by Ian Mortimer
In order to join in with a game during the Restoration, you’ll need to be aware of some basic differences. There is normally just the one wicket and one batsman. The bat is curved, like a long-toed hockey stick. The bowler bowls underarm and aims to get the leather-clad ball through the wicket, which has just two stumps and a crosspiece. The ball may be rolled along the ground or it may bounce but, as the wicket is quite low, so too will be the delivery. If you’re in bat, you must run to the bowler’s crease and back to your own wicket and tap the umpire’s staff, in order to score a run. Any number of players may be on the field – it is not limited to eleven aside – and there are no pads, gloves, helmets or any set costume. There are no organised teams: you just turn up and play when the captain asks you to do so. Finally, women do not play high-stakes matches alongside men. They are expected to play the old game, stool-ball, from which cricket developed (see below). If they do insist on playing cricket, it is normally at the instigation of some indignant cricket captain’s daughter.26
FENCING
Fencing is still one of the accomplishments that form part of a young gentleman’s education. In these days of duelling, that is just as well. Men go to fencing schools to learn how to fight and they practise in open fields with sticks. Most public fencing displays, however, are not between gentlemen, but between working men competing for prizes. Fights are put on in theatres and inns so that gentlemen can place bets on the outcome. Schellinks goes to the Red Bull playhouse in May 1662 to see a fight between a butcher’s man and a porter: they don’t have the requisite weapons so they borrow swords from the gentlemen present: ‘it was dreadful to watch,’ comments the artist.27 Turn up at the New Theatre near Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1663 and you too can see fencers lacerating each other for the entertainment of the cheering crowd. Pepys goes along to spectate on 1 June and comments:
it was between one Mathews, who did beat at all weapons, and one Westwicke, who was soundly cut several times both in the head and legs, that he was all over blood. And other deadly blows they did give and take in very good earnest, till Westwicke was in a most sad pickle. They fought at eight weapons, three bouts at each weapon. It was very well worth seeing, because I did till this day think that it has only been a cheat; but this being upon a private quarrel, they did it in good earnest; and I felt one of their swords, and found it to be very little, if at all blunter on the edge, than the common swords are. Strange to see what a deal of money is flung to them both upon the stage between every bout. But a woeful rude rabble there was, and such noises, made my head ache all this evening.28
FOOTBALL
David Wedderburn is a schoolmaster in Aberdeen who writes a book, Vocabula, in 1633 to teach his pupils Latin by way of everyday expressions. The basic idea is nothing new: schoolmasters have been doing this for centuries. Wedderburn’s stroke of genius is to include a section on the terms that his pupils might use on the football field. At first, sales of the book are slow – unsurprisingly, as no one is allowed to play football during the Commonwealth period – but after the Restoration, both the game and the book gain in popularity. Perhaps more use could be made of this method by modern teachers – promoting not only Latin, but also international understanding on the football pitch? I look forward to the day when I walk past playing fields and hear shouts of Praeripe illi pilam si possis agree (Tackle that fellow, if you can) and Nisi cavesiam occupabit metam (If you don’t look out, he will score).
