"One coaks'd or cockered, made a wanton or nestle-cock of,
delicately bred and brought up, so that when grown men or women
they can endure no hardship, nor comport with pains taking."
"'Tis not their fault, but our mothers', our cockering mothers,
who for their labour make us to be called _Cockneys_."--Dekker, _A
Knight's Conjuring_, 1607.
"And when this jape is told another day
I shall be halden a daffe or a _Cokenay_."
Chaucer, _The Reve's Tale_.
The following extracts will show that to this first sense Fuller might
have added, _one abundantly and daintily fed:_--
"Unlesse it be shortly considered, and that faukons be broughte to
_a more homelye diete_, it is ryght likely, that within a shorte
space of yeares, our familiar pultry shall be as scarse, as be now
partriche and fesaunte. I speake not this in disprayse of the
faukons, but of them whiche keepeth them lyke _Cokeneys_."--Elyot,
_The Governour_, 1557.
"Some again are in the other extreme, and draw this mischief on
their heads by too ceremonious and strict diet, being over precise
_cockney-like_, and curious in their observation of
meats."--Burton. _Anatomy of Melancholy_.