"Now lean Attorney, that his cheese The combination of the wits and their old and untiring enemies, the builders, was too much for the Finsbury archers. Charles I. issued a commission similar to that of his father; but still the work of innovation went on. The archers then once more took the matter in their own hands, and made visits every now and then to level hedges, fill up ditches, and replace marks; but at last they grew tired even of that method. The year 1786 saw the last effort of the kind they made. The bowling-alleys, to which Stow says the archers were driven, were by no means a novelty in England, although from this period more attention was paid to the game. Stow gives elsewhere a striking proof of the justness of his complaint concerning bowling-alleys and dicing-houses. He says that Northumberland House, in Fenchurch Street, being deserted by its noble owners, the Percy family, * D'Avenant's Long Vacation. Works, 1673, p. 289. in the reign of Henry VII., the gardens were converted into bowling-alleys, and the other parts of the estate into dicing-houses. In the following century the bowling-greens of London were the admiration of all foreigners. Among the other sports contemporaneous with the May-games, and no doubt generally introduced into them, the principal next to archery were quarterstaff, wrestling, and the different varieties of sports with the ball. Mixed with them were the grosser excitements of cock-fighting and bull and bear baiting. All these old English sports remained in the sixteenth century pretty much in the same state as when they were noticed by Fitz-Stephen in the twelfth. Before we say anything of these, however, we must mention an amusement which more than any of them carries us back to the poetical freshness of those olden times. Fitz-Stephen speaks of the youths using their bucklers like fighting-men, and the maidens "dancing and tripping till moonlight;" but Stow gives us the entire picture. "The youths of this city also have used on holidays after evening prayer, at their masters' doors, to exercise their wasters and bucklers; and the maidens, one of them playing on a timbrel in sight of their masters and dames, to dance for garlands hanged athwart the streets." Stow had a painter's eye and a poet's feeling; let us add, also, that later moralists might have taken home some of his lessons with advantage. Continuing the same subject, he says, "which open pastimes in my youth, being now sup pressed, worser practices within doors are to be feared." A sport practised till very recently at our country fairs was for many centuries a great favourite. We allude to the manly game of quarter-staff, so often mentioned in the Robin Hood ballads as one of the chief instruments, next to the bow, with which the mighty archer exhibited his versatile prowess; although it is curious enough, by the bye, to notice how often he was beat at it, whilst engaged in enlisting recruits for Sherwood. This truly formidable weapon, which appears to have belonged almost exclusively to our own country, was firmly grasped in the middle by one hand, whilst the other shifted to and fro towards either extremity, according as the one or the other was to be brought suddenly down upon the exposed head or shoulders of the unfortunate antagonist. The great characteristic of the quarterstaff was its large compass both for attack and defence; with a turn of the wrist a wide circle was described, through which it was difficult to enter, but from which it was easy to strike when the slightest inattention of eye or hand invited the blow. Next to archery, wrestling appears to have engaged the especial favour of the civic authorities. On the feast of St. Bartholomew the Apostle the Lord Mayor went out into the precincts of the City, most probably into Finsbury Fields, with his sceptre, sword, and cap borne before him, and followed by the aldermen in scarlet gowns with golden chains, himself and they all on horseback. A tent being pitched for their reception, the people began to wrestle before them, two at a time. After all was over, a parcel of live rabbits was turned loose among the crowd for their especial amusement. It is a curious study to trace through the old records the existence of what we may call the parochial feeling, which arrayed on these great public festivals the players of one parish or district against another, and to see the ludicrous disputes to which it often led. But sometimes the jealousy assumed a deeper cast, and presented scenes belonging rather to a tragedy than a farce. Stow has preserved the memory of one of these scenes, which is too interesting in itself, as well as too characteristic of the times, to be omitted here. "In 1222, on St. James's-day, the citizens kept games of defence and wrestlings near to the hospital of Matilda, at St. Giles in the Fields, where they challenged and had the mastery of the men in the suburbs, and other commoners. The bailiff of Westminster, devising to be revenged, proclaimed a game to be at Westminster upon Lammas-day; whereunto the citizens willingly repaired. When they had played awhile, the bailiff with the men of the suburbs harnessed themselves treacherously, and fell to such fighting that the citizens (being sore wounded) were forced to run into the city, where they rung the common bell, and assembled the citizens in great numbers. When the matter was declared, every man wished to revenge the fact; but the Lord Mayor of the City, being a wise and quiet man, willed them first to move the Abbot of Westminster in the matter, and if he would promise to see amends made it was sufficient. But a certain citizen, named Constantine Fitz-Arnulit, willed that all the houses of the abbot and bailiff should be pulled down. Which desperate words were no sooner spoken, but the common people (as unadvisedly) issued forth of the City without any order, and fought a cruel battle, Constantine pulling down divers houses; and the people (as praising Constantine) cried The Joy of the Mountain, the Joy of the Mountain; God help, and the Lord Lodowike!' The abbot, coming to London to complain, hardly escaped with life through the back door of the house where he was. Ultimately, Hubert de Burgh, with a great army of men, came to the Tower, obtained possession of Constantine, whom he hung with two others, and so put an end to the wrestling fray." The writer who has left us so interesting though brief a description of London in the twelfth century, Fitz-Stephen, says, with reference to the very ancient game of foot-ball,-" After dinner, all the youth of the City goeth to play at the ball in the fields; the scholars of every study have their balls. The practisers also of all the trades have every one their ball in their hands. The ancienter sort, the fathers, and the wealthy citizens, come on horseback to see their youngsters contending at their sport, with whom in a manner they participate by motion; stirring their own natural heat in the view of the active youth, with whose mirth and liberty they seem to communicate." Five centuries later we find the same game played in the Strand.