Obs. A customary payment at Shrovetide, formerly made to the schoolmaster in certain schools in the north of England.
Originally applied to defray the expense of cock-fighting or cock-throwing. See N. Carlisle, Endowed Gram. Schools (1818); also N. & Q., Feb., 1890.
1524. (April 1) Indenture, in N. Carlisle, Endowed Gram. Schools, I. 677. (Manchester Gram. Sch.) Item, that every Schoolmaster … shall teach freely … without any money or other rewards taken therefore, as ‘Cock-penny, Victor-penny, Potation-penny,’ or any other whatsoever it be.
1597. Pilgr. Parnass., V. 594. A companie of ragged vicars and forlorne schoolemaisters … looking for cockpence in the bottome of a pue.
1691. Wood, Ath. Oxon., I. 562.
1721. in Picton, L’pool Munic. Rec. (1886), II. 74. All gratuities whatsoever such as entrance money, cockpenny, fire money, and quarteridge.
1756. Boucher, in Lett. Radcliffe & James (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), Pref. 7. My salary [at St. Bees’ School] … was £10 a year; and entrances and cock-pennies amounted to as much more.
1818. N. Carlisle, Gram. Schools, I. 647 (at Cartmel, Lanc.) It is customary for persons of property, who have children at the School, to make a compliment to the Master at Shrovetide of a sum, called ‘Cock pence.’—‘This cannot be demanded of right.’ Ibid., I. 662 (at Hawkshead).
1870. Hazlitt, in Brand’s Pop. Antiq., I. 42. The scholars of Clitheroe Free Grammar-School have to pay at Shrovetide what is called a cock-penny … supposed to be a substitute for bringing the animal itself to school, which formerly was very common.
