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.
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 – destined to become a British possession – had nearly one-quarter of the trade of the entire world. The wider world was far away from England’s damp island: it took up to seven weeks to sail to America against the winds, nine weeks to Barbados, and six months to round the Cape of Good Hope en route to Calcutta. But events and sea power were to shape a momentous century. No one could have dreamed what lay ahead.
In the English villages, peasants and craftsmen were finding a wider market for their produce in the towns and cities. Basic crops of wheat, barley and rye went to make bread for the masses. Barley had a wider use: it made malt for the beer and ale that had long been the drinks of England, except in the cider districts of the western counties. Even children drank weak beer, since it was often healthier than impure water. The roads were dire, which restricted the movement of men and materials. Waterways and rivers were used as highways. West Country cheeses were carried to London by sea. When harvests were plentiful, surplus corn was exported. As trade grew, so did profits for the merchants who reinvested in agriculture. The Industrial Revolution lay half a century ahead, and England still enjoyed a truly beautiful landscape. The desecration of forests for timber, coal and housing had not yet begun. Swamps and wildernesses were being tamed for agriculture, and population growth had not yet marred the land with the scars of development.
Other than in a handful of villages, no one was much bothered about the infant game of cricket. Greater events, far away from the cradle of the game, were shaping the future. But cricket was putting down roots. It was still a rustic sport, poorly endowed and, so far as we know, confined to the south of England. Teams had no set number of players. Rules were haphazard, and varied from village to village. Dress was variable. Bats were curved. Two stumps – most likely so-called because the primitive game was played with the stumps of trees as a wicket – were still the norm. Bowling was underarm and along the ground (hence ‘bowling’), Drake-style, but faster. The concept of the carefully-prepared modern cricket square was unknown, and wickets were pitched on bumpy, grassy surfaces that were unpredictable and could cause nasty injuries. It would be another hundred years before anyone wore protective leg or shin pads, even though a serious injury could cost a rural player his livelihood.
In the early 1700s these hardy players had no concept of the changes that lay ahead for their game as they nursed their bumps and bruises. For the eighteenth century would see the establishment of a governing body, albeit self-appointed, the first laws codified, the game spread through and beyond the southern counties of England, scores and records kept spasmodically, and the style of cricket evolve. Even ladies’ teams were formed. Cricket would emerge from its infancy.
Early in the new century the game was adopted by influential patrons, and became a welcome distraction in London. The capital may have been the centre of wealth and the leader in fashion, but daily life was harsh for the majority of its citizens. The London of early cricket was a town of unpaved streets and open sewers, where garbage and bodily waste were tipped from the windows of leaky, broken-down slums in which eight to ten of the poorest people would huddle in a single unheated room. In the worst quarters, decrepit houses quite literally fell down on their dwellers’ heads. In such conditions life expectancy was low and infant mortality huge. Children slept in the streets, clothed only in rags, and no one was safe out at night if the gin shops had been busy in the evening – as usually they had.
For most of the sick, folk remedies were all that were on offer, and superstitious nonsense was widely believed: it was thought efficacious to apply a live toad to the kidneys to treat a urinary infection, or a hanged man’s hands to a cyst. But some tangible improvements to health care were being made. Philanthropists founded hospitals in the major towns and cities. In London, new hospitals – including maternity hospitals – were established to supplement St Bartholomew’s and St Thomas’s, which had served the capital for six hundred years. Guy’s and Westminster Hospitals were born out of private philanthropy, but the demands of healthcare also led to the foundation of St George’s and the London and Middlesex Hospitals, all of which opened their doors between 1720 and 1745. And such a licentious age brought the Lock Hospital into being – it cared for sufferers from venereal
