Читать книгу More Than A Game: The Story of Cricket's Early Years - John Major, John Major - Страница 11

By the middle of the eighteenth century, cricket was poised for changes that would make it the game we know today. It was emerging from its infancy in a small world of contrast and paradox. The fortunate few lived pampered lives. A lady of means would dine in mid-afternoon before going out to the theatre, following which she would play card games at a friend’s house, at which dancing might begin at a late hour with the arrival of the male guests. Her male counterpart could be expected to breakfast late, possibly with friends, and then visit one of London’s two thousand or so coffee houses to gamble, read or discuss business and politics. He might shop before dining in the late afternoon and visit the theatre at around 6 p.m. Wife, mistresses or friends might occupy his evening. From such a society came the patrons of cricket.

But life was very different for most people. Incomes were dreadfully low. Half of all families in England lived on less than £25 per annum. The ‘nearly poor’ families of tradesmen and builders might have £40 a year with which to keep a large family, but £50 a year turned a family into consumers. Many families bought only secondhand clothing, thus enabling them to dress above their income. Clothes might make up half of a man’s net worth, for few owned houses or possessed material wealth. The limit of ambition for most was sufficient clothes and food, and a rented roof. Twenty people died each week of starvation in London. Life expectancy was under thirty-seven years for the population as a whole, but even less for Londoners, with their unhealthy diet and insanitary and overcrowded homes.

Against this background of such social inequality, the second wave of cricket patrons carried the game to a wholly new dimension. When their work was done, the great Hambledon teams had earned immortality and the MCC had begun its long domination of the game. These patrons were few in number, but their influence was lasting. Another Sackville, the third Duke of Dorset, and Sir Horace Mann were the fount from which Kentish cricket flourished, while the Earl of Tankerville was a prominent sponsor for Surrey.

Sir Horace, a Kentish landowner and lifelong devotee of the game, was the most amiable of all the early benefactors. In 1765, at the age of twenty-one, he inherited around £100,000 (about £10 million today) from his father, a clothier who had amassed his fortune from army contracts. Ten years later his wealth was supplemented when his uncle Horace Mann Senior – the long-time recipient of the acid- infused letters of Horace Walpole – made over his estates in return for an annuity. This act of generosity made the young Horace one of the richest landowners in Kent. He married Lucy Noel, a daughter of the Earl of Gainsborough, in April 1765, and rented Bourne Place, a delightful mansion midway between Canterbury and Dover. Among the first summer visitors welcomed by Horace and Lucy were the Mozart family from Austria, including their talented nine-year-old son Wolfgang Amadeus. Young Wolfgang, probably the greatest child prodigy in history, had already toured Europe, met Marie Antoinette, played at the royal Courts in London and Vienna, and composed minuets and symphonies. Upon hearing a pig squeal, his musical ear absorbed the noise and his infant tongue proclaimed, ‘G sharp.’

The Mozarts must have talked of music and their plans, and Horace, in imparting his own views, may have been lyrical about his preparations to build a cricket pitch in his grounds. At the age of twenty-two Horace founded the Bourne Club, and set the team up to play in Bourne Paddock, in front of his mansion. He laid out an attractive ground, described by John Burnby in 1773 as having ‘smooth grass … laid compleat … a sweet lawn, with shady trees encompass [ed] round’. It was a beautiful setting. Bourne Paddock was to host many famous cricket encounters and inspire great nostalgia among those who knew it. Almost seventy years later, in 1840, the Kentish Telegraph recalled whimsically that ‘In our hot days … this manly game met with great patronage at Bourne Place, and there are yet a few of our contemporaries left, who would give a little to throw away their cares and crutches, and renew those old recollections of Sir Horace and his merry friends.’

And merry they were, for the open-handed Horace and Lucy Mann entertained with style. Every match day was a great event. A game between teams styled ‘Hampshire’ and ‘All-England’ in August 1772 gives some flavour of the scene. A large ring was formed beyond the boundary, where booths offered food and drink. Seats and benches were set out to enable spectators to enjoy the game in comfort, and grandstands were erected for the elite, who included many prominent figures of the county. It must have been a magical occasion, with fifteen to twenty thousand spectators on the first day. The match lasted two days, each of seven hours’ duration, with ‘England’ winning a hard-fought game by one wicket. One attraction for the crowd was that cricket was developing ‘stars’, and in this game two of the greatest, whom we shall meet later, were in the opposing teams: ‘Lumpy’ Stevens caused astonishment by clean-bowling John Small, which according to the Kentish Gazette ‘had not been done for some years’.

