 1230, required the prior to provide "a great feast". Pegge also notes that the bull used for running was provided by the prior, and that the animal "was turned out antiently at the abbey-gate, and by the prior; John of Gaunt or his officers being no way employed in that service."