53 

 LONDON COCKING IN ANNE'S REIGN 



Various kinds of spurs were used in Queen 

 Anne's time, as the following advertisement 

 shows : 



"On Wednesday a single battle will- be 

 fought with sickles after the East India 

 manner, and on Thursday a Battle Royal, 

 one cock with a sickle and four cocks with 

 fair spurs. Friday a pair of shake-bags with 

 fair spurs, and four matchable cocks which 

 are to tight with sickles, lancet-spurs and 

 penknife-spurs, the like never yet seen, for 

 the entertainment of Foreign Ambassadors 

 and gentlemen " 



Cocking always had its opponents, and in 

 Queen Anne's reign there was agitation to 

 make an end of it. This we learn from a 

 remark in the preface to The Royal Pastime 

 of Cocking. The author " would fain know, 

 shall an innocent pastime be forbidden to all 

 because some particular persons make ill use 

 of it " 



The sport had far too strong a hold on all 

 classes to be in any danger of abolition ; men of 

 every class, from one extremity of the social 

 scale to the other, bore part in it. The prize 



* Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne. J. Ashton 