Not all games were on such a grand scale. Between the opening of the new ground and 1771 the Bourne Club played all over Kent, as far afield as Cranbrook, Wrotham, Leigh, Dartford and Tenterden; that they endured the difficulties of travelling such distances by horse and cart is a tribute to the enthusiasm of the players and the growing popularity of the game. In May 1768 Mann took his team to London for a five-aside game at the Artillery Ground, where they were beaten by Lord John Sackville after a two-day contest. One month later, on 10 June, the Bourne Club travelled to Westerham and lost to a combined Westerham and Caterham team by 14 runs: this game is memorable insofar as it was the first time that the full score of an eleven-a-side game was published in a newspaper, the Kentish Post of 11 June.

The interest of the press reflected the rising interest of the public. Bourne Paddock was becoming famous. A ‘numerous and genteel company of spectators’ was there on 28 and 29 August 1771 for a game against Middlesex and Surrey. The popular enthusiasm for cricket was so great that a competing event, a benefit for the actress Mrs Dyer, had to be postponed – which, no doubt, caused her intense frustration.

Apart from Mann’s liberality, a further reason for the popularity of games at Bourne Paddock was that, year upon year, he engaged the most eminent cricketers to play in his team. An early acquisition was Richard Miller,* who made his first known appearance against ‘22 of Dover’ in 1771. John Burnby regarded Miller as ‘of England’s cricketers, the best’. He was a batsman, famous for scoring 95 for Kent against Hampshire in 1774, which remained Kent’s record score for nearly fifty years. John Nyren, the most celebrated chronicler of cricket’s early days, remembered him as ‘a beautiful player, and always to be depended upon; there was no flash – no cock-a-whoop about him, but firm he was, and steady as the pyramids’.

A later arrival was James Aylward, son of a Hampshire farmer, who played for his own county until 1779, and in 1777 batted from 5 p.m. on Wednesday to 3 p.m. on Friday to score 167 against England – at the time the highest score ever made. He is shown on the scorecard as batting at number ten, but in fact he opened the innings: the scorecard is a tribute to social class – gentlemen first, professionals next and rustics last. Aylward was a rustic. He played for Mann for four years from 1780, until he became landlord of the nearby White Horse inn and was awarded catering rights at Bourne Paddock; he continued thereafter as both player and caterer. He also served Mann as bailiff, a post for which he was, Nyren observed, ‘but ill qualified’.

A few years after Aylward’s arrival, John Ring, one of the best batsmen of the day, was added to Mann’s team’s strength. Ring was short – no more than five feet five inches – thickset, and played in Bourne Paddock for many years before an accident at cricket practice cost him his life. Apparently his brother George was bowling to him when a ball reared and broke his nose. While recuperating he caught a fever and died. Other lesser-known figures such as the May brothers – Dick the bowler and Thomas the batsman – also spent time in Mann’s employ: spectators were rarely without famous figures to attract them to Bourne Paddock.

The genial Horace Mann had other preoccupations in the early summer of 1772. His uncle, Horace Mann Senior, was installed as a Knight of the Bath, and his nephew acted as his proxy while he was overwhelmed with ceremonies. Young Horace organised a magnificent ball in his uncle’s honour and, extraordinary though it may seem today, was awarded a knighthood for his work as deputy to his uncle. His wealth and social position no doubt aided his preferment. The contemporary diarist John Baker notes Horace’s knighthood with no surprise at its cause, and then goes on to paint a vivid picture of the general atmosphere at a game of cricket on 23 July 1772:

to cricket match at Guildford between the Hamilton [he means Hambledon] Club … and Sir Horace … Buller of ‘White Hart’ had a very good stand with benches above one another over his booth … the booth below had so many ladies and gentlemen we could not get seats … but I found a small booth where we had a good dinner and good cider and ale.

Baker returned the next morning, but the second day was less satisfactory:

Rode to cricket match before ten, began at half past ten … Dined today at Butlers [possibly a misprint for Buller, or some other proprietor] booth; no ladies but one only – who was in Stand in brown riding habit. Much worse dinner than in little booth yesterday and ordinary half crown and pay for liquors (with waiters and all it came to a crown) and the whole with better dinner and better liquors [was] but half crown yesterday.

As Baker’s postscript shows, he was not alone in his irritation at having to pay more money for a less satisfactory meal:

Yesterday, Mrs Cayley complained, the ladies – though invited – were all called on for a crown for their ordinary and one shilling for tea. At which, they were surprised and offended, thinking they were all at free cost from the invitation.

Bourne Paddock raised no such hackles. In July 1773 a grandstand was erected for a Kent vs Surrey match, won comfortably by Surrey, and Sir Horace’s popularity inspired two poems in his honour. In ‘Surry Triumphant’, John Duncombe described his performance at the wicket:

At last, Sir Horace took the field,

A batter of great might,

Mov’d like a lion, he awhile

Put Surrey in a fright.

