From the accom

Foresters and the Horsham Park Eleven. panying description we learn that the Foresters made 109 runs in their first innings, and 136 in their second, while their fielding and bowling were so exceedingly good that their opponents were put out for sixty runs in their first and sixteen in their second innings. The bats used were small wooden instruments, like a battledore or racket, only with rather shorter handles, while the ball was a full-sized tennis. Balls had to be bowled underhand and full pitch.

A large gathering of the neighbouring gentry assembled to witness the match, which excited the greatest interest. "The two elevens were dressed in picturesque uniforms of light blue and pink, and the beautiful grounds adjoining the house were gaily decorated with flags. The whole formed a most striking scene." With such allurements the great chances are that not a few recreant cricketers may find the parent more enjoyable than the child, may desert cricket, and, like Richard in Shadwell's "Woman Captain," resolve that for the future they "will play at stool-ball with the maids."

Certain correspondents of Notes and Queries, some time ago were disposed to hold that the obsolete game of stob-ball was another variety of the principle of cricket. Very little is known about this old game, but from the glimpses we do get of it in old authors it seems to have been akin to golf rather than to cricket. There are two allusions to it in the Berkeley MSS. (1618), published by Mr. T. D. Fosbrooke in 1821, one in which the writer only records that the "Earl of Leicester, with an extraordinary number of attendants, and multitudes of country people that resorted to him, came to Wotton, and thence to Michaelwood Lodge, casting downe part of the pales which, like a little parke, then enclosed that lodge, and thence went to Wotton Hill, where hee played a match at stoball;" while, in the other, the writer most tantalisingly refrains from describing the game, on the plea that it is so well known. "The large and levell playnes of Slimbridge, Warth, and others,

66

in the vale of this hundred," he writes, "and downes or hilly playnes of Stinchcombe, Westridge, Tickraydinge, and others in the hilly or Coteswold part, doe witnes the inbred delight that both gentry, yeomanry, rascallity, boyes and children doe take in a game called stoball, the play whereat each child of twelve yeares old can (I suppose) as well describe as myselfe : and not a sonne of mine but at seven was furnished with his double stoball staves and a gamester thereat." Aubrey, however, in his "Natural History of Wiltshire," gives us a sufficiently minute account of the pastime to show that cricket owes no part of its play to stob-ball. This game is peculiar to North Wilts, North Gloucestershire, and a little part of Somerset, near Bath," says he. "They strike a ball stuffed very hard with quills and covered with soale leather as big as a bullet (elsewhere he says this ball is of about four inches in diameter), with a staffe commonly made of withy, about three and a halfe feet long. Colemdowne is the place so famous and so frequented for stob-ball playing. The turfe is very fine and the rock freestone is within an inch and half of the surface, which gives the ball so quick a rebound. heare that this game is used anywhere in England, but in this part of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire adjoining." There appears to be no vestige of this old game left in those counties Stob-ball in Tothill Fields is one of the games of England enumerated by Locke in 1679.

now.

I doe not

In a curious book published in 1706, "The Scotch Rogue: The Life and Actions of Donald Macdonald, a Highland Scot," the vagabond hero tells us he was fond of "cat and dog,” an old form of cricket once very popular in certain parts of Scotland. "I was but a sorry proficient in learning," he writes, "being readier at cat and dog . . wrestling, and foot-ball, and such other sports as we use in our country, than at my book." Dr. Jamieson says that this game was chiefly played in Angus and Lothian, and that at the very least three players are required, 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

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 has to prevent the cat from getting into the hole. If it pitches into the hole the batsman is out, and the bowler who threw the cat takes his turn with the club. If the cat be struck, the clubbearers change places, and each change of place counts one to the score of the two who hold the clubs, who are viewed as partners.

This is manifestly a rude foreshadowing of the cricket of today, and if we substitute a ball for the more easily obtained piece of wood, "cat and dog" would be most probably identical with the game played by the cricketers of the end of the seventeenth century.

From all this, then, we have sufficient proof that, though cricket is hardly mentioned by its modern name before the Revolution, yet that it existed long before then under other

names.

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 has to prevent the cat from getting into the hole. If it pitches into the hole the batsman is out, and the bowler who threw the cat takes his turn with the club. If the cat be struck, the clubbearers change places, and each change of place counts one to the score of the two who hold the clubs, who are viewed as partners.

This is manifestly a rude foreshadowing of the cricket of today, and if we substitute a ball for the more easily obtained piece of wood, "cat and dog" would be most probably identical with the game played by the cricketers of the end of the seventeenth century.

From all this, then, we have sufficient proof that, though cricket is hardly mentioned by its modern name before the Revolution, yet that it existed long before then under other

names.

II

CHAPTER II.

CRICKETANA.

In our last chapter we noticed some of the earlier forms of the game that has been developed, within comparatively recent years, into the scientific cricket of to-day. Let us now glance at the annals of the game from the time we first find it alluded to under its modern name.

The earliest mention of the name carries us back to the middle of the sixteenth century. In Russell's "History of Guildford," we have an account of some legal proceedings, in 1593, in respect to "a garden withhelde from the towne." It appears that, a few years before Elizabeth began to reign, one John Parvish, an innkeeper, rented a piece of waste land in the parish of Holy Trinity, in Guildford, which he soon afterwards enclosed. He and his successors were allowed to remain in undisturbed possession of this field till 1593, when the matter was made the subject of a legal investigation, which resulted in an order that the ground should be disenclosed and laid waste again. This piece of ground is the first cricketfield known in history, as we learn from the evidence at the trial of "John Derrick, gent., one of the Queen's Majesties Coroners of the county of Sussex, aged 59." Mr. Derrick said he knew the field "for fifty years or more. It lay waste, and was used and occupyd by the inhabitants of Guldeforde to saw timber in, and for sawpits, and for makinge of frames of timber for the said inhabitants." But there was a merry corner of the little common, we may be sure as far away as possible from the timber stacks and sawpits, and there the Guildford