Foot-ball

THE first mention of the game of football in English history is made by Fitz-Stephen, who, writing in the 13th century, says, “Annually upon Shrove Tuesday they (the London school-boys) go into the fields immediately after dinner and play at the celebrated game of ball (ludum pilæ celebrem).” But it is only fair to add, that the learned Strutt himself never felt certain that the reference here was to football. He tells us, in his commentary upon the passage, that Stowe, in his explanation of the words, has added, “without the least sanction from the Latin,” the word bastion, “meaning a bat or cudgel,” being of opinion that the game signified was something of the nature of goff (golf) or bandy-ball (sc., hockey). If Stowe was guilty of this bold gloss, and there is no question that he was, then it is clear that the game of the London school-boys is as likely to have been football as anything else, although Strutt is of the contrary opinion. For Strutt’s view is based upon the ground that football, as a pastime, “does not seem to be a very proper game for children.” On the other hand, there are strong reasons for believing that this game may have been football, for in the first place there is good historical evidence to the effect that Shrove Tuesday was a regular day upon which the London apprentices and those of other great cities, such as Chester, and the Scotch peasants, regularly indulged in the game of football. This evidence will be set forth immediately. But it is also a matter to be noted, that London is one of the places where football seems never to have died out, while the London schools, notably Westminster and the Charterhouse, were the places in which one species of the game of football was kept alive in a period of great athletic depression, to emerge, at the time of the recent athletic revival, in the form of the Association game.

That this game flourished in the succeeding century is manifest from the fact that Edward III., in A.D. 1349, found it necessary to forbid it by law. This warlike monarch, who was not quite of the same opinion as a man of at least equally military mind, the Duke of Wellington, sent a formal letter of complaint to the sheriffs of the City of London, that “the skill in shooting with arrows was almost totally laid aside for the purpose of various useless and unlawful games,” and they were thenceforth enjoined to prohibit all such “idle practices” as far as their jurisdiction extended.

Football, however, seemed to have sufficient vitality to outlast the pressure of a statute which, like some of those at present directed against gambling and betting, seems to have been more honoured in the breach than in the observance, for we find that in 1389 another Act was passed by Richard II. (12 Ric. ii., cap. 6) for the purpose of encouraging shooting, at the expense of other sports. This Act expressly forbade throughout the kingdom “all playinge at Tennis, Footballe, and other games called corts, dice, casting of the stone, kailes (a kind of skittles), and other such importune games.” How great must have been the moral effect of the statute we see from the fact that it had to be re-enacted by Henry IV. in 1401, and again by Henry VIII. considerably more than a hundred years later; while the last-named monarch also passed an enactment rendering it a penal offence for any person whatever to attempt to make gain by keeping a house or ground for sporting purposes of any kind—an enactment which some of the present managers of “gate-money” meetings for amateurs would be doubtless sorry to see replaced upon the Statute Book. Another clause of the same Act made it a penal offence for an artificer to play at any of the games mentioned above, save at Christmastide. In Scotland also similar measures were pursued for the purpose of separating those canny sportsmen from their well-loved games of golf and football; for in 1458, James III. of Scotland decreed that displays of weapons were to be held four times a year, and that “footballe and golfe be utterly put down.” Two other pieces of evidence show how constant and how vain was the effort made by our sovereigns to suppress a national sport. Twice in the reign of Elizabeth was proclamation made that “no foteballe play be used or suffered within the City of London and the liberties thereof, upon pain of imprisonment,” and twice were entries of the proclamations having been made entered in the books of the Corporation of London, upon Nov. 27th, 1572, and Nov. 7th, 1581, where they can be seen to this day. But in spite of prohibition and threat of fine and imprisonment, the London apprentices and the country labourers were determined to enjoy their football; and the game was probably never so flourishing or so prosperous as it was throughout the sixteenth century.

