and, not to multiply extracts, on other occasions he is entered in the Treasurer's books as having "tynt" £54 to Andrew Forman, the Prothonotary, and £18 to the Laird of Caprintoune. About the time James IV. was thus devoting himself to our game, Henry VII., as the register of his expenditure shows, was also a tennis player. "Item, for the king's loss at tennis, twelve pence: for the loss of balls, three pence." From this last clause Strutt infers "that the game was played abroad, for the loss of balls would hardly have happened in a tennis court." Though courts appear to have frequently been open at a much later period than this—for instance, the one the young Duke of York (James II.) is depicted as standing in, in a contemporary print, is open-Strutt's inference hardly follows, for "loss" may very easily mean the destruction of the covering of the balls, which wears out rapidly.

When Philip, Archduke of Austria, became King of Castile, he sailed from the Netherlands in 1506 to take possession of his new kingdom. Stress of weather compelled him to seek shelter in Falmouth, and Henry, hearing of his arrival, sent the Earl of Arundel and a gallant train to bring him to Windsor. Here for many days he was splendidly entertained. During the festivities, the account of an eye witness tells us, the two kings one day looked on while the Marquis of Dorset, Lord Howard, and two other gentlemen played tennis. Then the King of Castile joined in the game, playing with Dorset ; "but," says the chronicler, "the Kyng of Castille played with the rackett, and gave the Lord Marques XV.," Dorset evidently playing with the hand only. This is interesting as showing that the use of the racket had not superseded the older form of the hand game as late as 1506 in England.

6

The fifth Scottish James's love for amusements of all kinds was so excessive that every moment he could get was devoted to sport or pastime of some kind. From the Treasurer's accounts we can see the large sums that were lavished on all sorts of amusements; but perhaps Dunbar's "Remonstrance

best shows James's reckless prodigality, and most admirably portrays the state of affairs that ruined the king's health and impoverished his exchequer. Here are the lines in which the poet alludes to the excessive devotion to tennis shown by the people, following the king's example:—

Sa many rackettis, sa many ketche-pillaris,*
Sic ballis, sic nackettis,† and sic tutivillaris,+
Within this land was nevir hard nor sene.

In the poems of Sir David Lyndesay-the "Lord Lion King at Arms" of "Marmion"—we are told that the young prince, whose tutor Lyndesay was, "raiffled at the rakkat,” that is, played tennis; while elsewhere in the Lion's verses we see that not only did king and courtiers frequent the "cach-pule" (tennis-court), but that the ecclesiastics of the time were devotees of the game, as their successors nowadays, even in Presbyterian Scotland, are of golf and curling. Lyndesay gives us this picture of a friar, who was, it may be supposed, by no means singular in his age:

Thoch I preich nocht, I can play at the caiche;

I wat thair is nocht ane amang you all

Mair ferilie can play at the fute ball.

We might infer from Shakespeare's classing, in "King Henry VIII.," tennis with other "remnants of fool and feather" which the English courtiers got in France, that our game had then newly been imported into England; but though the dramatist makes the conditions of the proclamation run that these courtiers must renounce

The faith they have in tennis and tall stockings,

Short blister'd breeches, and those types of travel,

Or pack to their old playfellows,

these travelled nobles might easily have learned the game with

* Players at tennis.

+ Lads who marked at tennis; Fr. naquette. Worthless, frivolous things.

out ever crossing the Channel. A correspondent of Notes and Queries has been able, from the records of the Ironmongers' Company, to trace the existence of tennis in England from the tenth year of Edward IV. down to the twenty-sixth of Henry VIII. The following are a few examples of these entries::

Tem. Edward IV.

Richard III.
Henry VIII.

Resseyued of Robert Tooke for teneis ballis iiid.
William Bruyth for a grosse of balles xvid.
Item. Rs. of Maystier Bentley of the tennys play
for a year, IIS.

