Hocking and pigeon-holes at the Brentford Whitsun ale

A Brentford vestry of 1621 recorded that the townspeople had long met at Whitsuntide in their church house to eat and drink together, keeping up neighbourly feeling and raising a common stock for the church, the orphans and the poor. The chapelwardens’ accounts show how the money was made: by the game of pigeon-holes, by raffling, by selling food and drink, and by hocking, the old Hocktide trick of stopping people for money, here done at Whitsun. The hocking appears nearly every year until 1640, and the accounts also pay the woman who had been Lady at Whitsuntide.