And now, it may be asked, What manner of game was this football, which delighted our forefathers so hugely that they persisted in indulging in it although under ban of the law? Strange to say, there was not the chaos of conflicting rules which were found in use when the game was brought into prominence again a few decades ago. The original game appears to have been of the simplest description. Given two boundaries or goals, a ball of any make so long as it were strong enough to prevent its being torn in pieces, and the opposing sides were allowed to get the ball on and make it touch the adversaries’ goal in any manner whatever they pleased, whether by kicking, hurling, shoving, or running, or by stealth. Sometimes we hear of goals a mile or more apart; often the arena of play was a street or a high road, sometimes a whole town; and the attacking party with the ball would try and sneak round by bye-streets in order to escape notice, and plant the ball unawares through the window or against the post which was fixed as the goal. The game, in short, when played in a confined space, was none other than a rough form of the present Rugby Union football, without the rules and prohibitions which have now reduced to order and civilized that game. But it must have been a rough game, that of which the yokels and ’prentices of merry England were so fond; and of broken pates and aching shins there must have been not a few. But let us hear what the writers of the age had to say about it. But before we proceed to give a few extracts of their views, we must premise that football was always looked upon as a vulgar game, a game for clod-hoppers, Irish kernes, and ’prentice lads, which a gentleman of quality should shun, lest perchance his eye be blackened or his skin be raised in lumps by a wight of low degree. Hence we can only expect the writers of gentle birth of the age of Elizabeth and James I., and indeed of all the later ages up to the present generation, to look upon so rough a game as unfitting for a man of refinement. But a game does not need to be defended now because it brings men of different rank to meet on equal terms with no favour; and ardent footballers might indeed be still able to adhere to their game although it had been deemed vulgar by James I. and by Sir Thomas Elyot. Nor is there anything in the contempt of these dignitaries which will depress the spirits or hurt the sensitive pride of the football-player especially; for he will find upon study that football was not the only game condemned by the aristocratic classes. On the contrary, almost all athletic exercises which did not immediately and obviously conduce to knightly skill, were held in equally low esteem; and the game of cricket itself was equally lightly regarded. In fact, it is not too much to say, that it was not until the present century was well advanced that men of gentle birth and education gave up putting away boyish sports when they reached man’s estate. But of this we shall speak later.

The earliest writers who discuss football critically, are of the Elizabethan era. We have indeed been informed by a learned antiquary to whom we are largely indebted for the materials of this work, that many years before this there flourished in the City of London a “Guild of Football Players;” but as our friend has lost his reference to this, the first Football Club in existence, and as we have been unable, with much searching, to recover the clue, we are unable to present to our readers any report of exciting matches between the representatives of the various wards or between the opposing teams of the cities of London and Westminster. But of the fact that such an organization existed we feel little or no doubt, and only regret we cannot give more accurate information on the subject. We can only close our notice of the subject by transcribing the comment of the gentle scholar to whom we are indebted for the suggestion, that “probably the players, recognising the danger of the game to soul and body, thought it necessary to combine to employ a special chirurgeon, and a special chaplain of their own,” from which it will be seen that our friend is more fond of antiquities than he is of football.

