A Cock Fighting Man, 1607

“So it would incite, and cause them to say unto themselves, wee are induced and perswaded, nay, in a manner we are even compelled, and as it were inforced to love our husbands Cockes, and to make much of them…”

No, I have not found an early modern sex-therapist. This is, rather, George Wilson, The Commendation of Cockes, and Cock-fighting; Wherein is shewed, that Cocke-fighting was before the coming of Christ (1607), and a moment when the author’s obsession leaves him prey to total loss of his sense of humour. His conspicuous concern to put a positive spin for wives on having husbands who follow the sport (“they [i.e. cocks] doe shew unto them a good and a perswasive example, how they should love, regard, defend, and cherish us”) suggests to me that there was a Mistress George Wilson who was rather less than enraptured with her partner’s preoccupation.

Which is complete: Wilson’s little book is like one of those witty mock-commendations of a trifling activity or artefact that the Renaissance specialised in, but with the ‘witty’ and the ‘mock’ both omitted. He really means it, intensely, and may stand ancestral to generations of obsessive male hobbyists women have found ways of coping with ever since (“Now, therefore, for our owne parts, we will doe this from henceforth, we will rather want meate our selves, then the Cockes shall: and by this meanes, we shall allure our husbands to manifest their love towards us”).

Wilson, as his sub-title shows, sets out as a man of his age would, to commend cock-fighting by reference to antiquity. You can read between the lines his intense disappointment and chagrin that there is no gospel account of Christ and the disciples recreating themselves with their cocks-of-the-game, with intense side-betting on the outcome. Instead, he has to make do with a claim to a general ‘before the coming of Christ’ antiquity, and an honorary mention for the cock that crowed at St Peter’s denial: “the voice of the Cocke was (by Christs institution) ordained (like the voice of the Preacher) to call Peter to repentance”).

Having established the best possible Biblical role for the cock, after commending it as the best example of courage (especially for husbands), and after worrying whether the phoenix might have a claim to being a superior kind of bird (he thinks it isn’t, of course), Wilson arrives at the present “delectable pleasures” offered by ownership of game-cocks, and the latter part of his pamphlet consists of sanguinary anecdotes, where fighting cocks, blinded and broken, experience some trigger from the reptile cortex that stimulates them to vanquish at the last their apparently victorious opponent. He gives dates and places for some of his best fighting birds, and their names: ‘Jipsey’, victorious at Bury St Edmunds, his image put onto a painted cloth, with a quatrain of verse, then paraded round town with a volley of shot set off in his honour, and commends the cock Tarleton, named after the Elizabethan clown famous for his pipe and tabour (“because he always came to the fight like a Drummer, making a thundering noise with his wings”) for somehow killing his last opponent when blinded, beakless, and unspurred (Norwich, May 4^th, 1602).

For my own part, I have always thought that the pro-hunting lobby should be asked why their blood-sport should survive, when the more proletarian forms have been banned. As for cock-fighting itself, a latterday Wilson might say that, as mammals, we can feel that birds have it coming to them, as reprisal for the prehistoric aeons in which birds were therapods, and either ate or suppressed our lineage (while turning mammal against mammal in the fox hunt is unnatural).

George Wilson does his best, but in his enthusiasm does reveal that what excited him so intensely was in actuality a barbaric spectacle.

But, from amongst his anecdotes, an early modern death-bed scene, one that makes you reflect how elastic piety can be:

“a man of good worship credibly informed me, that hee knew a Gentleman, that had many good Cockes of the game that he loved marvailously well, and wherein he took great felicitie and delight all his life time; and at the last falling into a grievous sicknesse, and lying upon his death-bed, he requested his kinred and friends which were about him, to place his Cockes with their Coopes so neere unto his beds head as possibly they could doe, which being performed according to his request, he heard them crowe; whereat he sayd, now have I obtained that which I desired; for these delectable voices shalbe my sweete-sounding trumpets, to admonish and put me in minde of my immortal, and celestiall Judge.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockfighting