The sign of the Three Cocks occurs in the following advertisement:—
“ALL persons that have any Household Goods, Plate, Rings, Watches, Jewels, Wearing Apparel, etc., in the hands of Thomas Bastin, at the Three Cocks in St John’s Lane, Pawnbroker, which were pledged to him before the 25th of December 1709, are desired to fetch them away by the 25th of March next, or they will be disposed off.”—London Gazette, Jan. 18-21, 1711.
From this and innumerable other similar advertisements, it appears that pawnbrokers in those days did not always rigorously adhere to the Three Balls; that is to say, they were occasionally goldsmiths, and in that capacity used any sign.
It is rarely that the sign of the Cock designates any particular colour. There is a Black Cock in Owen Street, Tipton; a cock of this colour was always considered something more than an ordinary bird; with the Greeks it was a grateful sacrifice to Esculapius and Pluto, and in the middle ages it played a prominent part in matters of witchcraft. The Blue Cock is a sign at Leicester; but neither colour is common. At Hargrave, near Bury St Edmunds, there is a Cock’s Head, put up either in imitation of a nag’s,—bull’s,—bear’s,—or boar’s head, or as the crest of a fool’s cap, which, in old times, usually terminated with a cock’s head.
Though some sort of religious prestige may at first have prompted the choice of the cock, more profane ideas latterly contributed to make it popular, such as the pastimes of cock-throwing, or “shying,” and cock-fighting. To this first practice alludes the sign of William Brandon, on Dowgate Hill, which was called, Have at it; his token representing a man about to throw a stick at a cock. This cruel game was very common in alehouses in former times; the whole sport consisting in throwing a stick at an unfortunate cock tied to a stake; if the animal was killed it was the thrower’s property; if not, he forfeited the small sum paid for each “shy.” What a slaughter of cocks was carried on in this way may be judged from the following:—
“Last Tuesday a Brewer’s servant in Southwark took his walk round Towerhill, Moorfield, and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and knocked down so many cocks that by selling them again, he returned home twenty shillings odd pence richer man than he came out.”[294]
Medals are extant of the reign of William III., on which John Bull is represented throwing sticks at the French cock: not a very lofty allegory, it must be confessed; but in those days the public taste was not very refined; thus, after the victory of Blenheim, the simile was in equal bad taste, the same idea being expressed by a huge lion tearing an unfortunate cock in pieces.
Cock-fighting was a favourite diversion with the Romans, and we find continual traces of it during their occupation here. Fitz-Stephen says, it was the sport of schoolboys in his time; but as they grew up it seems the taste adhered to them. That sturdy bluebeard-king, Henry VIII., though always ready to chop off the heads of his subjects, felt his heart melt at the miseries of the cocks, and made edicts against cock-fights, yet with the inconsistency that marked his other tastes built a cock-pit unto himself at Whitehall. James I., also, was a great amateur. Though habitually suppressed by various sovereigns, the evil would always break out again, till it was finally abolished by an Act of Parliament in the 12 & 13 Queen Victoria. In Staffordshire, and other counties where this sport is still practised “on the sly,” the Fighting Cocks is a favourite sign.
The cock occurs in innumerable combinations with all kinds of heterogeneous objects, many of which seem merely selected for their oddity: among the most explicable is the Cock and Bottle, of which we have offered a solution, ([p. 207]) and which again occurs in the following title:—
“Just Published,
“A full account of the Life and Visions of Nicholas Hart who has every year in his Life past, on the 5th of August, fall’n into a Deep Sleep and cannot be awaked till 5 Days and Nights are expired, and then gives a surprising Relation of what he hath seen in the other World. Taken from[211] his own mouth in September last; after he had slept 5 days in St Bartholomew’s Hospital, the August before. By William Hill, of Lincoln’s Inn. The Truth of all which the said Nicholas Hart hath attested under his Hand, the 3d Day of August 1711, before several credible Witnesses, and declared his Readiness to take oath of the same. He began to sleepe as usual the 5th Day of this instant August 1711 at Mr Dixies at the Cock and Bottle in Little Britain. Entered according to Law. Printed for J. Baker, at the Black Boy, in Paternoster Row, price 2d.”[295]