He swung,’ till both his arms did ache,

His bat of season’d wood,

’Till down his azure sleeves the sweat

Ran trickling like a flood.

As Sir Horace scored only 3 and 22, and Surrey won by 153 runs, the poem is a little over the top – but perhaps Sir Horace’s hospitality flowed through the poet’s veins, and much may be forgiven for that. If so, it flowed through other veins too. John Burnby wrote in ‘The Kentish Cricketers’ (1773):

Sir Horace Mann, with justice may

Be term’d the hero of the play

His gen’rous temper will support

The game of cricket’s pleasing sport.

And few there are that play the game

Which merit a superior name

He hits with judgment, throws to please

And stops the speedy ball with ease.

The clue to this sycophancy may lie in the poet’s tribute to ‘gen’rous temper’, since Sir Horace’s highest known score was 23, and his five innings that season yielded a mere 44 runs. We may surmise that the two poets were not dog-lovers, for they make no mention of the fact that at Bourne Paddock, people ‘were desired to keep their dogs at home, otherwise they will be shot’.*

In 1774, fate cast a shadow over the idyllic life of the Manns. The year started well for Sir Horace: his growing prestige earned him membership of the famous committee that revised the laws of cricket at the Star and Garter (see page 104), and at the age of thirty he was elected the Member of Parliament for Maidstone. But any hopes of combining sport and politics were soon cast aside: Lucy was taken ill, and Sir Horace moved his family to the warmer climate of the Continent, at the home of his uncle in sunny Florence. But Lucy’s health did not improve, and after three years’ absence from his new constituency Sir Horace offered his resignation. It was not accepted. Lucy’s condition worsened, and she died in February 1778. The grief-stricken Sir Horace did not return home until November of that year. Lucy had been the love of his life, and he would never remarry.

On his return to England he sought solace in his other great love, cricket, but no longer as a player. Sir Horace played in only one more game, scoring 0 and 1 for Six of Kent against Six of Hants at Moulsey Hurst in August 1782. He did however resume his role as patron and benefactor, sponsoring a five-aside game against the Duke of Dorset and hosting a Kent–Surrey game at Bourne Paddock, both in June 1779, before returning to Italy. For the next eight years this lost and restless soul was a constant traveller, and as Horace Walpole noted in 1783, ‘he makes no more of a journey to Florence than of going to York races’.

During Sir Horace’s spells in England, Bourne Paddock was a lively place due to cricket and his continued largesse. When ‘Hampshire’ with Lumpy Stevens played ‘All-England’ for a thousand guineas in July 1782, one spectator, Lady Hales – a near neighbour – wrote to her friend Susan Burney:

Tomorrow Sir Horace Mann begins his fetes by a great cricket match between His Grace of Dorset and himself, to which all this part of the world will be assembled … many out of compliment to Sir Horace, who is never so happy as when he has all the world about him, and as he gives a very magnificent Ball and Supper on Friday, it would not be polite to attend that – without paying a compliment to his favourite amusement.*

This letter speaks well of Lady Hales’s sensitivity, and paints a vivid picture of the occasion. ‘All this part of the world will be assembled’, and Sir Horace ‘is never so happy as when he has all the world about him’, whether it be for the game itself or his post-match entertainment. But Lady Hales was wrong in one respect: Sir Horace and the Duke of Dorset were backing ‘All-England’, leaving Hampshire gentlemen to back their own county.

It seems that Sir Horace attempted to offset his loneliness following the loss of Lucy with these great events: certainly his reputation for hospitality grew in the 1780s, and his good nature and open-handed way of life earned him many admirers. After a Kent against All-England game in August 1786, the Kentish Gazette reported not only that a multitude had attended the game, enlivened by ‘the very splendid appearance of ladies’, but that

the very generous and liberal hospitality so conspicuous at Bourne House, does infinite honour to the very respectable and benevolent owner who, whilst he is patronising in the field the manly sport of cricket, is endeavouring to entertain his numerous guests with the most splendid entertainment in his house.

The Kent–All-England game was an annual event and a social highlight. It was repeated in August 1787, with the usual post-match ball (on this occasion in a new room built for the purpose) to which all the principal families of the county were invited. Among the guests was the Marquess of Lansdowne, who as Lord Shelburne had been Prime Minister a few years earlier.

When his uncle died in 1786 Sir Horace inherited a baronetcy, together with the family seat at Linton Park. Four years later he left his beloved Bourne, the house and the cricket ground that had provided him with so much happiness over the years, and moved to Linton. But Linton failed to capture his heart as Bourne had done, and Sir Horace lived there only briefly before offering it to his daughter and son-in-law. Thereafter, he divided his time between far smaller homes at Egerton and Margate.