The first Elizabethan critic of football whose words deserve quotation, is Sir Thomas Elyot, the author of “The Boke called the Governour,” a species of educational manual for the young noblemen and gentlemen of the age. Writing, in 1583, of the sports which should be indulged in by those of gentle birth, he expounds views which, seen through the glass of the opinions of the nineteenth century, appear strange. Archery he praises above tennis, because in tennis a player is compelled to play as hard as his opponent, and cannot, so to speak, make his own pace; so that “if he (the opponent) stryke the balle hard, the othere that intendeth to receyve him is then constrained to use semblable violence if he wyll to retourne the balle.” And “boulynge” (bowls), “claishe,” and “pinnes” (skittles), and “koyting” (quoits), are also spoken of with disfavour as being too furious; and the writer then goes on (we quote verbatim, leaving more learned critics to explain the worthy knight’s grammar): “Verilie as for two the laste” (i.e., pinnes and koyting) “be to be utterly abjected of all noble men, in like wise foote-balle wherein is nothing but beastlie furie and exstreme violence, whereof procedeth hurte and consequently rancour and malice do remaine with them that be wounded, wherfore it is to be put in perpetuall silence.” Perhaps this view would have been coincided with by a certain bridegroom whom we read elsewhere to have attended the revels held at Kenilworth in honour of Queen Elizabeth in 1575, for the gentleman in question, we gather from a letter of the gallant Captain Laneham, to have been “lame of a legge, that in his youth was broeken at foote-balle;” but modern footballers would hardly agree with Sir Thomas or with the learned and pious Puritan writer, Stubbs, who, in our quotations, “follows on the same side.” Stubbs, in his “Anatomie of Abuses” in the realm of England in 1583, not only objected to football for itself, but also for that it was generally played, both in town and village, on Sunday; and one of his reasons for believing that the day of doom, as foretold in Scriptural revelation, was at hand was, that “football-playing and other develishe pastimes” were played on Sunday. “Lord,” he prays, “remove these exercises from the Sabaoth.” What follows is curious: in answer to a question as to whether football-playing is a profanation of the Sabbath, he says, “Any exercise which withdraweth us from godlinesse, either upon the Sabaoth or any other day, is wicked and to be forbiden. Now who is so grossly blinde that seeth not that these aforesaid exercises not only withdraw us from godlinesse and virtue, but also haile and allure us to wickednesse and sin? for as concerning football-playing, I protest unto you it may rather be called a friendlie kind of fight than a play or recreation—a bloody and murthering practise than a felowly sporte or pastime. For dooth not everyone lye in waight for his adversarie, seeking to overthrow him and picke him on his nose, though it be on hard stones, in ditch or dale, in valley or hill, or what place soever it be he careth not, so he have him downe. And he that can serve the most of this fashion, he is counted the only felow and who but he.” We may remark incidentally that it is at least satisfactory to know that the footballers of the time of Elizabeth appreciated the advantages of a good “tackler.” But to resume with Stubbs his opinions. “So that by this means sometimes their necks are broken, sometimes their backs, sometimes their legs, sometimes their armes, sometimes one part thrust out of joint, sometimes another; sometimes their noses gush out with blood, sometimes their eyes start out, and sometimes hurte in one place sometimes in another. But whosoever scapeth away the best goeth not scot free but is either forewounded, craised or bruised so as he dyeth of it or else scapeth very hardlie, and no mervaile, for they have the sleights to meet one betwixt two, to dash him against the hart with their elbowes, to butt him under the short ribs with the griped fists and with their knees to catch him on the hip and pick him on his neck, with a hundred such murthering devices. And hereof groweth envy, rancour, and malice, and sometimes brawling murther, homicide, and great effusion of blood, as experience daily teacheth. Is this murthering play now an exercise for the Sabaoth day?”

So much for the opinion of the pious Stubbs, who, it must be recollected, was a Puritan, and one of the party who afterwards almost succeeded in entirely putting down football during the supremacy of their opinions. Perhaps it will be as well to finish the hostile criticism with the opinion of King James I. of England, who, in his Basilicon Doron, a manual of education written for his son, after speaking in praise of various other sports, saith, “but from this count I debar all rough and violent exercise, as the foot-ball meeter for laming than making able the users thereof.” Still James I., taking him for all in all, was something of an old woman, and can hardly have been expected to look with favour upon a “charge” or a “scrimmage.” Added to this, we have something more than a suspicion that his Royal Highness, while posing as an original writer on education, was drawing a great many of his views from Sir Thomas Elyot; for the Basilicon Doron bears a most suspicious resemblance in many places to the work of the earlier writer.

