Foot-ball

AFTER the downfall of the Puritan Government and of the supremacy of Puritan opinions, as every student of history well knows, the Maypoles were set up again in the country, and simple folk resumed their dancing and the like rustic sports. But it is rather the fashion of concise historians to represent changes of this kind as more rapid than they are in actual fact; and it is probably nearer the truth to say that the Puritan habits and feelings which came over England in the earlier part of the 17th century have never really lost their hold of the nation, and are even in this day dying hard. Certain it is, at any rate, if any certainty can be gathered from the literature which is, as it were, the crystallized thought of an age, that until the present generation athletic sports have never so much formed a part of the life of the English people as they did before the Puritan epoch. The direction of a straw is sufficient to show which way the wind is blowing; and the apparently insignificant fact that references to football and other early English games are rare in the literature of the eighteenth century, is almost sufficient in itself to prove the decrease in the popularity of the game. Some old towns and districts clung to the ancient and simple form of the game, and cling to it still up to the present day; but it will not be too much to say, that from the date of the Restoration until the time of the great athletic revival in the last thirty or forty years, the popularity of the ancient game of football was steadily declining, though never in any danger of complete extinction. Let us give the generation who abandoned their ardour for football their due, and say that they became more serious, more earnest, and less brutal in their sports. The fact, however, of the decline in the popularity of the game remains the same, and with the chronicling of that fact we must remain content. So early as 1675 we learn from a satire that the apprentices of London were no longer content with a game of football on Shrove Tuesday or any such holiday, but preferred the by no means modern amusement of a political demonstration. Says the anonymous satirist of the ’prentices,—

Still the city youths were not always indulging in demonstrations about this time, and a number of games of football were played about the metropolis after the Restoration. In 1665 Pepys records in his diary that on January the 2nd, the streets were full of footballs, it being a great frost. Probably the footballers of that time did not play football for choice when the ground was frozen; but a long frost meant a long holiday and cessation from business in those good old times, and the ’prentices therefore got an opportunity of playing the game which they would not have had in open weather. We hear too of a match played in 1681 between the servants of King Charles II. and those of the Duke of Albemarle, which the king witnessed himself and was much delighted at. A few years later, there was enough football in London to attract the notice of a French visitor, M. Misson, who published his views of England at the end of the 17th century in a book brought out at Paris in the year 1698, and entitled “Mémoires et Observations Faites par un Voyageur.” We need hardly wonder that the Frenchman in his description of the game should be unable to appreciate its exact significance. Simple as the game undoubtedly was in these days, there was probably a little more “science” in it than the visitor to our shores could comprehend. These are his words: “En hiver le Football est un exercice utile et charmant. C’est un balon de cuir, gros comme la tête et rempli de vent: cela se balotte avec le pied dans les rues par celui qui le peut attraper: il n’y a point d’autre science.” From this very short allusion in a long work some very interesting pieces of information are to be derived. First, it appears that at this time the football had definitely assumed somewhat of its present shape: it was a leather ball, full of wind, as large as a man’s head. Next we find that football was definitely regarded by a foreigner as a regular winter sport in England, and that it was still played as an ordinary matter of course in the streets or public places. A third inference may possibly be drawn from the passage. M. Misson speaks of no running or collaring, but merely of kicking with the feet. Here at last might the dribbler think that we find a definite allusion to the original dribbling or Association game. After consideration, however, we think that a different explanation of the passage is probably to be given. From the description we have quoted, it seems probable that the writer had not seen a genuine football match, but merely boys or men kicking a football about the streets for amusement,—in modern phraseology “having a punt-about.” Whichever interpretation of the passage, however, be taken, it seems not improbable that it was from the custom of punting a ball about in a confined space for the sake of obtaining warmth and exercise upon a cold day, without any running with the ball or rough horseplay, that the proficiency in dribbling and kicking was first obtained and the capacities of the dribbling game for affording a genuine sport full of skill and excitement first discovered. On the whole, however, there is little doubt that the Association game must be regarded as the product of the great public schools of the kingdom, and not so much the national sport of the lower classes.