Politics re-entered his life. Sir Horace had retired from the Commons in 1784, but in 1790 he was re-elected for the constituency of Sandwich, which he would represent for the following seventeen years. Cricket, however, was a passion he couldn’t assuage, and at leisure in Margate he once again turned to arranging matches as well as watching them. He helped promote clubs, and was a prominent member of the newly formed Marylebone Cricket Club (see page 106), and when Kent played the MCC at Lord’s in August 1791 the Kentish Chronicle noted that Sir Horace was a spectator and ‘remained the whole day at the ground with his book and pencil’ – presumably either scoring or, just possibly, noting wagers. On 20–22 July 1807, at a game between twenty-three of Kent and thirteen of England at Penenden Heath, near Maidstone, it was recorded: ‘that old amateur of the bat, Sir Horace Mann, was present every day and dined at the ordinary, which was sumptuously furnished and well attended’ (for more on this match, see pages 128–9).

His cricketing afterlife was not easy: his open generosity exceeded the means with which he could subsidise it. As early as 1767 his uncle was worrying, and with good cause, that he would dissipate his fortune. By the 1780s he was wagering huge sums on matches, borrowing from relatives and raising money against the security of the Linton estate. By 1800 he was heavily in debt to local traders and farmers. As an old man, in 1808, he was declared bankrupt.

His enthusiasm for the game never dimmed, and John Nyren, writing several decades later, recalled Sir Horace at a match at Hambledon, ‘walking about, outside the ground, cutting down the daisies with his stick – a habit with him when he was agitated’. It is a lovely image, and one with which we might leave the life of the greatest, and most amiable, of the early benefactors. Horace Mann’s kind and generous spirit had done much to promote the early growth of the game. His contribution was immense.

Sir Horace was not the only patron presiding over the growth of late-eighteenth-century cricket: both the Earl of Tankerville (1743– 1822) and the Duke of Dorset (1745–99) – the third in the great line of cricketing Sackvilles – helped build its popularity.

Tankerville, an old Etonian introduced to cricket at school, inherited his earldom at the age of twenty-four. He was, according to Nyren, ‘a close and handsome man, about 5' 8'' in height’, with a lively temper that was not always kept in check. After a fracas with a coachman in 1774 he was rebuked in the St James’s Chronicle as ‘renowned for nothing but cricket playing, bruising and keeping of low company’ – a harsh judgement for a man who was at the time Chairman of the East India Company’s Court of Directors. Three years earlier he had married Emma, daughter of Sir James Colebrooke, and settled at Mount Felix, ‘a large plain edifice of no architectural pretensions whatever’ in Walton-on-Thames. Tankerville was a keen sportsman, and maintained a cricket ground at Byfleet that was suitable for practice but inadequate for formal games: these he staged at Laleham Burway or Moulsey Hurst, both of which were within easy reach of Mount Felix. Although never a great player, he was an important sponsor of cricket, most notably of Surrey.

He first appears as a cricketer on the eve of his marriage, playing for the Cobham Club against a Mr Vaughan and the Dorking Club in a series of three matches in August and September 1771. Tankerville lost the series, watched by a great multitude of spectators who thronged the fields and refreshment marquees to gamble large sums on the outcome. Notwithstanding that defeat he was a successful batsman who ‘distinguished himself in the field in a capital manner’.*His highest score of 45 for England against Hampshire at Guildford in 1777 may seem modest these days, but was creditable on the wickedly uneven pitches of the time.

As a patron, Tankerville employed two of the finest contemporary cricketers to boost his team. Edward ‘Lumpy’ Stevens (1731–1819), son of an innkeeper, was discovered by a cricket-loving brewer, a Mr Porter, and as his skill blossomed he became Tankerville’s gardener at Mount Felix in the early 1770s. Lumpy, as described by Arthur Haygarth, was a ‘thick made round shouldered man’, widely regarded as the premier bowler in England, who according to John Nyren had a capability to ‘bowl the greatest number of length balls in succession … of all men within my recollection’. Tankerville once won a bet of £100 (about £10,000 at today’s prices) that Lumpy could hit a feather placed on the pitch at least once in four balls. Such accuracy made him a legend, and he was deadly on unprepared wickets to any batsman with poor technique. Lumpy remained a top-class bowler well into his fifties, and did not retire until 1789. When he died thirty years later, his old patron Tankerville, in a gesture that speaks well of him, erected a gravestone for Lumpy in Walton-on-Thames churchyard; the two had shared many cricketing exploits, and Tankerville had not forgotten his protégé. Nor had others: the Duke of Dorset commissioned a portrait that can still be seen at Knole. Lumpy was an early cricketing legend.

