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others ; while, on account of his courage and watchfuhiess, he was 

 dedicated to Apollo, to Mercury, to JEsculapius, and to Mars. 

 When the Eomans under Julius Csesar invaded Britain they found 

 the fowl in a state of domestication, but forbidden as food and kept 

 for diversion and sport. 



One of the first notices of cock-fighting in England is by WilUam 

 Fitz-Stephen in the time of Henry the Second, who alludes to it as 

 the sport of schoolboys on Shrove Tuesday. The school was the 

 pit and the master the director of the sport ; indeed attention has 

 been called to the fact that at one or two old-established schools the 

 scholars were being charged with cock-pence quite recently (in one 

 case as much as thirty shillings annually), although the sport had 

 long ceased to exist in the school. 



From a very early time the sport has been followed in England 

 without intermission up to the present time, although one or two 

 Acts were passed forbidding it, notably one by Oliver Cromwell, 

 dated March 31, 1654. Most of our kings, however, have been 

 patrons of the sod. King Henry the Eighth, although he passed an 

 Act at one time against cockfighting, built a cock-pit at Whitehall 

 for his private diversion, and is supposed by some to have founded 

 the Cock-pit Eoyal at Westminster, in which mains were fought 

 regularly until the Act was passed prohibiting the sport in the 

 present century. This building was quite as much an institution as 

 the theatre at the present time — indeed some of the theatres were 

 used for that purpose, notably Drury Lane. 



All the Stuarts were fond of cocking. In an old book dealing 

 with orders on the Exchequer in the reign of James the First we 

 find frequently repeated the following order : — " £16 13s. id. to 

 William Gatacre, for breeding, feeding, and dieting of cocks of the 

 game for his Highness" recreation." 



King Charles the Second is said to have introduced the Pile breed 

 of game, a cock of that colour belonging to his Majesty winning 

 great distinction in the pit. King Charles was passionately fond of 

 cock-fighting, and, according to Sir John Hereby' s Memoirs, we find 

 his Majesty's diversions when he visited Newmarket in October, 

 1684, were as follows : — " In the morning he walked until ten 

 o'clock, then to the cock-pit until dinner time at one p.m. ; at three 

 p.m, to the horse-racing on the heath ; at 6 p.m. to the cock-pit 

 again for an hour, and then to the play." Not only the royal house- 

 hold, but the whole Court, moved to Newmarket for a month's 



