The most minute details are given as to the selection of fighting-cocks, the breeding of game cocks, and 'the dieting and ordering a cock for battle.' Under this last head we read:—'In the morning take him out of the pen, and let him spar a while with another cock. Sparring is after this manner. Cover each of your cock's heels with a pair of hots made of bombasted rolls of leather, so covering the spurs that they cannot bruise or wound one another, and so setting them down on straw in a room, or green grass abroad; let them fight a good while, but by no means suffer them to draw blood of one another. The benefit that accrues hereby is this: it heateth and chafeth their bodies, and it breaketh the fat and glut that is within them. Having sparred as much as is sufficient, which you may know when you see them pant and grow weary, then take them up, and, taking off their hots, give them a diaphoretic or sweating, after this manner. You must put them in deep straw-baskets, made for this purpose, and fill these with straw half way, then put in your cocks severally, and cover them over with straw to the top; then shut down the lids, and let them sweat; but don't forget to give them first some white sugar-candy, chopped rosemary, and butter, mingled and incorporated together. Let the quantity be about the bigness of a walnut; by so doing you will cleanse him of his grease, increase his strength, and prolong his breath. Towards four or five o'clock in the evening take them out of their stoves, and, having licked their eyes and head with your tongue, and put them into their pens, and having filled their throats with square-cut manchet, **** therein, and let them feed whilst the****is hot; for this will cause their scouring to work, and will wonderfully cleanse both head and body.'
Was ever poor animal subjected to such indignity? The preparation of the other animal, the jockey, is nothing to it. But, to continue:—
'The second day after his sparring, take your cock into a fair green close, and, having a dunghill cock in your arms, show it him, and then run from him, that thereby you may entice him to follow, permitting him to have now and then a blow, and thus chafe him up and down about half an hour; when he begins to pant, being well-heated, take him up and carry him home, and give him this scouring, &c.'
This training continued for six weeks, which was considered a sufficient time for 'ordering a cock for the battle;' and then, after the 'matching,' came the last preparation of the poor biped for the terrible fight in which he would certainly be either killed or kill his antagonist, if both were not doomed to bite the dust. This consisted in the following disfigurement of the beautiful creature:—
'With a pair of fine cock-shears cut all his mane off close into his neck from the head to the setting on of the shoulders: secondly, clip off all the feathers from the tail close to his rump; the redder it appears the better is the cock in condition: thirdly, take his wings and spread them forth by the length of the first rising feather, and clip the rest slope-wise with sharp points, that in his rising he may therewith endanger the eye of his adversary; fourthly, scrape, smooth, and sharpen his spurs with a pen-knife; fifthly, and lastly, see that there be no feathers on the crown of his head for his adversary to take hold of; then, with your spittle moistening his head all over, turn him into the pit TO MOVE TO HIS FORTUNE.'
I should, perhaps, state that, instead of the natural spurs, long artificial ones of well-tempered steel were fixed to the cock's heels in later times, and these were frequently driven into the body of his antagonist with such vigour that the two cocks were spitted together, and had to be separated.
The dreadful fight having come off, the following was the treatment prescribed for the fortunate conqueror.
'The battle being ended, immediately search your cock's wounds, as many as you can find. SUCK the blood out of them; then wash them well with warm ****, and that will keep them from rankling; after this give him a roll of your best SCOURING, and so stove him up as hot as you can for that night; in the morning, if you find his head swelled, you must suck his wounds again, and bathe them with warm ****; then take the powder of herb Robert, and put it into a fine bag, and pounce his wounds therewith; after this, give him a good handful of bread to eat out of warm ****, and so put him into the stove again, and let him not feel the air till the swelling be fallen.'
A cock sometimes took a long time to recover from his wounds—as, indeed, may be well supposed from the terrible 'punishment' which he necessarily received; and so our professor goes on to say:—'If after you have put out your wounded cock to their walks, and visiting them a month or two after, you find about their head any swollen bunches, hard and blackish at one end, you may then conclude that in such bunches there are unsound cores, which must be opened and crushed out with your thumbs; and after this, you must suck out the corruption, and filling the holes full of fresh butter, you need not doubt a cure.'
A poetical description of a cock-fight, by Dr R. Wild, written at the commencement of the last century, will give an idea of the 'diversion.'