Another of Tankerville’s cricketing employees, William Bedster, was a batsman who served as his butler for around five years from 1777. He first appears, misreported as ‘Belsted’, at a game between England and Hampshire at the Artillery Ground. Tankerville had received a severe blow below his knee and was forced, in ‘excruciating pain’ to quit the field. Bedster fielded in his stead and – the laws being elastic at the time – was then permitted to open the batting with Tankerville, who had clearly recovered. They put on 49 between them, a large opening stand for the time. After leaving Tankerville, Bedster played for Berkshire and Middlesex before becoming landlord of a public house in Chelsea.

As Tankerville was a leading member of the aristocracy, his sporting preoccupation was not universally well regarded at a time when England was at war with the American colonists. An anonymous tract published by John Bew lampoons Tankerville and Dorset. The author was scathing about the two men he calls ‘The Noble Cricketers’, and introduces the insulting poem with the sarcastic observation that it is ‘a testimonial of my regard’. In his preamble he urges the two peers to ‘For God’s sake, fling away your bats, kick your mob companions out of your house and, though you can do your bleeding Country no service, cease to accommodate insult on [top of] misfortune, by making it ridiculous.’ After this pugnacious invective, the poem continues:

O Muse, relate the mighty cares that fill

The Souls of D..s.t and of T..k..v.lle,

From glory far, at Folly’s shrine they fall,

Leag’d with the wond’rous Wight, yclept Sam Small,*

With Lumpy, Horseflesh** and a score beside,

Scum of St Giles’s, and their Lordships pride

Where mob-encircled, midst th’ Artillery ground

Pimps, Porters, Chimney Sweepers grinning round,

Far from the Cannon’s roar, they try at cricket,

Stead of their country, to secure a wicket,

There, mad for praise, they glutton-like devour

The nauseous flattery, which those Panders pour.

And lo! their ragged partners of the field

Seem as well pleas’d the Bat, as Blade, to wield,

As well on Cakes, as Carnage to regale.

Whether Tankerville saw these lines is uncertain, but he retired from cricket in 1781 to enter politics, where his behaviour soon aroused controversy. At first all went well: he took a junior position in Lord Shelburne’s brief administration, lost it under his successor the Duke of Portland, but returned to government when the twenty-four-year-old William Pitt the Younger became Prime Minister in December 1783. Two years later, in an attempt to expose corruption, Tankerville

accused a colleague, Lord Carteret, of using public funds to buy his own personal household effects, but could not sustain the charge, and was dismissed from the government. When a subsequent report, ironically requested by a relative, Charles Grey, later the author of the Great Reform Act, cleared Carteret of wrongdoing, it ended Tankerville’s hopes of a successful political career. He consoled himself by amassing one of the world’s largest collections of seashells.

After his retirement from politics Tankerville emerges only intermittently into the public gaze, most famously in 1794, when he fought a duel with Edward Bouverie – and wounded him – for making unwelcome advances to his daughter Ann. His cricketing past was not forgotten, however. In 1801 the Morning Herald printed lines that, despite having few claims to literary greatness, must have been a welcome antidote to the cruel caricature John Bew had published so many years earlier:

To serve the King for pure good will,

The motto is of Tankerville,

It is a sentimental tenet

Of the illustrious house of Bennet

May each, to his succeeding son,

Act always as the Father’s done

Perhaps you’ll think ’tis here no matter

That he’s an independent batter,

And, at the famous game of cricket,

Keeps the best guard before the wicket,

When match’d against the playing men

He beats nine of them out of ten

Making, if at the work he labours,

More runs and notches than his neighbours.

Tankerville’s time at the heart of cricket was far shorter than Horace Mann’s, but his role in promoting the game, especially during Mann’s frequent absences abroad, earns him an honoured place among those who embedded cricket as part of the English way of life. In 1805, when he was in his early sixties, he was described by Thomas Creevey as a ‘haughty, honourable man … communicative and entertaining with a passion for clever men, of which he considers himself to be one, though certainly unjustly’. Lady Tankerville, the former Emma Colebrooke, fares rather better: she was credited with being very clever, and with having ‘as much merit as any woman in England’, but ‘like her Lord, was depress’d and unhappy’. If true, it is a sad postscript.