The writer thinks these balls were made of iron. He speaks of a tombstone erected to a lad who had been killed at tennis by one of these strange balls; but if the tomb is that one in Elford Church, in Staffordshire, in which the effigy holds a ball against his forehead, while the inscription runs, "Ubi dolor, ibi digitus," it is quite consistent with the idea that in their sale of tennis balls the ironmongers may have acted merely as agents for some workers in material more suitable for a racket ball. A blow from a well-stuffed ball might easily have proved fatal, though its material was far lighter than impossible iron. "The tennis ball is hard and inelastic," says the Edinburgh Review, "being composed of shreds of rag and cloth bound solidly together with string, two inches and a half in diameter, and weighing about two ounces and a half. It is a solid thing to stop, especially at a volley, and a strong racket is required to arrest and repel its vehement momentum. When fairly hit, with the full swing of a heavy racket tightly strung, it is a really formidable projectile. It was a tradition of the Haymarket court that a duke had been killed there." The usual materials of which balls were made in early times were "good wool," closely packed feathers, as in golf balls, or worsted thread. Shakespeare adds to these substances hair; for he says of Benedick," the old ornament of his cheek hath already stuffed tennis balls." Nash, too, in 1591, writes: "They may sell

E

their haire by the pound to stuff tennis balles ;" but it is supposed that these lighter materials were used only for balls when tennis was played on grass.

Henry VIII. was much attached to this game. Strutt quotes from Hall's life of the king that his "propensity being perceived by certayne craftie persons about him, they brought in Frenchmen and Lombards to make wagers with hym, and so he lost muche money; but when he perceyved theyr crafte, he escheued the company and let them go." He did not give up the game, however, for, according to the same biographer, a dozen years afterwards he is playing at tennis, with the Emperor Maximilian for his partner, against the Prince of Orange and the Marquis of Brandenborow; "the Earl of Devonshire stopped on the Prince's side, and the Lord Edmond on the other side; and they departed even hands on both sides, after eleven games fully played." "Eleven" here is supposed to be a mistake for "ten" or "twelve," as, of course, it is impossible for two sides to be " even hands in an odd number of games.

Though we find the bluff king adding to Whitehall "divers fair tennis courts"-one on the site now occupied by the Privy Council Office for the enjoyment of his beloved game, yet there was passed in the thirty-third year of his reign the most stringent Act against the keeping "for gain or living" of any tennis court, or the enjoyment of this and several other "unlawful games" at any time but Christmas, by artificers, apprentices, mariners, serving-men, and many others--an Act that was only repealed in 1863.

In Scotland tennis never recovered from the shock that all games in the North got at the Reformation. We find traces

of it down to the end of the eighteenth century, but its existence was weak when compared to the lusty life it enjoyed in the days of the "Commons' King" and his predecessors. In Mary's Court, too, before the fierce zealots swept it away, it was much played. We can get an idea of the extent to which

gambling at cards and dice was carried then from a statement of David Home of Godscroft, in a sketch he has left of his brother, Sir George Home of Wedderburn. While at Court in his youth, George, being stinted of money by a stepmother, had to avoid cards and dice, and restrict himself to tennis, says the historian of the house of Douglas.

Mary's son does not appear to have been a tennis player himself, but in the rules he drew out and addressed to Henry, the Prince of Wales, he recommends it in these words: "The exercises that I would have you to use, although but moderately, not making a craft of them, are, running, leaping, playing at the caitch, or tennise, archerie, palle-malle, and such-like other fair and pleasant field games."

Prince Henry seems to have been very fond of tennis, though it appears to have had as disturbing an effect on his temper as it had on that of Gascone de Foix in Froissart's story. He once got so angry at tennis with his father's infamous favourite, Carr, Earl of Somerset, that he struck him with his racket. On another occasion he and the young Earl of Essex, afterwards the famous Parliamentary General, were playing, when a dispute arose. Prince Henry, in his anger, called Essex the "son of a traitor," alluding to the execution of his father, Elizabeth's favourite. The young earl struck the prince so hard a blow as to draw blood, but the king, when he heard all the circumstances, declined to punish the highspirited lad. Prince Henry's fatal illness is said to have been brought on by playing tennis one evening without his

coat.

During the Commonwealth the exiled Court played the game abroad. In September, 1658, it is said Sir Stephen Fox found King Charles at tennis in Hochstraten when he arrived with the important tidings of Cromwell's death.

At the Restoration Charles reintroduced the game into England, and probably the next few years were the palmy days of tennis in England. Courts were set up in a great many places;