A Swell’s Day Out

By the eighteenth century, cockfighting had been practiced in Britain for the better part of two millennia. Prohibited by law during the Interregnum following the execution of Charles I in 1649 until the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, and condemned by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Puritans who wished to rid the Church of England of lingering Roman Catholic practices, it had otherwise been encouraged and facilitated by secular and spiritual authorities alike. It was enjoyed as a cultural pastime by all levels of society, either, in its early days, as part of religious festivities, or as an amusement that afforded scope for the pleasure of breeding game cocks on the one hand, for gambling and drunkenness on the other. As a blood sport, it attracted opprobrium from a few isolated voices from across the social divide. By the Age of Reason, these voices had formed a chorus which had gathered sufficient momentum to begin supplanting religious, philosophical and cultural orthodoxies with new ways of looking at humankind’s relationship with the cock, with animals and with nature more generally. A reappraisal of our understanding of cruelty and pain was central to this change.