The churchwardens’ accounts of Reading show hocking there for generations: in 1499 the women of St Laurence’s gathered twenty shillings and the men only four. The wives always raised the most and were rewarded with a supper. A bishop of Worcester had tried to forbid hocking in 1450 because of the rowdiness it caused, and in London the season was called Hob-tide.
Hock money at Reading
Hock Tuesday (second Tuesday after Easter) · Reading, Berkshire
No longer kept
Paid for the wyves supper at Hoctyde, xxiiijd.
From Chambers's Book of Days, vol. 1, p. 499. Read the original
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