More Than A Game: The Story of Cricket's Early Years - John Major

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this made news, and the early newspapers – soon to be joined (in 1706) by the first evening paper, the London Evening News – lapped it up. Reports in the Post Boy, the Postman or the Weekly Journal were sparse, but then as now, trivia made good copy, and the size of bets laid and the rivalries between aristocrats were widely reported. Attractive games were advertised by sponsors, often innkeepers keen to attract a thirsty crowd, and tended to be between teams of eleven or twelve players, though there is no clue as to why that number was settled upon. In every (advertised) instance the match was arranged to accommodate a wager:

      These are to inform Gentlemen, or others, who delight in cricket playing, that a match of cricket, of 10 Gentlemen on each side, will be play’d on Clapham Common, near Fox-Hall [Vauxhall], on Easter Monday next, for £10 a head each game (five being design’d) and £20 the odd one.

      Such an advertisement, from the Post Boy of 30 March 1700, is typical, but even the ‘gentlemen’ players were not always regarded with respect. A burlesque poem of 1701 parodied a Tunbridge beau:

      It’s true he can at cricket play,

      With any living at this day,

      And fling a coit or toss a bar,

      With any driver of a car:

      But little nine-pins and trap-ball,

      The Knight delights in most of all.

      Conceiving like a prudent man,

      The other might his honour stain,

      So scorns to let the Publick see,

      He should degrade his Quality.

      ‘He should degrade his Quality’ – this was pure snobbery from the author, who evidently believed that cricket should remain a ‘peasant’s game’. But not all poems were written to mock. Five years later, in 1706, the far more elegant pen of William Goldwin published Musae Juveniles, a collection of poems in Latin, one of which, ‘In Certamen Pilae’, describes a cricket match, giving evidence of the nature of the contemporary game as well as confirming that it was played at Eton when he was a pupil there in the 1690s. Goldwin later became vicar of St Nicholas, Bristol, and his famous poem tells us much about early cricket. His lines reveal that batsmen had curved bats, and the ball was a leathern sphere, thus confirming that early cricket employed the leather casing for balls first adopted by the Romans nearly two thousand years earlier. The umpires (there were two) officiated whilst ‘leaning on their bats’, and the scorers ‘cut the mounting score on sticks with their little knives’. Batsmen could be caught out by a fieldsman who ‘with outstretched palms joyfully accepts [the ball] as it falls’. Finally, Goldwin refers to the ‘rustic throng’, thus telling us that cricket was a spectator sport from the outset, and that its first supporters were rural working men.

      While matches between ‘gentlemen’ were growing in popularity, more impromptu games were also thriving on common land at Chelsea, Kennington, Walworth, Clapham and Mitcham, as well as on rural grounds around the Weald. The rustic cricketers were not always welcome. As the Postman warned on 5 April 1705:

      This is to give notice to any person whatsoever, that they do not presume to play at foot-ball, or cricket, or any other sport or pastime whatsoever, on Walworth Common, without lease of the Lords of that Manor … as they will answer the same when they are sued at law for so doing.

      The name, Walworth Common, implies that it was common land, but the lords of that manor felt otherwise. They wished to discourage cricket, as did their allies the Church, who were only too happy to promote propaganda against it. A contemporary pamphlet recounted the tale of four young men unwise enough to play cricket on a Sunday. As they did so, a ‘Man in Black with a Cloven-foot’ rose out of the ground. The Devil, for it was said to be he, flew up into the air ‘in a dark cloud with flashes of fire’, but left behind him a very beautiful woman. Two of the players lost interest in the game and stepped up to kiss her. This was a bad move. The young men fell down dead: it was, after all, the Sabbath. Their companions, shocked at the result of such sin, ran home, appropriately to Maidenhead, where they lay in a ‘distracted condition’. The local minister prayed with them, and in church preached a sermon on the theme ‘Remember the Sabbath Day to Keep it Holy’ (Exodus 20, Verse 8). For good measure, he denounced cricket as a ‘hellish pastime’ – thus explaining to the congregation why the Devil was so attracted to it. At the inquest into the deaths of the two unfortunate youths, the coroner and the jury attributed their fate to ‘the last judgement of God, for prophaining his Holy Sabbath’. In cricket’s infancy, such poppycock resonated among the ill-educated peasantry. No one even considered a more likely cause of death: the players were struck by lightning, and the beautiful woman was a figment of the fevered imagination of a sunny day.

      More eminent men than these rustic boys found themselves the victims of pamphlet propaganda. In May 1712 a broadsheet, The Devil and the Peers, attacked the Duke of Marlborough and an unidentified peer for playing a single-wicket match in Berkshire. This was real villainy, for the match was on a Sunday – and for a wager of twenty guineas. The unidentified peer, ‘who went to Eaton School’, was most likely Marlborough’s son-in-law Francis Godolphin, known by his courtesy title Lord Railton. Godolphin won, but – for even hostile pamphleteers must fawn over a Duke – not before His Grace had ‘gave ’em several Master strokes’. Marlborough was, after all, a national hero, and Sunday or not, master strokes were master strokes. Despite his sycophancy to Marlborough, the sour old pamphleteer predicted that the ‘Sabbath-Breakers will not escape the Hands of Justice’. He was wrong: not even the Church dared to move against the Duke, who heavily outgunned minor officials, as well as the pamphleteer.

      No more with Birch, let Eton’s pupils bleed;

      No more with learned lumber stuff their head,

      Her rival fee! Like Nursery of Fools,

      Who practice Cricket, more than Busby’s Rules.

      Clearly, the aristocracy’s fascination for cricket was being reflected in the schools and universities to which they sent their children.

      Three early patrons stand above the rest: Edward Stead, a sponsor of Kentish cricket, and two sponsors of Sussex, the Duke of Richmond and Sir William Gage. Stead (1701–35) lived the proverbial ‘short life but a merry one’. In his teens he inherited large estates in Kent, but he soon set about losing his fortune at cards and dice, to which, along with cricket, he was addicted. ‘The devil invented dice,’ said St Augustine, but Stead was not listening. He was so reckless that at the age of twenty-two he was forced to mortgage some of his lands to repay his gambling debts and raise capital.

      By night Stead played the tables. By day he abandoned them for cricket, and formed his own team, ‘Stead’s Men’, or sometimes ‘Men of Kent’. Throughout the 1720s he arranged and played in many games – with mixed fortunes. On one occasion, Stead’s men were in a winning position when their Chingford opponents refused to finish the game. The cause of their refusal

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