Aquarium. There was a Cock Alehouse in Tothill Street up to a few years ago (No. 4 on the opposite side of the way), but it had no connection with the old Tavern. Cock and Pye Fields, ST. GILES's. The name of the Fields on which the Seven Dials were built. The name is said to be derived from that of a public-house which stood at the bottom of St. Andrew Street. Cockaine House, CITY, perhaps so called from Sir William Cockaine, Lord Mayor, 1619. Writing of William Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, Aubrey says:— His brother Eliab bought, about 1654, Cockaine House, now [1680] the Excise Office, a noble house, where the Doctor was wont to contemplate on the leads of the house, and had his several stations in regard of the sun or wind. He was much and often troubled with the gout, and his way of cure was thus: he would then sit with his legs bare, if it were frost, on the leads of Cockaine House, put them in a pail of water till he was almost dead of cold, and betake himself to his stove, and so 'twas gone.-Aubrey's Lives, vol. iii. pp. 380, 384. The site of Cockaine House is not certainly known, but was probably Broad Street, as in 1690 the Excise Office, "not only a convenient but a very stately and magnificent house, fit to receive an ambassador or foreign prince," was in Broad Street.1 It was afterwards at the house of Sir John Frederick in the Old Jewry. [See Excise Offices.] Cockpit or Phoenix Theatre, in DRURY LANE, stood in the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, on the site of Cockpit Place or Alley, afterwards named Pitt Place, and is said by Prynne to have demoralised the whole of Drury Lane. The performances appear to have been of a low class. Volpone. The bells, in time of pestilence, ne'er made Ben Jonson's Volpone, Act iii. Sc. 6. The Cockpit Theatre was certainly not converted into a playhouse, until after James I. had been some time on the throne. How long before that date it had been . used, as the name implies, as a place for the exhibition of cock-fighting, we are without such information as will enable us to form even a conjecture. Camden, in his Annals of James I., speaking of the attack upon it in March, 1616-1617, says that the Cockpit Theatre was then nuper erectum, by which we are to understand, perhaps, that it had been lately converted from a cockpit into a playhouse. Howes, in his continuation of Stow, adverting to the same event, calls it a "new playhouse," as if it had then been recently built from the foundation.-Collier, vol. iii. p. 328. The attack to which Mr. Collier alludes was made on Shrove Tuesday, March 4, 1616-1617, by the apprentices of London, who, from time immemorial, had claimed, or at least exercised, the right of attacking and demolishing houses of ill-fame on that day. Mr. Collier published "A Ballade in praise of London 'Prentises, and what they did [on this occasion] at the Cockpit Playhouse, in Drury Lane." They 1 Delaune, Anglia Metropolis, p. 338. nearly destroyed the house, and a second structure on the same site. The house was converted in 1647 into a schoolroom;1 but it soon returned to its old use, as Evelyn notes under February 5, 1648, that he "saw a tragi-comedy acted in the Cockpit, after there had been none of these diversions for many years during the war." On Saturday, March 24, 1649, the house was pulled down by a company of soldiers, "set on by the sectaries of those sad times." 2 A third house appears to have been erected on the site, in which, as a sort of opera, was played in 1658 "The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, exprest by instrumental and vocal music, and by art of perspective in Scenes, by Sir William Davenant, represented daily at the Cock Pit in Drury Lane, at three in the afternoon punctually." Evelyn went to see it in the following May :— May 5, 1659.-I went to visit my brother in London, and next day to see a new Opera, after the Italian way, in recitative music and scenes, much inferior to the Italian composure and magnificence; but it was prodigious that in a time of such public consternation such a vanity should be kept up or permitted. I being engaged with company could not decently resist the going to see it, though my heart smote me for it.-Evelyn. In 1660 a company of players, under Rhodes, acted here until Killigrew and Herbert managed to suppress them. Charles II. had authorised two companies of players, and two only-one under Killigrew, called the King's Servants; and one under Davenant, called the Duke's. Rhodes's players (Mohun, Hart, etc.) joined Killigrew; and Davenant's newly-formed company, with Betterton in its ranks, began to act in the Cockpit Theatre, vacated by Rhodes. Here they continued till they removed, in 1662, to their new theatre in Portugal Row, Lincoln's-InnFields.3 Killigrew's house (opened April 8, 1663) was erected on the site of the present Drury Lane Theatre. Cockpit (The), in ST. JAMES'S PARK, stood at some steps leading from the Birdcage Walk into Dartmouth Street, near the top of Queen Street, and was distinguished by a cupola. It was taken down in 1816, but had been deserted long before, "that behind Gray's Inn having the only vogue."4 Hogarth's print of "The Cockpit," published in 1758, gives an excellent idea of the scenes which passed daily inside of this building. In Ackermann's Microcosm of London, 1808, is a print of the inside of this Cockpit with figures by Rowlandson. In 1821 (Tom and Jerry's time) the "Royal Cockpit" was in Tufton Street, Westminster; and there is an excellent account of a visit to it in the London Magazine (November, 1822, p. 398) by Hamilton Reynolds. Cocks of the game are yet cherished by divers men for their pleasures, much money being laid on their heads when they fight in pits, whereof some be costly made for that purpose.