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The Game of Cricket, in some rude form, is undoubtedly as old as the thirteenth century. But whether at that early date Cricket was the name it generally bore is quite another question. For Club-Ball we believe to be the name which usually stood for Cricket in the thirteenth century; though, at the same time, we have some curious evidence that the term Cricket at that early period was also known. But the identity of the game with that now in use is the chief point; the name is of secondary consideration. Games commonly change their names, as every school-boy knows, and bear different appellations in different places.

Nevertheless, all previous writers acquiescing quietly in the opinion of Strutt, expressed in his “Sports and Pastimes,” not only forget that Cricket may be older than its name, but erroneously suppose that the name of Cricket occurs in no author in the English language of an earlier date than Thomas D’Urfey, who, in his “Pills to purge Melancholy,” writes thus:—

“Herr was the prettiest fellow

At foot-ball and at Cricket;

At hunting chase or nimble race

How featly Herr could prick it.”

The words “How featly” Strutt properly writes in place of a revolting old-fashioned oath in the original.

Strutt, therefore, in these lines quotes the word Cricket as first occurring in 1710.

About the same date Pope wrote—

“The Judge to dance his brother Sergeants call,

The Senators at Cricket urge the ball.”

And Duncome, curious to observe, laying the scene of a match near Canterbury, wrote—

“An ill-timed Cricket Match there did

At Bishops-bourne befal.”

Soame Jenyns, also, early in the same century, wrote in lines that showed that cricket was very much of a “sporting” amusement:—

“England, when once of peace and wealth possessed,

Began to think frugality a jest;

So grew polite: hence all her well-bred heirs

Gamesters and jockeys turned, and cricket-players.”

Ep. I. b. ii., init.

However, we are happy to say that even among comparatively modern authors we have beaten Strutt in his researches by twenty-five years; for Edward Phillips, John Milton’s nephew, in his “Mysteries of Love and Eloquence” (8vo. 1685), writes thus:—

“Will you not, when you have me, throw stocks at my head and cry, ‘Would my eyes had been beaten out of my head with a cricket-ball the day before I saw thee?’ ”

We shall presently show the word Cricket, in Richelet, as early as the year 1680.

A late author has very sensibly remarked that Cricket could not have been popular in the days of Elizabeth, or we should expect to find allusions to that game, as to tennis, foot-ball, and other sports, in the early poets; but Shakspeare and the dramatists who followed, he observes, are silent on the subject.

As to the silence of the early poets and dramatists on the game of cricket—and no one conversant with English literature would expect to find it except in some casual allusion or illustration in an old play—this silence we can confirm on the best authority. What if we presumed to advance that the early dramatists, one and all, ignore the very name of cricket. How bold a negative! So rare are certain old plays that a hundred pounds have been paid by the Duke of Devonshire for a single copy of a few loose and soiled leaves; and shall we pretend to have dived among such hidden stores? We are so fortunate as to be favoured with the assistance of the Rev. John Mitford and our loving cousin John Payne Collier, two English scholars, most deeply versed in early literature, and no bad judges of cricket; and since these two scholars have never met with any mention of cricket in the early dramatists, nor in any author earlier than 1685, there is, indeed, much reason to believe that “Cricket” is a word that does not occur in any English author before the year 1685.

But though it occurs not in any English author, is it found in no rare manuscript yet unpublished? We shall see.

Now as regards the silence of the early poets, a game like cricket might certainly exist without falling in with the allusions or topics of poetical writers. Still, if we actually find distinct catalogues and enumerations of English games before the date of 1685, and Cricket is omitted, the suspicion that Cricket was not then the popular name of one of the many games of ball (not that the game itself was positively unknown) is strongly confirmed.

Six such catalogues are preserved; one in the “Anatomy of Melancholy,” a second in a well-known treatise of James I., and a third in the “Cotswold Games,” with three others.