The third Duke of Dorset, John Frederick Sackville (1745–99), was the finest cricketer of the later patrons. He was an instinctive ball-player, with a good eye and a fine temperament. His talent was evident at Westminster School, where he was regarded as ‘the best [player] of his time at cricket and billiards’. He also played tennis and fives to a high standard. As a man, he was well-made, five feet nine inches in height with a habit when at ease, according to John Nyren, of standing with his head tilted to one side. Despite his social position he was an empty-headed playboy, ‘not in possession of any brains’, according to contemporary opinion. But he was a kindly man. Like many aristocrats, he had assets aplenty but not much ‘ready money’. Nonetheless, he spent lavishly, sometimes on the poor, but more often on his own amusements.

Although not handsome, Dorset had pleasant features, an agreeable manner and a natural dignity. But Nathaniel Wraxall, in his Posthumous Memoirs (1836), concurs with his critics that he did not possess ‘superior abilities’ – except at cricket, where eye and wrist coordination made him the finest gentleman all-rounder of his time. Twice in 1773 he bowled out six batsmen in a single innings, and one year later hit 77 runs for Hampshire at the Vine, Sevenoaks. These were prodigious feats for the time, and John Burnby, the cricket- loving poet, was on hand to record them in ‘The Kentish Cricketers’:

His Grace the Duke of Dorset came,

The next enroll’d in skilful fame,

Equal’d by few, he plays with glee,

Nor peevish seeks for victory.

His Grace for bowling cannot yield,

To none but Lumpey in the field:

And far unlike the modern way,

Of blocking every ball at play,

He firmly stands with bat upright,

And strikes with his athletic might,

Sends far the ball, across the mead,

And scores six notches for the deed.

Burnby’s description suggests that Dorset, then twenty-eight, was an attacking batsman who stood upright at the crease with his bat raised from the blockhole, much as Victor Trumper and Graham Gooch were to do many years later. And if it is a true judgement that he yielded at bowling to ‘none but Lumpey’, he was certainly a pre-eminent all-rounder.

In 1768, as Lord John Sackville, he organised a game between the old boys of Westminster and Eton – for whom the diarist William Hickey was longstop. It was not one of Hickey’s finest hours. He failed to attend the pre-match practices, despite being informed of them, and awoke on the morning of the match with a nasty hangover in ‘a cheap lodging house near Drury Lane’. The contest was for a wager of twenty guineas a player, with the amount to be given by the losers to the poor of the parishes of Moulsey and Hampton – a generous gesture. Any player failing to turn up was to forfeit the same sum.

Hickey, feeling wretched but anxious to save his guineas, hurried home to change his clothes, collect his mare from the stables, and embark at a gallop to Moulsey Hurst. The wickets were due to be pitched at eleven o’clock, and Hickey had to ride twelve miles in forty-five minutes or forfeit his money. He made it with moments to spare, but noted that he had ‘a horrible headache and sickness’, the classic symptoms of over-indulgence. Having arrived barely in time to play, he did not distinguish himself, although after a hard match his team did win. It should have been less of a struggle. Hickey recalled:

the Westminsters insisted we should have won easier had I played as usual, but I was so ill at the time that I let several balls past me that ought not to have done so … When we adjourned – a magnificent dinner was prepared, no part of which could I relish, even Champagne failed to cheer me; I could not rally … The moment the bill was called for, and our proportions adjusted and paid, I mounted my mare, and in sober sadness gently rode to my father’s [house] at Twickenham.

One warms to Hickey for his unsparing account of his own shortcomings.

After succeeding to the dukedom at the age of twenty-four Dorset embarked on a ‘grand tour’ of Europe, and for two years played no cricket at all. He was accompanied by his mistress, Nancy Parsons, a strikingly attractive woman who either enjoyed cricket or thought it prudent to pretend to do so; in any event, upon her return from the tour she attended matches with the Duke, to the delight of the cricketers. Apart from her physical attractions, Nancy had something of a reputation – she was formerly the mistress of the Duke of Grafton – and the players were keen to gawp at her. John Nyren relates a tale which illustrates the easy relationship that the players enjoyed with the leading patrons.* Apparently his father Richard was eager to meet the lovely Nancy, and the Earl of Tankerville, who was present at a Hambledon game, cheerfully engaged her in conversation so that Nyren could join him. It was a kindness that Richard Nyren never forgot.

From early in his cricketing career the Duke of Dorset was a focus of interest to spectators. In a game in which Kent beat a combined Sussex and Hampshire team at Guildford in August 1772, great sums were wagered upon whether the Duke or an opponent, the cricketing vicar at Westbourne, the Reverend Edward Ellis, would score most runs: it was the Duke, who scored 21 in a single innings, while the Reverend Ellis made 16 in two innings.

As well as being a fine cricketer himself, Dorset employed top-class players to strengthen his teams. One, John Minchen, alias Minshull (1741–93),

was a capital hitter, and a sure guard of his wicket … however, not an elegant player; his position and general style were both awkward and uncouth; yet he was as conceited as a wagtail, and with his constantly aping what he had no pretensions to, was, on that account only, not estimated at the price at which he rated his own merits.