* 66 Every one will remember the famous passage in Shakspere concerning tennisballs, where, the Dauphin of France having, in reply to Henry V.'s demand of the sovereignty of France, sent a present of tennis-balls, Henry quietly remarked, When we have matched our rackets to these balls, we will in France, by God's grace, play a set shall strike his father's crown into the hazard." These are almost the words of the old chroniclers; and this is the first historical English notice of the game, which we find to have been subsequently much favoured by the court from the time of Prince Henry (the son of James I.) to Charles II., who was so ardent a player, that on one occasion, having caused himself to be weighed before and after, he found he had lost during the game four pounds and a half. Charles was also a great patronizer of the game of pall-mall, which consisted in striking a ball through a hoop suspended from a pole. The place where he generally pursued this sport still bears its name-the Mall in St. James's Park. With all their vices, and they were neither light nor few, Charles and his courtiers were certainly free from any touch of effeminacy. Their sinews relaxed not in the siren's lap. Rochester himself performed some of the most extraordinary feats in swimming ever witnessed; and two other courtiers one day for a wager, in the presence of Charles, ran down a stout buck in St. James's Park, and held him fast prisoner. It is a pity that the "merry monarch" did not confine his patronage to such innocent sports alone. Bull and bear baiting, and cock-fighting, put down by Cromwell and the Puritans (who went to the fountain-head of the practical part of the evil by killing all the bears), now again broke forth in all their enormity. Indeed, one still more infamous feature was added-the baiting of a horse. Evelyn was present at one of these exhibitions, when the horse beat off every assailant, and was at last, to gratify the revolting appetites of the spectators, stabbed with knives. One need scarcely wonder, however, that the English character remained so long debased by these brutalities, when we find from Fitz-Stephen that children were positively trained in the twelfth century to the enjoyment of cock-fighting. He says, “Yearly at Shrove * See Clean your Honour's Shoes,' p. 21. very tide the boys of every school bring fighting-cocks to their masters, and all the forenoon is spent at school to see those cocks fight together." With the close of the seventeenth century may be said to have also departed the old popular sports of England. The May-day amusements had then entirely disappeared, unless we may consider as exceptions the "superstitious" bathers in the dew before mentioned, the milk-maids who danced some time longer with their pails hung round with wreaths of flowers, or the sweeps in all their dusky splendour, who continue dancing still. People now, instead of hurrying forth at sun-rise to Greenwich and Shooter's Hill, repaired at a more fashionable hour to the velvet lawns and shady avenues of Spring Gardens, or went at sun-set to Ranelagh and Vauxhall, to enjoy their music, fire-works, and water-works, their wonderful mechanism, their extraordinary cascades, and their trees with thousands of lamps glowing as resplendently as Aladdin's famous fruit in the cave. The archers' meetings had then given place to shooting-matches, of the kind described in an advertisement of the period: "A stall-fed fat deer to be shot for at the Greyhound in Islington, on Wednesday in Whitsun week, for half a crown a man; forty men to shoot." Then bowls, which had usurped the place of archery in the popular estimation, saw itself in course of being thrust aside by skittles. The ball games had merged into cricket, which was then played by the 'prentices in the porches of Covent Garden. This excellent sport, now the only generally popular one we possess, has one feature deserving especial notice; we allude to that social admixture of all classes, from the nobleman to the ploughman, sometimes exhibited in the array of players of the different clubs, even in places like Hampstead Heath, but much more commonly in the rural districts of England. Lastly, it was about this period that quarter-staff and, wrestling changed into single-stick and prize-fights. The principal weapons at this latter amusement were broad-sword, and sword and dagger; and the combatants were persons who engaged in it as a regular trade, supporting themselves by the subscription purses which occasionally rewarded their exertion, and by the more regular fees paid for admission. Many of these men rambled about the country like so many knights-errant, seeking adventures, and making the quiet little country villages resound again with their boasting challenges. Here is a picture of a prizefight in London:-Seats filled and crowded by two, drums beat, dogs yelp, butchers and foot-soldiers clatter their sticks; at last the two heroes, in their finebosomed holland shirts, mount the stage about three; cut large collops out of one another to divert the mob, and make work for the surgeons; smoking, swearing, drinking, thrusting, justling, elbowing, sweating, kicking, cuffing, all the while the company stays. In the early part of the eighteenth century, Figg, the immortalized of Hogarth, who had previously taught the use of the singlestick and small-sword, began to give lessons in boxing, which soon became the great popular amusement of the people of London. It was encouraged by the magistrates, with the idea of its tending to produce a general manliness of character; and patronised by the great on account of its affording a new opportunity of gratifying their taste for gambling. The Duke of Cumberland, the hero of Culloden, lost some thousands of pounds by the defeat of Broughton, one of the chief pugilists of the day. The challenges of these gentry were, at this time, regularly |