I. For the first catalogue, Strutt reminds us of the set of rules from the hand of James I. for the “nurture and conduct of an heir-apparent to the throne,” addressed to his eldest son, Henry Prince of Wales, called the ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΟΝ ΔΩΡΟΝ, or a “Kinge’s Christian Dutie towards God.” Herein the king forbids gaming and rough play: “As to diceing, I think it becometh best deboshed souldiers to play on the heads of their drums. As to the foote-ball, it is meeter for laming, than making able, the users thereof.” But a special commendation is given to certain games of ball; “playing at the catch or tennis, palle-malle, and such like other fair and pleasant field-games.” Certainly cricket may have been included under the last general expression, though by no means a fashionable game in James’s reign.

II. For the second catalogue of games, Burton in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” “the only book,” said Dr. Johnson, “that ever took me out of bed two hours sooner than I wished to rise,”—gives a view of the sports most prevalent in the seventeenth century. Here we have a very full enumeration: it specifies the pastimes of “great men,” and those of “base inferior persons;” it mentions “the rocks on which men lose themselves” by gambling; how “wealth runs away with their hounds, and their fortunes fly away with their hawks.” Then follow “the sights and shows of the Londoners,” and the “May-games and recreations of the country-folk.” More minutely still, Burton speaks of “rope dancers, cockfights,” and other sports common both to town and country; still, though Burton is so exact as to specify all “winter recreations” separately, and mentions even “foot-balls and ballowns,” saying “Let the common people play at ball and barley-brakes,” there is in all this catalogue no mention whatever of Cricket.

III. As a third catalogue, we have the “Cotswold Games,” but cricket is not among them. This was an annual celebration which one Captain Dover, by express permission and command of James I., held on the Cotswold Hills, in Gloucestershire.

IV. Fourthly: cricket is not mentioned in “The compleat Gamester,” published by Charles Browne, in 1709.

V. “I have many editions of Chamberlayne’s ‘State of England,’ ” kindly writes Mr. T. B. Macaulay, “published between 1670 and 1700, and I observe he never mentions cricket among the national games, of which he gives a long list.”

VI. The great John Locke wrote in 1679, “The sports of England for a curious stranger to see, are horse-racing, hawking, hunting, and Bowling: at Marebone and Putney he may see several persons of quality bowling two or three times a week: also, wrestling in Lincoln’s Inn Fields every evening; bear and bull-baiting at the bear garden; shooting with the long bow, and stob-ball, in Tothill Fields; and cudgel playing in the country, and hurling in Cornwall.” Here again we have no Cricket. Stob-ball is a different game.

Nevertheless we have a catalogue of games of about 1700, in Stow’s “Survey of London,” and there Cricket is mentioned; but, remarkably enough, it is particularised as one of the amusements of “the lower classes.” The whole passage is curious:—

“The modern sports of the citizens, besides drinking(!), are cock-fighting, bowling upon greens, backgammon, cards, dice, billiards, also musical entertainments, dancing, masks, balls, stage-plays, and club-meetings in the evening; they sometimes ride out on horseback, and hunt with the lord mayor’s pack of dogs, when the common hunt goes on. The lower classes divert themselves at foot-ball, wrestling, cudgels, nine-pins, shovel-board, cricket, stow-ball, ringing of bells, quoits, pitching the bar, bull and bear baitings, throwing at cocks, and lying at ale-houses.”(!)

The lawyers have a rule that to specify one thing is to ignore the other; and this rule of evidence can never be more applicable than where a sport is omitted from six distinct catalogues; therefore, the conclusion that Cricket was unknown when those lists were made would indeed appear utterly irresistible, only—audi semper alteram partem—in this case the argument would prove too much; for it would equally prove that Club-ball and Trap-ball were undiscovered too, whereas both these games are confessedly as old as the thirteenth century!

The conclusion of all this is, that the oft-repeated assertions that Cricket is a game no older than the eighteenth century is erroneous: for, first, the thing itself may be much older than its name; and, secondly, the “silence of antiquity” is no conclusive evidence that even the name of Cricket was really unknown.

Thus do we refute those who assert a negative as to the antiquity of cricket: and now for our affirmative; and we are prepared to show—

First, that a single-wicket game was played as early as the thirteenth century, under the name of Club-ball.

