1605 CE · 1600s
The Royal Cockpit-in-Court
James I commissions the Royal Cockpit-in-Court at Whitehall — the cockpit at the heart of Stuart London, designed by Inigo Jones, where the king's cocks were matched and where English cockfighting acquired its most aristocratic setting.
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sortableYear: 1605
The Royal Cockpit was built for James I in 1605 by Inigo Jones, then at the beginning of his career as the principal architect of the Stuart court. The building stood on the south side of Whitehall Palace, near the river; it was a circular structure with a raised viewing gallery for the king and his entourage, and a central pit surrounded by tiered seating for the courtiers and the betting public.
The Royal Cockpit was, for the next two centuries, the most prestigious cockpit in England. Major mains — formal matches of fourteen or more cocks per side, with purses that could reach several thousand pounds — were staged here under royal patronage. The building survived the Great Fire of 1698 (it was rebuilt) and continued in use until 1816, when it was finally demolished to make way for improvements to Whitehall. Its name survives in the Cockpit Steps, a flight of stone stairs near the Banqueting House that remains today.
The bird of the Royal Cockpit was, almost certainly, the Redshank — the slate-blue-legged, Asiatic-derived gamecock that dominated the British pit from the late sixteenth century until the rise of the Carlisle and Oxford strains in the eighteenth.