-Stow, p. 36. Within the City what variety of bowling-allies there are, some open, some covered. There are tennis-courts, shuffle-boards, playing at cudgels, cock-fightings, a sport peculiar to the English, and so is bear and bull-baytings, there being not such dangerous dogs and cocks anywhere else.—Howell's Londinopolis (1657), p. 399. 1 Parton's History of St. Giles, p. 235. 2 Collier's Life of Shakespeare, vol. i. p. ccxiii. 3 Malone's Shakespeare, by Boswell, vol. iii. Pp. 252, 254. 4 Hatton, p. 8. William Windham was the last man in England of eminence and high character who delighted in this cruel sport. On October 5, 1796, he entered in his Diary, "Dinner at Mr. Pitt's before Cockpit. Drove back to Fulham after Cockpit was over. Found that Passport was come from the Directory." There was an ancient building in Tufton Street, Westminster, called the "Cockpit Royal" and the royal arms had once been emblazoned over the door. It was in this building I first witnessed a main of cocks, and there that the grandfather of the present Duke of Norfolk-notorious for his extraordinary appearance-attired in that sky-blue dress which, when I was a boy, I had often seen, with large ruffles at his wrists, with which in shooting, he would at times wipe out the pan of his gunwent to see one of the great "mains of the day."-Grantley Berkeley, My Life and Recollections, 1865, vol. i. p. 282. Cockpit (The), WHITEHALL PALACE, was a portion of Henry VIII.'s palace, much as a billiard-room would be at the present day; but when it ceased to be employed for the sport is not clear. It looked upon St. James's Palace. Malone says, "Neither Elizabeth, nor James I., nor Charles I., I believe, ever went to the public theatre; but they frequently ordered plays to be performed at Court, which were represented in the royal theatre called the Cockpit." August 4, 1607.-Warrant to pay 100 marks per annum to Wm. Gateacre, for breeding, feeding, etc., the King's game cocks, during the life of George Coliner, Cockmaster. August 8, 1607.-Grant in reversion to Wm. Gateacre, of the Office of cockmaster to the King.-Cal. State Pap., 1603-1610, p. 367. From the MS. books in the Lord Chamberlain's Office it appears that in the reign of Charles II. the groom-porter alone had the power of licensing Cockpits. In 1635 Sir Henry Herbert's Office Book contains the following entry : On Tuesday night the 17th of February, 1634-1635, a French company of Players, being approved of by the Queene at her house two nights before, and commended by her Majesty to the Kinge, were admitted to the Cockpit in Whitehall, and there presented the Kinge and Queene with a French comedy called Melise, with good approbation: for which play the Kinge gave them ten pounds. Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, had his lodgings at the Cockpit in 1649, and from one of his windows saw Charles I. pass from St. James's to the scaffold. He died in these apartments on January 23 of the following year. Oliver Cromwell seems to have been his successor. In the Commons' Journals of February 29, 1650, is the entry, "Resolved that the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland have the use of the lodgings called the Cockpit, of the Spring Garden and St. James's House, and the command of St. James's Park." During the Protectorate, when all Whitehall was in his possession, he still retained the Cockpit. Next Friday, 20th February 1657, which was Thanksgiving Day [for Oliver's escape from assassination], the Honourable House, after hearing two sermons at Margaret's, Westminster, partook of a most princely entertainment by invitation from his Highness at Whitehall. "After dinner his Highness withdrew to the Cockpit; and there entertained them with rare music, both of voices and instruments, till the evening;" his Highness being very fond of music.