Perhaps the best description we have of the game at this period comes from Carew’s “Survey of Cornwall,” published in 1602. Carew gives a long account of the game of “hurling,” which was another form of the football we have described above, with the addition that the players were allowed, if they liked, to carry sticks and hit the ball towards the goal, besides hurling, kicking, hitting, or running with it. We thus see, as would naturally be expected, that hockey and football started as the same sport but gradually “differentiated” into separate games, according to the true Darwinian law of progress. Hurling is described as a match between two large parties of men, in which each side strives to get the ball as best it can up to the adversaries’ goal. Carew, who is a more genial critic than Elyot, Stubbs, or King James I., describes hurling with much carefulness and acuteness of observation. “For hurling to goales there are 15, 20, or 30 players, more or less, chosen out on each side, who strip themselves to their slightest apparel and then join hands in ranke one against another; out of these ranks they matche themselves by payres, one embracing another, and so passe away, every of which couple are especially to watch one another during the play.” What football-player knows not the phrase, “Mark your men”? “After this, they pitch two bushes in the ground, some eight or ten feet asunder, and directly against them, ten or twelve score paces off, other twain in like distance, which they term goales, where some indifferent person throweth up a balle, the which whosoever can catch and carry through the adversaries’ goals hath won the game.” The hurlers also, we learn, were not allowed to but or handfast (charge or collar) under the girdle, or to “deale a foreballe” i.e., to pass forward to one nearer the goal than the player, in which passage we have the only explicit reference to “off-side” play which is to be found in the early annals of the game. Besides the game in a field of play, there was also, we learn from Carew, a game played over country. “Two three or more parishes agree to hurl against two or three other parishes.” In this game the goals were usually houses, or else villages, three or four miles asunder, and “that company which can catch or carry it by force or slight to the place assigned, gaineth the victory. Such as see where the ball is played give notice, by crying, ‘Ware east,’ ‘Ware west,’ as the same is carried. The hurlers take their way over hilles, dales, hedges, ditches, yea, and thorow bushes, briars, mires, plashes and rivers whatsoever, so as you shall sometimes see twenty or thirty lie tugging together in the water, scrambling and scratching for the ball.” This description of what may be described as a “maul in pond” is certainly interesting, and the whole description of the game lucid. The criticism of the game is also eminently sensible. “The play is verily both rude and rough, yet such as is not destitute of policies in some sort resembling the feats of war; for you shall have companies laid out before, on the one side to encounter them that come with the ball, and of the other party to succour them in manner of a fore-ward.” (Thus we see that the term “forward” in football is no ill-chosen one, the “fore-wards” or “fore-guards” being those who bear the first attack, and protect the rear-guards, who are manœuvring behind.) Carew goes on, “The ball in this play may be compared to an infernal spirit, for whosoever catcheth it fareth straightways like a madman struggling and fighting with those that go about to hold him: no sooner is the ball gone from him than he resigneth this fury to the next receiver, and himself becometh peaceable as before.” (Perhaps, we may here remark, the man who lost the ball became peaceable because he was by that time well “blown.” We have observed the same ourselves in the present age.) Carew ends up with some very thoughtful criticism of the game, “I cannot well resolve,” he says, “whether I should the more commend this game for its manhood and exercise, or condemn it for the boisterousness and harm which it begetteth; for as on the one side it makes their bodies strong, hard, and nimble, and puts a courage into their hearts to meet an enemy in the face, so on the other part it is accompanied by many dangers, some of which do ever fall to the players’ share, for the proof whereof when the hurling is ended, you shall see them retiring home as from a pitched battle, with bloody pates, bones broken and out of joint, and such bruises as serve to shorten their days; yet all is good play, and never attorney or coroner troubled for the matter.”

Perhaps one more extract will be sufficient to show that circiter A.D. 1600, football was considered one of the national sports of England, just as it is to-day. Here is a list of British games in the year 1600. Quoth one bold swain to another his rival (in verse):—

Perhaps, gentle reader, we may have more to say anon about the ancient sports of the age of Shakspeare, but at present we must needs jog on. Let not our readers think, however, that the Bard of Avon never heard of football. Let them look to the “Comedy of Errors,” Act ii. Scene 6,—

Lear too, and Kent, knew something about “hacking” and “tripping.” Listen to this, “Lear,” Act i. Scene 4.