Football has been around for a good many years by 1660 and it has now acquired some unwritten rules. Teams play in a closed field that has a gate at each end, and each gate is a goal. The teams must have equal numbers and when someone kicks the ball over the hedge, thus putting it out of play, it must be fetched and kicked (not thrown) back in from where it went out. You may not simply kick another player in the shins; you have to make some attempt to play the ball. If you catch the ball on the full, without it bouncing first, you may make a mark with your heel; from that spot you may kick the ball without fear of being tackled.29
You will come across places where football is still banned. Although Winchester permits its boys to play it, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge most certainly do not. Elsewhere, after the fall of the Commonwealth, many villages start happily playing football again with their neighbours every Sunday. Some Puritans still call it breaking the Sabbath, but more forward-thinking people realise there is less evil in playing football than in seeing young men in the alehouse. Monsieur Misson notes that the London youths play football up and down the streets in winter and explains to his readers that it is ‘a charming exercise’.30 Other foreigners do not find it charming. One Swiss traveller, having seen the windows of London houses and carriages smashed by football-playing youths, is shocked when the players, hearing the complaints of householders and passengers, simply laugh at them.31
GOLF
Golf is an expensive game. The feather-stuffed leather balls are whacked so hard that they easily lose their shape or split apart. You normally require one new ball per hole per player, so at 4d per ball, a round of golf across eighteen holes will cost you 6s in balls alone. The clubs, too, tend to break: each club lasts about ten holes. Iron-headed clubs are likely to cost you 2s each.32 Of course, you can pay much more than this. On his visit to Scotland in 1679, James, duke of York, plays a round of golf. John Douglas of Edinburgh accordingly supplies a gross of top-quality golf balls at 5d each, costing a total of £3; he also provides sufficient ‘sticks’ for four players for a further £3 9s 2d.33
As it happens, that round has a claim to be the first international match between England and Scotland. The duke has an argument with a couple of his English-born noble attendants about whether golf is an English game or a Scottish one. The Englishmen’s claim is not without foundation: Chamberlayne’s list of English games includes golf; moreover, the English have been playing a similar game, stow-ball, for centuries (see below). But the duke, being of Scottish descent, stoutly defends the Scots’ claim. And being who he is, he doesn’t try to settle a historical question by asking a historian but decides it should be settled by a match. Thus he seeks a suitable Scottish partner and is told about John Patterson, a cobbler, who is the local champion. Thus it is that a duke and a cobbler set about defending Scottish honour. They defeat the upstart English lords, and that is that. If only all historical questions were answered so easily.
HORSERACING
Horse racing costs a fortune – from the purchase or breeding of the horses to their training and stabling, veterinary bills, saddles and bridles and the price of merely travelling to and entering a race. Charles II spends £10,000 a year just stabling his horses. But ‘the sport of kings’ is even more expensive if you really are the king, as you have to entertain your guests and visiting dignitaries during the races, and provide food and drink of the highest order. Moreover, in 1660 the royal palace at Newmarket is in ruins – destroyed by the Puritans, who also tried to wipe out the breeding of racehorses. Charles thus has to rebuild the sport from scratch.
It takes him six years to get Newmarket properly up and running again as a great social event. Races recommence in 1663, and three years later Charles lays out the Round Course, to be run every October. He draws up a set of twenty articles or rules specially for this race: jockeys have to weigh less than 12 stone; they may not pull each other off or hit each other; they may not be servants or grooms; the entry fees of the horse that comes second are to be paid by the horse that comes last, and so on. All this may not sound unusual, but producing a written set of rules is unprecedented. Almost every other sport or game has acquired its rules gradually over the years and has never written them down; no royal authority dictates how you must play chess, for instance, or football, golf or cricket. Most sports will not have a set of written rules until the next century.
The king’s initiative immediately finds favour with the aristocracy. The pattern of twice-yearly meetings established by the king at Newmarket is quickly followed at Epsom. L
ondoners also make the journey out to Banstead Downs in Surrey to watch the racing there. Studs develop specialist breeds of racehorses and by the time Monsieur Misson visits England in 1697, many are able to complete a traditional 4-mile course in sixteen minutes (in case you are wondering, the modern world record is half that). He watches one horse run 20 miles in fifty-five minutes. John Aubrey claims to know of a horse by the name of Peacock that can cover the 4 miles of the Salisbury Race in a little over five minutes.34 Even though this time is not reliable it is evident that truly fast horses are to be found, despite the best attempts of the Puritans to wipe them out. Aristocrats accordingly reserve their largest and most ambitious bets for this sport, laying down stakes of up to £2,000 on a single race.35
HUNTING AND HAWKING
For many people the heyday of hunting is past. Wild boar have long since been hunted to extinction, and deer hunting is on the wane as more and more land is enclosed for agriculture. Most of all, the art of hunting with hawks is rapidly dying out. The earl of Bedford still keeps birds of prey: in 1671 he spends a total of £51 14s on birds, including £15 for a lanner and £8 for a goshawk.36 The king too hunts with birds of prey from time to time. But, generally speaking, the art of falconry is fading fast.