Secondly, that it might have been identical with a sport of the same date called “Handyn and Handoute.”

Thirdly, that a genuine double-wicket game was played in Scotland about 1700, under the name of “Cat and Dog.”

Fourthly, that “Creag,”—very near “Cricce,” the Saxon term for the crooked stick, or bandy, which we see in the old pictures of cricket—was the name of a game played in the year 1300.

First, as to a single-wicket game in the thirteenth century, whatever the name of the said game might have been, we are quite satisfied with the following proof:—

“In the Bodleian Library at Oxford,” says Strutt, “is a MS. (No. 264.) dated 1344, which represents a figure, a female, in the act of bowling a ball (of the size of a modern cricket-ball) to a man who elevates a straight bat to strike it; behind the bowler are several figures, male and female, waiting to stop or catch the ball, their attitudes grotesquely eager for a ‘chance.’ The game is called Club-ball, but the score is made by hitting and running, as in cricket.”

Secondly, Barrington, in his “Remarks on the More Ancient Statutes,” comments on 17 Edw. IV. A.D. 1477, thus:—

“The disciplined soldiers were not only guilty of pilfering on their return, but also of the vice of gaming. The third chapter therefore forbids playing at cloish, ragle, half-bowle, quekeborde, handyn and handoute. Whosoever shall permit these games to be played in their house or yard is punishable with three years’ imprisonment; those who play at any of the said games are to be fined 10l., or lie in jail two years.”

“This,” says Barrington, “is the most severe law ever made in any country against gaming; and, some of those forbidden seem to have been manly exercises, particularly the “handyn and handoute,” which I should suppose to be a kind of cricket, as the term hands is still (writing in 1740) retained in that game.”

Thirdly, as to the double-wicket game, Dr. Jamieson, in his Dictionary, published in 1722, gives the following account of a game played in Angus and Lothian:—

“This is a game for three players at least, who are furnished with clubs. They cut out two holes, each about a foot in diameter and seven inches in depth, and twenty-six feet apart; one man guards each hole with his club; these clubs are called Dogs. A piece of wood, about four inches long and one inch in diameter, called a Cat, is pitched, by a third person, from one hole towards the player at the other, who is to prevent the cat from getting into the hole. If it pitches in the hole, the party who threw it takes his turn with the club. If the cat be struck, the club-bearers change places, and each change of place counts one to the score, like club-ball.”

The last observation shows that in the game of Club-ball above-mentioned, the score was made by “runs,” as in cricket.

In what respect, then, do these games differ from cricket as played now? The only exception that can be taken is to the absence of any wicket. But every one familiar with a paper given by Mr. Ward, and published in “Old Nyren,” by the talented Mr. C. Cowden Clarke, will remember that the traditionary “blockhole” was a veritable hole in former times, and that the batsman was made Out in running, not, as now, by putting down a wicket, but by popping the ball into the hole before the bat was grounded in it. The same paper represents that the wicket was two feet wide—a width which is only rendered credible by the fact that the said hole was not like our mark for guard, four feet distant from the stumps, but cut like a basin in the turf between the stumps; an arrangement which would require space for the frequent struggle of the batsman and wicket-keeper, as to whether the bat of the one, or the hand of the other, should reach the blockhole first.

The conclusion of all is, that Cricket is identical with Club-ball—a game played in the thirteenth century as single-wicket, and played, if not then, somewhat later as a double-wicket game; that where balls were scarce, a Cat, or bit of wood, as seen in many a village, supplied its place; also that “handyn and handoute” was probably only another name. Fosbroke, in his Dictionary of Antiquities, said, “club-ball was the ancestor of cricket:” he might have said, “club-ball was the old name for cricket, the games being the same.”

The points of difference are not greater than every cricketer can show between the game as now played and that of the last century.