Lear, you see, breaks out into an exclamation of praise, when he sees a neat “trip” brought off by Kent.

There are still some ancient customs in relation to the game of football, which belong to no particular age, as many of them endured through many ages, but which may well be set out here lest they should pass out of mind. The following is from MS. Harl. 2150, fol. 235:—“It hath been the custom, time out of mind, for the shoemakers yearly on Shrove Tuesday to deliver to the drapers, in the presence of the Mayor of Chester, at the cross on the Rodehee, one ball of leather called a foote-ball, of the value of three shillings and fourpence and above, to play at from thence to the Common Hall of the said city; which practice was productive of much inconvenience; and this year (1540), by consent of the parties concerned, the ball was changed into six glayves of silver of the like value, as a reward for the best runner that day upon the aforesaid Rodehee.”

At the parish of Scone, in Perthshire, a similar game appears to have been played every Shrove Tuesday, between the bachelors and the married men, from two o’clock until sunset. The game was initiated by the throwing up of the ball in the neighbourhood of the market cross at Scone, and the account of it may well be given in the words of the author of “The Statistical Account of Scotland,” as quoted by Hone in his Year-Book of 1838. The game was this: “He who at any time got the ball into his hands ran with it till overtaken by one of the opposite party, and then, if he could shake himself loose from those of the opposite party who seized him, he ran on; if not, he threw the ball from him, unless it was wrested from him by the other party, but no person was allowed to kick it. The object of the married men was to hang it, that is, to put it three times into a small hole in the moor, which was the ‘dool,’ or limit, on the one hand; that of the bachelors was to drown it, or dip it three times in a deep place in the river, the limit on the other; the party who could effect either of these objects won the game; if neither won, the ball was cut into equal parts at sunset. In the course of the play there was usually some violence between the parties; but it is a proverb in this part of the country, that ‘All is fair at the ball at Scone.’” This annual game is supposed to have been established in commemoration of the victory of a parishioner of Scone over an Italian braggadocio of chivalrous times; and every man in the parish was compelled to play. Thus, in this Perthshire game we seem to find the rough and rude instance of the original game in Scotland, and the first instance of compulsory football. It should further be remarked, that the same antiquary gives an account of an annual Shrove Tuesday football match between the married women of Inverness and the spinsters of the same parish, which, according to him, invariably resulted in the triumph of the married women. It appears, therefore, that the female elevens which occasionally appear in North Country football fields, are not without a respectable historical precedent for their acts. Still, it is pardonable to say that the game is not exactly suitable to their physical constitution; and even the sturdy lass of Inverness must have been somewhat out of place in the game which Waller describes with reasonable accuracy in the following lines:—

A game of similar character to “the ball at Scone” appears also to have been played yearly at Kingston-on-Thames on Shrove Tuesday, which, as we shall see later, continued an annual fixture until far into the present century.

Sunday was a great day for all sports and pastimes throughout the Tudor times; and it was long indeed before the Puritan reaction caused them to be entirely stopped on that day. There is an amusing extract from Thomas Cartwright’s Admonition to Parliament, which gives some material for the formation of an idea of the manner in which our forefathers spent the Sunday. It should be mentioned that the learned writer originally wrote with the object of showing that an established form of prayer was unsuitable for church service. “Among his arguments,” says the easily-satisfied historian, “is the following:—‘He,’ meaning the minister, ‘posteth it over as fast as he can galloppe; for eyther he hath two places to serve, or else there are some games to be playde in the afternoon, as lying for the whetstone, heathenishe dauncing for the ring, a beare or a bulle to be baited, or else a jackanapes to ride on horsebacke, or an interlude to be playde. And, if no place else can be gotten, this interlude must be plaide in the church.’” And, in order that a clear idea of the details of Sunday life may be obtained, the antiquary adds an extract from “The Pope’s Kingdom” (1570), translated from the Latin of T. Neorgeorgus by Barnaby Googe:—