The Spectator, which in other respects forms a mine of wealth for procuring information as to the customs and opinions of England in the beginning of the 18th century, is, unfortunately for our purpose, almost entirely silent as to the game of football. There is, however, an illusion in No. 161 (Sept. 4th, 1711). A supposed country correspondent, a dweller in the neighbourhood of the estate of Sir Roger de Coverley, writes to The Spectator in town an account of a country wake. First the writer finds “a ring of cudgel-players, who were breaking one anothers’ heads in order to make some impression upon their mistresses’ hearts.” “I observed,” he goes on, “a lusty young fellow who had the misfortune of a broken pate, but what considerably added to the anguish of the wound, was his overhearing an old man who shook his head and said, ‘that he questioned now if black Kate would marry him these three years.’ I was diverted from a further observation of these combatants by a football match which was on the other side of the green, where Tom Short behaved himself so well that most people seemed to agree it was impossible that he should remain a bachelor until the next wake. Having played many a match myself, I could have looked longer on the sport, had I not observed a country girl.”... And so, forsooth, the Spectator’s country correspondent gives up the further contemplation and probably the further description of a manly game, in order that he may gaze at a country wench, to the great detriment and loss of knowledge of the football student of the present day. O woman, woman, how many omissions are to be laid to thy charge through the vanity and curiosity of man when he gazeth upon thee! At any rate, however, we gather from the passage that in the 18th century the country people played at football in holiday time on the village green, that country gentlemen joined in the matches, and that the most skilful players gained the favour and encouragement of the fair sex, and were not destined to remain bachelors for ever. Verily, ye gentlemen of Blackheath, times are changed, but not manners.

In writing however of the 18th century, the learned Strutt is the safest guide, for his compilations and researches into matters of ancient sport take us up to the end of the 18th century. From Strutt we learn how the game was gradually being abandoned throughout the country about the year 1800. “Of late years,” he says, “it seems to have fallen into disrepute, and is but little practised.” We see, however, from his amusing description which follows, that by his time it had become a field sport, and was played upon a regular football field, and doubtless with touch-lines and goal-lines. Unfortunately he makes no mention of the number of players who are usually engaged in the contest, and gives us little or no hint of any rule, or any explanation of what was considered scientific play. “When,” he says, “a match at football is made, two parties, each containing an equal number of competitors, take the field, and stand between two goals, placed at the distance of eighty or an hundred yards the one from the other. The goal is usually made with two sticks driven into the ground about two or three feet apart. The ball, which is commonly made of a blown bladder and cased with leather, is delivered in the midst of the ground, and the object of each party is to drive it through the goal of the other, which being achieved the game is won.... When the exercise becomes exceeding violent, the players kick each others’ shins without the least ceremony, and some of them are overthrown at the hazard of their limbs.” He garnishes his simple account with some elegant extracts from Barclay and Waller, such as—

and again—

From the time of Strutt, whose book was published in 1801, until the great revival of the game, about fifty years later, there is little to chronicle in the history of the game, which was played at almost all the great schools; but, as regards the rest of the world, only popular in certain localities where great matches were played by those who adhered to ancient customs. In fact, we find from the mention made of the game by Hone, the author of the “Every Day Book and Year Book,” that football for men was looked upon as more or less of a relic of antiquity in England. There was the celebrated match at Kingston on Shrove Tuesday, at Corfe Castle in Dorsetshire, the equally celebrated antiquity at Derby, at which city, as reported by Glover, its learned historian, a match had been played every year on Shrove Tuesday since A.D. 217, when a troop of British warriors thrust some Roman troops out of the gates. But what Hone states of England seems never to have applied to Scotland and a few northern counties of England, where the game has enjoyed an uninterrupted popularity among the inhabitants of the country. But perhaps a better idea can be obtained by giving some of Hone’s extracts. On page 152 of his “Year Book” (1852), he quotes, from Hutchinson’s “History of Cumberland,” an account of the football match at Bromfield, on Shrove Tuesday. The scholars of the free school in that place were allowed by custom to “bar out” the master for three days; after a mock fight with popguns and harmless missiles, a truce was solemnly concluded, one of the terms of which was, that a football match should be permitted, as well as some cock-fighting. “After the cock-fighting was ended,” says the account, “the football was thrown down in the churchyard, and the point then contended was, which party should carry it to the house of his respective captain—to Dundraw perhaps or West Newton, a distance of two or three miles. The details of these matches were the general topics of conversation among the villagers, and were dwelt on with hardly less satisfaction than their ancestors enjoyed in relating their feats in the border wars.” A quotation of an indigenous song is also given, which runs as follows:—

An account of a similar game at Kingston in the year 1815, is given in the “Every Day Book,” vol. i., p. 245.