But, lastly, as to the name of Cricket. The bat, which is now straight, is represented in old pictures as crooked, and “cricce” is the simple Saxon word for a crooked stick. The derivation of Billiards from the Norman billart, a cue, or from ball-yard, according to Johnson, also Nine-pins and Trap-ball, are obvious instances of games which derived their names from the implements with which they are played. Now it appears highly probable that the crooked stick used in the game of Bandy might have been gradually adopted, especially when a wicket to be bowled down by a rolling ball superseded the blockhole to be pitched into. In that case the club having given way to the bandy or crooked bat of the last century, the game, which first was named from the club “club-ball,” might afterwards have been named from the bandy or crooked stick “cricket.”

Add to which, the game might have been played in two ways—sometimes more in the form of Club-ball, sometimes more like Cricket; and the following remarkable passage proves that a term very similar to Cricket was applied to some game as far back as the thirteenth century, the identical date to which we have traced that form of cricket called club-ball and the game of handyn and handoute.

From the Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. lviii. p. 1., A.D. 1788, we extract the following:—

“In the wardrobe account of the 28th year of King Edward the First, A.D. 1300, published in 1787 by the Society of Antiquaries, among the entries of money paid one Mr. John Leek, his chaplain, for the use of his son Prince Edward in playing at different games, is the following:—

“ ‘Domino Johanni de Leek, capellano Domini Edwardi fil’ ad Creag’ et alios ludos per vices, per manus proprias, 100 s. Apud Westm. 10 die Aprilis, 1305.’ ”

The writer observes, that the glossaries have been searched in vain for any other name of a pastime but cricket to which the term Creag’ can apply. And why should it not be Cricket? for, we have a singular evidence that, at the same date, Merlin the Magician was a cricketer!

In the romance of “Merlin,” a book in very old French, written about the time of Edward I., is the following:—

“Two of his (Vortiger’s) emissaries fell in with certain children who were playing at cricket.”—Quoted in Dunlop’s “History of Fiction.”

The word here rendered cricket is la crosse; and in Richelet’s Dict. of Ant. 1680, are these words:

“Crosse, à Crosier. Bâton de bois courbé par le bout d’en haut, dont on se sert pour jouer ou pousser quelque balle.”

“Crosseur, qui pousse—‘Cricketer.’ ”

Creag’ and Cricket, therefore, being presumed identical, the cricketers of Warwick and of Gloucester may be reminded that they are playing the same game as was played by the dauntless enemy of Robert Bruce, afterwards the prisoner at Kenilworth, and eventually the victim of Mortimer’s ruffians in the dark tragedy of Berkeley Castle.

To advert to a former observation that cricket was originally confined to the lower orders, Robert Southey notes, C. P. Book. iv. 201., that cricket was not deemed a game for gentlemen in the middle of the last century. Tracing this allusion to “The Connoisseur,” No. 132. dated 1756, we are introduced to one Mr. Toby Bumper, whose vulgarities are, “drinking purl in the morning, eating black-puddings at Bartholomew Fair, boxing with Buckhorse,” and also that “he is frequently engaged at the Artillery Ground with Faukner and Dingate at cricket, and is esteemed as good a bat as either of the Bennets.” Dingate will be mentioned as an All-England player in our third chapter.

And here we must observe that at the very date that a cricket-ground was thought as low as a modern skittle-alley, we read that even

“Some Dukes at Mary’bone bowled time away;”

and also that a Duchess of Devonshire could be actually watching the play of her guests in the skittle-alley till nine o’clock in the evening.

Our game in later times, we know, has constituted the pastime and discipline of many an English soldier. Our barracks are now provided with cricket grounds; every regiment and every man-of-war has its club; and our soldiers and sailors astonish the natives of every clime, both inland and maritime, with a specimen of a British game: and it deserves to be better known that it was at a cricket match that “some of our officers were amusing themselves on the 12th June, 1815,” says Captain Gordon, “in company with that devoted cricketer the Duke of Richmond, when the Duke of Wellington arrived, and shortly after came the Prince of Orange, which of course put a stop to our game. Though the hero of the Peninsula was not apt to let his movements be known, on this occasion he made no secret that, if he were attacked from the south, Halle would be his position, and, if on the Namur side, Waterloo.”