The Cockfight that Broke an Empire

THE “COCKPIT” WAS THE NAME of a meeting room of the King’s Privy Council in 18th-century London. It had previously served as a cockfighting arena for monarchs less concerned with public decorum, including Henry VIII. Of course, the king’s favored cock was always victorious—in a salaciously colorful sense. In January 1774, the cockpit was where King George III’s swaggering cock won a brief pyrrhic victory but lost an empire.

Benjamin Franklin had been in London for over 9 years, representing several British American colonies as a diplomat seeking to bridge the imperial divide over English civil rights. American colonists were treated as the proverbial “red-headed stepchild” because they were not conceived on the same maternal soil as British subjects back home. They had fewer rights. Franklin tried to save Great Britain from itself by highlighting this glaring dichotomy before members of the Privy Council. They refused to listen. It was almost as if members of the Privy Council and Franklin were speaking two different languages—legalese and statecraft. Indeed, they were.

When Parliament decided to weigh in on the issue of colonial rule, misunderstandings escalated dramatically. It was as if a third, even less comprehensible language had been introduced into the dialogue. Parliament used the legal language of taxation to assert its control over the colonies—a hammer, if you will—and tried to pound the nail of colonial dissent into oblivion. That did not work out well, as we all know.

Throughout the repeated debacles of the Stamp Act, Revenue Act, and finally the Tea Act, Parliament’s attempts to assert regulatory control over the 13 colonies were met with the proper indignation they deserved and were defied. But after colonists in Massachusetts destroyed £10,000 worth of tea, Parliament’s gloves came off.

Franklin was summoned to appear before the Privy Council, ostensibly to present a petition on behalf of the colonies he represented. Instead, for over an hour, he was excoriated by the Privy Council’s chosen swaggering cock, Scottish-born legal curmudgeon Alexander Wedderburn, who was known for verbally abusing and lampooning his targets in a melodramatic fashion to draw jeers and score points. Wedderburn impugned Franklin’s heretofore stellar reputation without evidence. Franklin stood stock-still, never uttering a word in his defense.

When the cockfight was over, Franklin had transformed. Until then, he had worked tirelessly behind the scenes and in public to prevent the looming civil war between Great Britain and her colonial subjects. He had had enough. From this point on, Franklin worked even more diligently to ensure that the outcome of the war would favor his homeland, America. In the words of historian and Franklin biographer H.W. Brands, Ben Franklin became the “first American.”