Athletics and Football (extract)

ATHLETIC SPORTS IN ENGLAND 15 a dukedom.' Another chronicler mentions the duke's fame as a ' leper,' which may or may not be another jest. What, how­ ever, is more interesting is the knowledge that not only the Court but the people at this time went on with their athletic matches in spite of Puritan opposition. From the ' Annals of King James and King Charles,' published in 1681,weglean the following. As in the case of some of the preceding extracts, the sense is more obvious than the grammar is correct. ' The Reformers,' says the annalist, 'took exception against the people's lawful pleasuresand holidays; and at last against all sports and publick pastimes, exercises innocent and harmless, such were leaping, dancing, running, or any mastery for to goal or prize, May-poles or Church ales as deboshed idle persons. In some of these pastimes several counties excelled, and to entertain community with their mirth the Court pro­ gressestook delight to judge of their wagers on their journeys to Scotland, which the people observingtook occasion them­ selves to petition the King for leave to be merry.' The result of this petition was the issue by James I. of the well-known ' Book of Sports' in 1617, bywhich the people were permitted to have certain sports upon Sundays after church. The edict provokedlittle oppositionat this date, but when it was repub­ lished by Charles I., in the eighth year of his reign, it formed one of the chief causes of complaint brought against him by the Puritan party. All the world knows that not long after­ wardsthe Puritans proved stronger in the field; but we have something more than a suspicion that Cromwell's Ironsides must have been brought up in the national athletic sports, or they would not have displayed such skill and endurance. Indeed, their complicity in such criminal sports is rendered highly suspicious from the fact that a round cropped head is to this day the outward and visible sign of a pugilist or a pedestrian. Before we deal with the sportingperiod of the Restoration, however, we must not omit to mention the account given of the common sports of the earlier part of the sixteenth century