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

wife, only twelve years old at the time of her marriage, had such a wild temperament that by the age of fifteen her husband had removed her from Court to Hurstmonceaux Castle in Sussex. In June 1677, no doubt seeking a few quiet hours, the Earl drew £3 from his accounts to attend ‘the crekitt match at Ye Dicker’, a stretch of common land near to the castle.

      It seems the young Countess was not seduced by cricket, because later that same year she deserted her husband to join her mother in Paris. Here life looked up for her when she was seduced by the British ambassador, the future Duke of Montagu. In the early 1680s she returned to her husband, with whom she had little in common. A few years later Sussex supported William of Orange in the 1688 Revolution, while she sided with her uncle, the deposed King, James II, then in exile at St-Germain. It must have been a real Jack Spratt marriage, for their views differed on every matter. Nor would she have been pleased when the Earl’s extravagance and gaming losses compelled him to sell his estates.

      But, so far as we know, their relationship never led to ‘riot and battery’. This was the conviction obtained against Thomas Reynolds, Henry Gunter and a widow, Eleanor Lansford, for battering Ralph Thurston while ‘being only spectators at a game of cricket’. The cause of the assault is not known, but it is most likely to have been a dispute over a bet: if so, they would have been wiser to have paid up, as did Sir John Pelham, Bart, who lost 2s.6d. in ‘a wagger about a cricket match at Lewis’ in 1694.

      Five years later, philosophers were muscling in on the game. The text in 1699 of The World Bewitched, by Edward Ward, contains a dialogue between two Astrologers and the Author, in which it is asserted that: ‘Quoits, cricket, nine-pins, and trap-ball will be very much in fashion, and more tradesmen may be seen playing in the fields, than working in their shops.’

      As the seventeenth century came to a close, the British navy was carrying traders, missionaries and the game of cricket to many parts of the world – a naval chaplain on HMS Assistance, Henry Teonge, recorded a game of ‘crickett’ near Aleppo as early as 6 May 1676. In England, the game was widening its appeal. Cricket was moving beyond its base camp around the Weald. London, then the greatest city in Europe, was beginning to appreciate it. Noble families were beginning to patronise the game. Spectators, gamblers and publicans welcomed it as a vehicle for their interests. The press – then, as now, with a London bias – newly freed from censorship, was on hand to publicise it, or more typically the antics of prominent supporters and the size of their bets on matches.

      For cricket, money was to be the root of all progress. As the eighteenth century dawned, most of the wealth of England was in the hands of a small number of families, who by and large had few time-consuming responsibilities and ample leisure in which to enjoy their good fortune. The age of the patron was not far away.

* In this he echoes the eighteenth-century historian Joseph Strutt, who suggested that ‘the manly exercise of cricket’ originated from club-ball.

* He later produced an epic on the Crusade entitled Antiocheis.

** Macaulay was never short of opinions. When he was a precocious toddler, his aunt enquired after a minor ailment and drew the reported response: ‘I thank you, Madam, for your solicitous inquiry. The agony has somewhat abated.’

* The relevant extract from the deposition is shown in full, as the works of some early historians, notably H. S. Altham’s classic A History of Cricket (1926), contain errors of transcription. Altham also refers to Derrick as ‘Denwick’.

* But see Coriolanus, Act I, Scene I: ‘What’s work, my Countrymen in hand?, Where go you, with bats and clubs?’ The game is unlikely to be cricket.

* At a conference at Hampton Court between Anglicans and Puritans in January 1604, James backed the Anglican bishops. Shortly afterwards, a hundred Puritan ministers were dismissed from their livings.

* The children were William Martin, Richard Martin Junior and Raphe West, playing with two friends, Edward Hartley and Richard Slaughter.

* Some historians mistakenly attribute the damning of Maidstone to Wilson himself rather than Swinnock, for example David Underdown in Start of Play (2000), and Derek Birley in The Willow Wand (1979) and A Social History of Cricket (1999).

** If he was imprisoned for libel, the offending denunciation should have been written. However, I can find no record of it: possibly ‘libel’ was used sloppily, and the offence was actually slander.

* For example, in 1637 the Star Chamber sentenced three Puritan writers to imprisonment and to have their ears cropped for libelling bishops.

* In Ireland, the Major-General banned ‘krickett’. ‘Sticks’ and ‘balls’ were ordered to be burnt by the common hangman; the players were not.

* See Leonard Hector, ‘The Ghost of Cricket Walks the Archives’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, Vol. IV, No. 7, 1973, pp.579–80.

** Quoted in, for example, Derek Birley’s excellent The Willow Wand (1979).

* A term especially associated with the Sevenoaks–Tonbridge area until the nineteenth century.

* Although it has been, for example in H.S. Altham’s The History of Cricket and Ashley Mote’s The Glory Days of Cricket (1997).

** Nonetheless, the date of 1685 appears in David Underdown’s Start of Play.

       2

       The Early Patrons

      In 1700 England was on the eve of an empire that would carry to the world a language, a system of law, a parliamentary tradition and, more prosaically, team sports – above all cricket. The growth of this empire was not preordained, the product of no grand design, but the natural consequence of free trade, self-interest and fear. Its roots reached far back, but we may usefully trace it from the birthdate of cricket – the early age of Elizabeth.

      From that time, trade had played a crucial role in extending British ambitions. Imports of sugar, coffee and tobacco from Virginia, and tea – by the mid-seventeenth century on its way to popularity – all whetted the appetite for more trade and greater overseas possessions. Industry and commerce expanded steadily, but by 1700 England was still only a middle-ranking power. By contrast, France had an economy twice the size of England’s and a population nearly four times as large, whereas India