Hock Tuesday at Coventry

Hock Tuesday (second Tuesday after Easter) · Coventry, Warwickshire

No longer kept

Warwickshire

On Hock Monday and Tuesday, a fortnight after Easter, the men and then the women went out with ropes and tied up anyone of the other sex they met until they paid a small sum, which went to the church. Coventry had a Hock Tuesday play showing battles with the Danes, won at last when the Saxon women came to help, and it was played before Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth in 1575. It was said to recall the massacre of the Danes in 1002, though Chambers thought the custom far older.

Queen Elizabeth 'laughed well' at this play

From Chambers's Book of Days, vol. 1, p. 499. Read the original

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Folklore from the old calendars

Hock money at Reading No longer kept BerkshireThe 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.
Black Monday No longer kept EnglandEaster Monday was long known in England as Black Monday.
First Cuckoo Day in Sussex Lore and belief SussexA naturalist who sent Hone the average arrival days of the spring birds from a twenty years' journal noted that 14 April was called First Cuckoo Day in Sussex.
Men on Monday, women on Tuesday in Hampshire No longer kept HampshireIn several Hampshire manors the men hocked the women on Hock Monday, and on the Tuesday the women took their turn with the men.
Lambeth wives out-gather the men at Hock-tide No longer kept LondonThe churchwardens' accounts of Lambeth for 1515 and 1516 recorded hock money gathered by both the men and the women for the church.
Hocktide for the church repairs at St Peter in the East No longer kept OxfordshireIn seventeenth-century Oxford a parish that needed money for church repairs would keep a Hocktide, and the takings could be large.

Hock Tuesday at Coventry

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