Writings of this kind were abundant in the time of Elizabeth, and eventually became so influential as to cause that most prudent of stateswomen to issue a general proclamation enjoining a more strict observance of the Sabbath. It would be most erroneous, however, to trace in this proclamation any characteristic quality of Elizabeth other than natural prudence, for there have been few English monarchs, male or female, to whom the Puritan tenets were more distasteful at heart than they were to the peerless but somewhat out-spoken virgin queen. James I., for whom Strutt has a great admiration, repeated this declaration in general; but he, as a timid man, averse to muscular exercise, and an indifferent sportsman, had a rooted objection to football, which, as we have stated before, was not wonderful.

Enough has now been written to prove that the game of football is, in name at least, of extreme antiquity, and to give a general idea of its characteristics in early times. But it may not be amiss to examine these latter in more detail. It is to be noted in the first place that there appear in early days to have been hardly any rules; but it is nevertheless possible to discover certain general characteristics. The main principle of the game appears to have been, that a ball should be driven from one place to another; but as to the means appropriate to its conveyance, there would seem to have been a great difference. The men of Perthshire never, by any chance, kicked the ball; the Southerners kicked, carried, and struck it with their hands or with sticks.

But for any trace of what is now known as the Association game, in which almost the only method of propulsion of the ball allowed is by kicking with the feet, we look in vain in ancient times. It seems probable that such a game originated in schools, and was confined to them, until brought before the public as a pastime for men by school-boys from the great public foundations, who wished to continue their games after they had left school for the world. The real and substantial difference between the two games as at present played is, that in the Association game no collaring, and therefore no running with the ball, is allowed; so that it may be not unsafe to conjecture that the dribbling game was invented, or rather grew, in schools where young boys were not allowed to tear each others’ clothes and break each others’ bones in the intervals of school hours. But of the Association game we shall have more to say anon.

We think we have said enough of the history of the game of football in the days preceding the Great Revolution and the Puritan supremacy. This was a period in which the star of athleticism waned to an exceeding paleness; and there is no question that those who appreciate the benefits of innocent enjoyment in exercise of the body, owe a deep debt of enmity to the Roundheads. With their politics, their religion, their love of independence, and with many other points good and bad in their character, we have no concern in the present work.

The death of Charles on the scaffold, the history of the Long Parliament, Cromwell with his spot of blood upon his collar, the steeple-crowned hats, and the sad-coloured cloaks touch us not at all. But the influence which the Puritans exercised in determining the pastimes of the nation is a serious matter. From an athletic point of view, the Puritan creed is this—“Be always morose, always ponderous, absorbed in continual thought and everlasting sermonizing concerning your latter end. Now, if you play football or cricket, or indulge in any English pastimes, you will unquestionably forget your latter end, and will develop such a healthy energy as will be fatal to despondent bitterness of spirit, which makes the true Puritan.” The result was simple. Exercise was a waste of time, innocent pleasure an unwarrantable pampering of the flesh, an unholy coaxing of the old Adam. Now we all know the result of insufficient exercise to be derangement of the liver, the spleen, and all organs and functions of the body. Upon this follows loss of temper, which passes from the condition of casual irritability to that of unrelenting and constitutional rancour. Thus men of dispositions naturally bitter and gloomy, not only took steps to develop their naturally ungracious tendencies, but also sought to run the rest of the nation into the same mould. They did their endeavour to convert merry England,—for we were once, in very truth, the merriest of nations,—into a melancholy country; and it may well be believed that the Restoration was due as much to weariness of the Puritan discipline in matters of daily life and amusement, as to any strong political feeling. The rule of politics which the Puritans seem to have forgotten, is the practical one, that the first principle of good government is to keep the people who are governed in a good humour. The natural result of a system which inculcated bitterness of thought, fostered ill-humour, and encouraged conceit, was, that it should perish at the hands of the bitterness, the ill-humour, and conceit which it had itself engendered.