-Carlyle's Cromwell. It was in this year that Cromwell relaxed the Puritan rules against "Music and Declamation after the manner of the Ancients," and it is probable that the Cockpit performances and those "at the back part of Rutland House" were of the same character. In the records of the Audit Office a payment of xxxli. per annum "to the Keeper of our Playhouse called the Cockpitt in St. James's Park." Just before the restoration the apartments were assigned by Parliament to General Monk; and Charles II. confirmed the arrangement. Monk resided here throughout the terrible plague season of 1666, and died here, January 3, 1670. Pepys mentions several plays being acted at the Cockpit during Monk's occupancy. In 1673 large sums were laid out on the lodgings, and they were made over to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who probably sold them to Sir Thomas Osborne, as, on the marriage of the Lady Anne in 1683, the Duchess of Marlborough1 tells it was bought from the Duke of Leeds in order to be settled on the Princess and her heirs. She was residing here in 1688; and on the landing of the Prince of Orange fled at midnight by the "backstairs which led down from her closet" and walked to the hackney coach which Bishop Compton and the Earl of Dorset had waiting for her "in the neighbourhood of the Cockpit." When the Revolution was accomplished she returned to these apartments, and continued to occupy them till the differences with her sister caused her to remove to Berkeley House, Piccadilly. [See Berkeley House.] When Whitehall was burned down in 1697, the Cockpit escaped and was used as a Court for the Committee of the Privy Council, and here on March 8, 1711, a French emigrant, named Guiscard, having been brought up for examination on a charge of high treason, suddenly seized a penknife and struck at the minister, Robert, Earl of Oxford. The wound was slight, and not at all such as one would suppose from Johnson's well-known line : And fixed disease on Harley's closing life. In 1705 the Commissioners for drawing up the terms of union between England and Scotland sat in the Cockpit, and Sir Christopher Wren was directed to enclose part of the garden to form a recreation ground for them. When in 1761 Lord Bute was appointed Prime Minister he had no official residence, and his own house in Harley Street was a small one. He therefore held his public levees at the Cockpit, and his example was followed by the Duke of Grafton and Lord North. Treasury minutes bore its name at their head, and the semi-official letters of ministers were dated from it. It represented very much what "Downing Street" has done in our time, and afforded a constant subject of joking to wits and caricaturists.2 December 15, 1742.—I write to you in a vast hurry, for I am going to a meeting 1 Account of the Conduit, etc., p. 57. 2 Gillray has a clever cartoon of the "Treasury Cock" or "Cock Pitt." at the Cockpit, to hear the King's Speech read to the members. Mr. Pelham presides there.-H. Walpole to Sir Horace Mann. December 19, 1798.-Went to the Cockpit in the evening to hear the King's Speech read. Two-thirds of the room were filled with strangers and blackguard news writers. Mr. Pitt came in at half-past nine with Mr. Secretary Dundas, the Lords of the Treasury, Master of the Rolls, Attorney and Solicitor General, etc. The Speaker absent from illness.—Lord Colchester's Diary, vol. i. p. 12. Whitehall Gate, as standing between the Cockpit and the Park, was commonly called Cockpit Gate. Cockpit Alley, DRURY LANE, so called after the Cockpit Theatre, and afterwards corruptly named Pitt Place, was situated nearly opposite the present "mortuary house" and graveyard. Titus Oates lived in this alley. In the Assassination Plot of 1696 the "Black Posts in Cockpit Alley" was one of the chief resorts of Sir George Barclay and the other conspirators. In the last century Cockpit Alleys, Cockpit Buildings, Cockpit Courts, Cockpit Streets or Cockpit Yards were to be found in almost every part of London, their occurrence and number testifying to the general prevalence of the sport of cock-fighting, but most of them have been swept away or had their names changed. Cockspur Street, CHARING CROSS. Why the street is so called is unknown, possibly from some fancied connection with The Mews adjoining the Cock Tavern. [See The Cock, Charing Cross.] Charles Byrne or O'Brian, the Irish giant, died in this street in 1783. He was 8 feet 4 inches in height, and his skeleton-one of the curiosities of the College of Surgeons-measures 8 feet. He was only twenty-two at his death. The Bronze equestrian statue of George III., by Matthew Cotes Wyatt, was erected in 1837. Colnaghi's print-shop is now in Pall Mall East. We would rather pay a shilling to Mr. Colnaghi of Cockspur Street, to look at his windows on one of his best furnished days, than we would for many an exhibition. -Leigh Hunt. Smollett was in the habit of frequenting "a small tavern in the corner of Cockspur Street" called the Golden Ball, "where we had a frugal supper and a little punch, as the finances of none of the company were in very good order." Dr. Carlyle was there with him when the news of the Battle of Culloden arrived, and relates the stratagems they resorted to on leaving lest they should be detected by the mob as Scotchmen and roughly handled.1 [See British Coffee-house, Cockspur Street.] Cocoa Tree (The), No. 64 ST. JAMES'S STREET, but originally in Pall Mall. It was the Tory "Chocolate-house" of Queen Anne's time. The Whig Coffee-house was the St. James's, near the Thatched House in St. James's Street. I must not forget to tell you, that the parties have their different places, where, however, a stranger is always well received; but a Whig will no more go to the 1 Autobiography of Dr. Alexander Carlyle, p. 190. |