One reason for this is the rise of fox hunting. Only a few rich men can come together to hunt with their birds of prey, but many people can ride in pursuit of a fox and enjoy the thrill of the chase. Being a large group of people, there is a strong social side to this form of hunting too: the Bilsdale Hunt in Yorkshire, established in 1668, is just one of several organised hunts that are set up in this period. Another reason for the decline in hunting with birds of prey is the growing popularity of guns among the rich. As a result of the Game Act of 1671, you must have an income of £100 per year to hunt with a gun, so the use of one becomes a status symbol. Guns are also easier to keep than birds, and a marksman can take a more personal interest in the kill than he can by merely letting loose a well-trained bird of prey.
PELL-MELL
Pell-Mell, or Pall-Mall, is a game like croquet. It comes to England in the reign of Charles I and finds favour with the aristocracy, who head to the Pall-Mall court on the south side of St James’s Square, in London. Discontinued during the Commonwealth period, the game is restored to its former glory in 1660. It is played on a long, narrow enclosure with an arched hoop at either end. The players take turns striking the boxwood ball until they hit it through both hoops, with the one who does so first being declared the winner. Like most Restoration games, it would be tedious if it weren’t for the dangerously high bets placed on each match.
RUNNING
Although competitive running must be one of the oldest sports of all, and is frequently mentioned in texts from the ancient world (just think of fleet-footed Odysseus in the Iliad or the original Olympic games), people don’t think of it as a sport. But that changes in this period – and you can guess the reason why: gambling. Often two gentlemen will bet on their champion runners, just as they would on their horses. Pepys watches a ‘foot race’ in Hyde Park in August 1660 between an Irishman and an Englishman called Crow, who was once Lord Claypole’s footman (a servant who runs alongside his master’s coach). They run three times around the park (a total distance of about 12 miles) and Crow wins by more than two miles. Obviously being a footman is great training. Three years later, the king is present to watch a famous race on Banstead Downs in Surrey, between a man called Lee, who is the duke of Richmond’s footman, and Tyler, a famous runner. The bets are all on Tyler winning but, again, the footman comes home first.37
It would be wrong to suggest that all the competitive running in the country is the result of gambling. We’ve already come across ‘smock races’ in which women undress to their smocks and run races for the prize of a new garment or a silver spoon. There are also old team games still being played in some parts of the country. Schellinks comes across a ‘run’ in Kent in the summer of 1661: teams of twenty men each gather in two corners of a level field and play what amounts to a complicated form of tag in front of several hundred spectators.38 But none of these local traditions and games develop sets of rules or encourage the pursuit of excellence. Ironically, then, it is the vice of gambling that gives rise to the virtuous sport of athletics.
STOOL-BALL
Stool-ball – not be confused with stow-ball (see below) – is a traditional game not unlike cricket. The stool is the wicket. The teams are normally all-female but in some places the competition takes place between teams of young men and women, with the reward being a tansy – the flavoured egg pudding we encountered in chapter 9. However, as people do not wager large sums on the game, it does not come to much wider attention. It remains a ball game played among milkmaids and the boys who fancy them – or at least fancy their tansies.
STOW-BALL
Also known as stop-ball, this is very much like golf in that it is played with clubs or ‘sticks’ and hard, feather-filled balls. John Aubrey is of the opinion that it is only played in North Wiltshire, North Gloucestershire and part of Somerset, but in fact it is much more widely known: John Locke refers to it being played in Tothill Fields, in Westminster.39 The difference between golf and stow-ball is that in golf the players try to sink a ball down a series of holes, whereas in stow-ball they hit out from a mark and set out for a distant pole, taking it in turns to hit the ball around it and back to the starting point. It can completely kill a conversation; a good striker of the ball will be hundreds of yards ahead of his opponent in a short while. Golf, on the other hand, requires some finesse to be displayed every few hundred yards, not just pure striking power. Thus players remain in proximity to one another and conversation can be maintained. And, most importantly in the Restoration period, golf gives gentlemen eighteen opportunities to bet, not just one.