That at least was the view of Nyren, who was not an admirer of Minshull’s behaviour, even though he grudgingly conceded his cricketing ability. And well he might, for Minshull scored the first recorded century in cricket, 107 for Dorset’s XI against Wrotham on 31 August 1769. Six weeks later Dorset engaged him, nominally as a gardener, to work at Knole for eight shillings a week. Minshull remained at Knole for only three years, but during that time he cemented his reputation, as the Kentish Gazette reported on 8 August 1772:

On Wednesday last a game of cricket was played [at the Vine, Sevenoaks] between eleven gentlemen of Sevenoaks and eleven of Wrotham and Ightham, which was determined in favour of the former by 56 notches. In this match a remarkable bet of thirty shillings to a guinea was laid, that the united parishes got more notches than the noted Minshull … but the famous batsman got 58, and the united parishes but 56.

Minshull was a fine acquisition, but not the only one to catch the Duke’s eye. A more engaging personality was the labourer William Bowra,* engaged as a gamekeeper at Dorset’s manor at Seal and Kemsing in 1778 for five, later seven, shillings a week. This modest sum secured a fine talent whom the Duke would cheer on while he was batting – ‘Bravo, my little Bowra!’ was a familiar cry from the boundary at the Vine. After the Duke’s death Bowra remained a favourite of the Duchess, and she brought him to Knole, where for the rest of his life he worked as a gamekeeper.

In the 1770s the rules and tactics of cricket were continuing to take shape. Dorset, Tankerville and Mann were at Sevenoaks in July 1773 when Richard Simmons, reputed to be the finest fieldsman of his day, stood sufficiently close to the Hampshire batsmen to intimidate them. A fortnight later the Duke was playing at Laleham Burway when his opponents attempted to do the same to him. The Duke complained, but to no effect until one of his attacking strokes felled a close fieldsman. Such aggressive fielding was set to become an everyday part of cricket.

Another important change in the game emerges in the diary of Richard Hayes of Cobham, who watched Dorset play at Sevenoaks Vine for All-England against Hampshire on 25 and 26 June 1776. Hayes records the Duke bowling the opening over – ‘Four balls. Not a run got’ – though Hampshire went on to score the respectable total of 241. All-England scored a mere 105 and lost heavily, with the Duke bowled for a paltry 6 runs. Hayes’s diary contains two little gems of information. He wrote: ‘They talk of having 3 stumps,’ and noted also that ‘by playing with broad bats … it is a hard matter to hit the wicket’. Both these anomalies were soon to be corrected, and the later patrons would play a part in doing so.

The concept of three stumps has an air of modernity about it, but cricket still had its savage days. When Kent played Essex at Tilbury Fort in 1776, a row arose over the eligibility of one of the Kent team. Essex declined to play, and a fight ensued. One of the Kent men shot and killed an Essex player, and in the chaos that followed an old invalid was bayoneted and a soldier shot dead. Essex then fled, and the Kent team made off in boats. In a violent age, even such incidents did not diminish the enthusiasm for the game.

By 1777 Dorset had long since parted from the delectable Nancy Parsons, who married Viscount Maynard. Dorset’s new mistress was a fellow aristocrat, the Countess of Derby, which created a great scandal. This did not bother either of them. The Countess decided to arrange a ladies’ cricket match, and Dorset is said to have been the author of a letter published in a society magazine, although if so, his purpose in writing it seems ambiguous:

Ladies, while you are eagerly pursuing the round of court pleasures and cutting out new figures for fashion, permit me to add to your entertainments a novelty of no less singularity than those which of late so amply diverted your little society. Divert yourselves, then, for a moment of much importance, cast aside your needles and attend to my essay.*

After this patronising opening paragraph – ‘cutting out new figures for fashion … your little society … cast aside your needles’ – which would have earned him social crucifixion in the twenty-first century, the Duke – if indeed he really was the author – raises his game and entices women to become involved in cricket:

Though the gentlemen have long assumed to themselves the sole perspective of being cricket players, yet the ladies have lately given a specimen that they know how to handle a ball and the bat with the best of us, and can knock down a wicket as well as Lord Tankerville himself. The enclosed drawing, which I thought proper to make for your information is a true representation of a cricket match played lately in private between the Countess of Derby and some other Ladies of quality and fashion, at the Oaks in Surrey, the rural and enchanting retreat of her Ladyship.