A correspondent writes to the Editor to say that when travelling by the Hampton Court coach to Kingston on Shrove Tuesday, he was told that it was “Football Day,” and “was not a little amused to see, upon entering Teddington, all the inhabitants securing the glass of their front windows by placing hurdles before them, and some by nailing laths. At Twickenham, Bushy, and Hampton Wick they were all engaged in the same way. Having to stop a few hours at Kingston, I had an opportunity of seeing the whole custom.... At about 12 o’clock the ball is turned loose, and those who can kick it. I observed some persons of respectability following the ball: the game lasts about four hours, when the parties retire to the public-houses.”... The writer goes on to say that the corporation of Kingston tried to put a stop to the practice; but the judges confirmed the right to the game.

Another correspondent, whose letter is published on page 374 of vol. ii. of the same book, describes how at that time (viz. 1827), a game of football was played every Sunday afternoon by Irishmen, upon an open space at Islington. The game commenced at three, and lasted until dusk, men of one county, as a rule, playing against men of another. The same writer goes on to say that when he was a boy he was accustomed to play football on a Sunday morning in the “church-piece” before church-time, in a village in the West of England; but from the tone of the letter it appears very evident that the writer looked upon football at that day as a game more of the past than of the present.

In Scotland, however, football in this age was still a national pastime, and extensively patronized by the upper classes. In 1815 we read of a great football match being played at Carterhaugh in Ettrick Forest, between the Ettrick men and the men of Yarrow; the one party backed by the Earl of Home, and the other by Sir Walter Scott, then Sheriff of the forest. The latter wrote a couple of songs in honour of the occasion, from one of which we quote a verse,—

It is perhaps scarcely necessary to quote the lines from the “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” of the same poet, when, in the truce between the English and Scottish armies, sports were indulged in:—

But independently of these extracts, there are many allusions through Scott’s works which testify to the acknowledged popularity of football in Scotland in the lifetime of the great novelist.

Perhaps we cannot do better than conclude our account of the football of the past before the days of the Rugby Union and Association rules by referring to the ancient game which is still played at Derby on Shrove Tuesday at the present, though perhaps played with less zest since the lusty youths of the city have had plenty of opportunities of enjoying the game to the top of their bent on other occasions, and since too we live in an age which has more respect for the privileges and feelings of peaceable householders than its predecessors. At Derby there has been from time immemorial a match at football on Shrove Tuesday, between the rival parishes of All Saints and St. Peter. The game is started in the market-place, and the St. Peter’s goal is a gate some miles away, while the wheel of a water-mill, distant about as far, is the goal of the All Saints’ division; and the game is over when the ball has been taken to either goal. Rules of the game there are none; and all that is needed is for one party, by force or by stratagem, to get the ball up to the adversary’s goal; to effect which object, détours are made round streets and alleys, and the river often crossed by swimming with the ball. Here indeed is a survival of one of the ancient sports of merrie England, where blows are given and taken in good humour, and “all is good play, and never attorney or coroner troubled for the matter.” Nor is Derby by any means the only place where such a game is still played. In the Midlands, the North, the South, and the West it survives in holes and corners of old England; and although we who have learnt the game of football in other days may prefer a good match with picked sides on the regulation field of play and under organized rules, yet we should regard with veneration the more simple sport from which has been derived the more elaborate game which it was our delight to play in youth, and which it may be our delight to watch in old age. We must reserve for another chapter the important task of showing how, issuing from its home in the public schools, where it had for generations found a welcome shelter, the game of football has developed once more in our days into a national sport.