TABLES
This is not actually a game in itself; rather, the word ‘tables’ denotes the board we use for playing backgammon, in conjunction with a set of dice. At this time people do play backgammon but they also play many other games besides, using the same tables. Charles Cotton mentions eight in his Complete Gamester: verquere, grand trick-track, Irish, backgammon, tick-tack, doublets, sice-ace and ketch-dolt. However, his explanations of the rules will leave you a little confused. Here is his instruction for ketch-dolt:
The first throws and lays down from the heap of men without the tables, what is thrown at it might be sice-deuce. If the other throw either sice or deuce, and draw them not from his adversary’s tables to the same point in his own, but takes them from the heap and lays the ace down, he is dolted and loses the game, or if he but touch a man of the heap and then recall himself, the loss is the same.
Got that? No, nor have I. Stick to backgammon.
TENNIS
Forget about lawns and cucumber sandwiches: tennis in this period is exclusively of the indoor sort that we know today as real tennis or royal tennis. The ball is served on to the roof of the penthouse that runs along the left-hand side of the court and it can be played off the walls as well as the penthouse roofs. There are winning boxes called galleries that allow a point to be won instantly. It is a remarkably complicated game – especially when you consider that a ball bouncing twice on the server’s side does not necessarily lose him the point but sets up a series of chases, which he can win later in the game by having the ball bounce twice closer to the back of the court than the second bounce of the ball he missed to set up the chase. Are you with me? It makes Charles Cotton’s description of tables look straightforward. But the game is popular with the rich and that is what counts.
WRESTLING
Wrestling needs little explanation. You’ll find it going on at fairs and in all sorts of open-air locations around the country. In London, if you just step beyond the wall out into Moorfields or go to the old Bear Garden on Bankside, you’ll be bound to see a bout in progress. The umpire, or ‘vinegar’, throws two leather belts into the ring: the two contestants strip down to their breech
es or drawers, take up the belts and put them on above the waist. No striking below the belt is permitted, but kicking your opponent’s legs away is allowed.40 And that’s just about all you need to know.
There are two reasons to get excited about the wrestling matches, besides the action itself. First, there are the long-standing rivalries, such as that between the men of Devon and Cornwall, or those of the west and the north. The other reason is the betting – wrestling is one of the few sports in which the bets and prize money rival the money placed on horse races. Visit London on 19 February 1667 and make your way to St James’s Park: a team of West Countrymen are set to take on a team of Northerners for the colossal prize of £1,000. The king is presiding and the umpires are the northern peer Lord Gerard and Sir William Morice, MP for Plymouth. Many large bets are placed. There is a lot of shouting from a crowd of working men and women, many of whom look as if they’ve been through a good few bouts themselves. Gentlemen like Evelyn stand in small groups, watching the straining muscles, the grasping and the crashing, as first one man brings his opponent down on the cold, hard ground, and then the next. The enormous prize means that everyone is spellbound by the spectacle being played out before them.41
I am glad to say that the West Countrymen win.
Sightseeing
The idea of travelling for pleasure is a relatively recent phenomenon.Even in the mid-sixteenth century, during ‘the age of exploration’, it was rare. People did travel long distances but only when they had to; most people found it safer and cheaper to stay at home. Now, however, driven by the immense curiosity that is the hallmark of the Restoration period, people are on the road for no other reason than they want to see the sights. You could say that, as far as tourism goes, the Rubicon has been crossed.
Most foreign travellers coming to Britain have a desire to see four towns in particular: Windsor (because of the castle), Oxford and Cambridge (because of the universities) and London (of course). Among the most popular destinations in and around the capital are Whitehall Palace (especially Inigo Jones’s Banqueting House); the Royal Exchange; the royal tombs in Westminster Abbey; Nonsuch Palace (until 1682, when Lady Castlemaine has it demolished and sells the materials); St Paul’s Cathedral (before it is destroyed by the Great Fire); Hampton Court; the royal tapestry works at Mortlake; and the Tower of London. Entry fees apply at some places: 3d to see the royal tombs and 12d for entry to the Tower. The latter may seem expensive but it’s worth it. Here you will find not only Domesday Book and the archives of the English government since the reign of William I but also the royal menagerie, the royal armoury (including the armour of Henry VIII) and the Crown Jewels, which Colonel Blood unsuccessfully attempts to steal in an armed raid in 1671.