Having baited the hook, the author of the letter comes to the point, but cannot resist putting his tongue in his cheek:

What is human life but a game of cricket? And, if so, why should not the ladies play at it as well as we? Beauty is the bat, and men are the ball, which are buffeted about just as the ladies’ skill directs them. An expert female will long hold the ball in play: and carefully keep it from the wicket; for, when the wicket is once knocked down, the game of matrimony begins and that of love ends …

If Dorset, who had a lengthy string of mistresses, was indeed the author, as claimed by the magazine, it is unlikely that the double entendres were an accident. We shall never know whether the letter was a genuine attempt to encourage women to take up cricket, or a vehicle to poke fun at those scandalised by the Duke’s relationship with the Countess.

When France intervened to support the American colonists in the War of Independence, Dorset became a Colonel in the West Kent militia, and his participation in cricket began to fall away. After the war ended, in 1783, he was appointed Ambassador to the Court of Versailles, and he never again played top-class cricket. But his enthusiasm did not wane. While in France he played casual games for pleasure, despite a pompous rebuke from The Times, which frowned upon ‘his associations with the inferior orders in pursuit of his favourite amusement, cricket’. The Times was in a grouchy mood: apart from castigating Dorset, it noted that horse-racing in Paris was on the wane and cricket was replacing it, but that the French ‘could not equal the English in such vigorous exertions of the body’. The French were soon to show on the battlefield that their exertions were formidable. It was an early example of what, 150 years later, Churchill would say was ‘The Times’ ability to be wrong on every major issue’.

Throughout his five years as Ambassador, Dorset spent a part of every summer in England, where he was able to enjoy some cricket. He carried his enthusiasms back to Paris, and supposedly presented Queen Marie Antoinette with a cricket bat that she ‘kept in her closet’.* He finally returned home to England in 1789, amidst the first stirrings of the French Revolution but before the violent disruption became widespread. The real terror lay ahead. Myths arose about Dorset’s homecoming. Serious historians** have alleged that his ambassadorial role ‘ended in farce’, when he invited Tankerville to bring a cricket team to play in Paris to placate anti-British feeling. At Dover, it is said, they ‘encountered Dorset scurrying ignominiously the other way’. An earlier version suggests that he wrote not to Tankerville, but to William Yalden, then landlord of the Cricketer inn at Chertsey, an old Surrey cricketer, and that it was his eleven at Dover.† In fact the whole story is nonsense. Dorset did not ‘scurry ignominiously’ from Paris. He had written to the Foreign Secretary, the Duke of Leeds, in July 1789, seeking permission to return. As he had warned other British residents in Paris to leave, it seems unlikely that he would at the same time have invited a cricket team to France. It makes a good story, but it is fiction. Dorset left France on 8 August 1789, four weeks after the outbreak of the Revolution. He reached Dover on 10 August, continued to Bourne Place, dined with Horace Mann and, to celebrate his homecoming, spent the following day watching Kent play Surrey.

After his return Dorset married an heiress less than half his age – he was forty-six – and soon afterwards ceased to support cricket. The news of the bloody events in France, including the execution of Marie Antoinette, preyed on a mind already predisposed to melancholy. Sadly, the wayward Sackville gene that had robbed his forebears of their sanity was active once more. During the 1790s Dorset became progressively more morose and penny-pinching, in sharp and unhappy contrast to the gay enjoyment of his free and easy youth. He died a virtual recluse in 1799. His cricketing glories were long behind him, but not forgotten: he left the Vine ‘for the use of cricketers’.

On their village greens the players may have noted these great events, but their attention would have been diverted by the more peaceful revolution that had taken place in their smaller world of cricket. The immortal Hambledon Club had been formed, enjoyed its greatest days, and set a shining example for all cricket to follow. To ensure that it did so, the game now acknowledged a governing body that would wield its authority for the next two centuries: the Marylebone Cricket Club had been formed.

* Not ‘Joseph’, as is sometimes stated; nor, as is also claimed, was he employed by Dorset or Tankerville.

* Presumably the dogs, not the people.

* Quoted in Lord Harris and F.S. Ashley-Cooper, Kent Cricket Matches (1929).

* G.B. Buckley, Fresh Light on Eighteenth Century Cricket (1935).

* Poet’s error: he means the batsman John Small.

** Poet’s error: he means Hogsflesh, a bowler from Hampshire.

* It was published in the Town, 21 October 1832, but censored from Nyren’s book The Young Cricketer’s Tutor (1833).

* Pronounced ‘Borrer’. He is sometimes confused with a locksmith of the same name.

* Quoted in the Sporting Magazine, 1803.

* According to The Times, 17 December 1789, it was preserved as a ‘relique’ (sic) of British prowess.

** e.g. David Underdown in Start of Play, pp.153–4.

† Arthur Haygarth, Cricket Scores and Biographies, Vol. 1 (1862).