Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/615

Rh CRICKET 581 1. That no cricketer, whether amateur or professional, shall play for more than one county during the same season. 2. Every cricketer born in one county and residing in another shall be free to choose at the commencement of each season for which of those counties he will play, and shall, during that season, play for that county only. 3. A cricketer shall be qualified to play for any county in which he is residing and has resided for the previous two years ; or a cricketer may elect to play for the county in which his family home is, so long as it remains open to him as an occasional residence. 4. That, should any question arise as to the residental quali fication, the same should be left to the decision of the committee of the Marylebone Club. History. The name cricket is cognate to the Saxon eric or eryc, a crooked stick. This germ of the modern bat is seen in the earliest representation of the pastime about the middle of the 13th century. In a MS. in the King s Library, 14 Bv, entitled Chronique d Angleterre, depuis Ethelberd jusqu d Hen. III., there is found a grotesque delineation of two male figures playing a game with a bat and ball. This is undoubtedly the first known drawing of what was destined to develop into the scientific cricket of modern times. The left hand figure is that of the batsman, who holds his weapon perpendicularly in the right hand with the handle downwards. The right hand figure shows the c itcher, whose duty is at once apparent by the extension of his hands. In another portion of the same MS., however, there is a male figure pointing a bat, with the base curved like a leopard s head, towards a female figure in the attitude of catching, but the ball is absent. On p. 126 of King Edward I. s wardrobe account for the year 1300, there occurs the following entry, viz., &quot;Domino Johanni de Leek capellano Domini Edwardi fil Regis, pro den per ipsum liberat eidem Domino suo ad ludendum ad creag et alios ludos per vices, per manus proprias apud Westm, 10 die Marcii, 100s. Et per manus Hugonis camerarii sui apud Newenton mense Marcii, 20s summa, 6.&quot; Here is found the earliest allusion to the game as designated by a term analogous to the modern word &quot;cricket,&quot; as well as indisputable proof that even in these early times the game was followed by the first personages in the realm, who of course spoke French. In a Bodleian Library MS., No 264, dated 18th April 1344, and entitled Romance of the Good King A lexander, fielders for the first time appear in addition to the batsman and bowler. All the players are monks with their cowls up and down alternately, the former having been erroneously taken for female figures by Strutt in his Sports and Pastimes. On the extreme left of the picture, the bowler, with his cowl up, poises the ball in the right hand with the arm nearly horizontal. The batsman comes next with his cowl do-/rn, a little way only to the right, stand ing sideways to the bowler with a long roughly-hewn and slightly- curved bat, held vertically, handle downwards in the left hand. On the extreme right come four figures with cowls alternately down and up, and all having their hands raised in an attitude to catch the ball should it be missed by the hatsman, or be tipped in their direction. Judging, however, from the positions of bowler and batter, the out players are not placed so as to field a direct but a side hit. But the want of perspective in the composition renders any estimate of their object uncertain. It is evident, however, that the bat was always held in the left hand at this date, since on the opposite page of the same MS. a solitary monk is figured with his cowl down, and so holding a somewhat elongated oval-shaped imple ment. The close roll of 39 Edw. III. (1365), Men. 23, disparages certain games on account of their interfering with the practice of archery, where the game of cricket is probably included among the pastimes denounced as &quot; ludos inhonestos, et minus utiles aut valentes.&quot; In this instance, cricket was clearly considered fit for the lower orders only. Judging from the drawings, it can only be conjectured that the game consisted of bowling, batting, and field ing, though it is known that there was an inside and an outside, for sometime during the 15th century the game was called &quot; Hond- yn or Hondoute,&quot; or &quot; Hand in and Hand out.&quot; Under this title it was interdicted by 17 Edw. IV. c. 3 (1477-78), as one of those illegal games which still continued to be so detrimental to the practice of archery. By this statute, any one allowing the game to be played on his premises was liable to three years imprisonment find 20 fine, any player to two years imprisonment and 10 fine, and the implements to be burnt. The inference that hand in and hand out was analogous to cricket is made from a passage in the Hon. Dairies Barrington s Observations on the more Ancient Statutes from Magna Charta to 21 James I. cap. 27.&quot; Writing in 1766, he comments thus on the above statute, viz: &quot;This is, perhaps, the most severe law ever made against gaming, and some of these for- bidden sports seem to have been manly exercises, particularly the handyn and hxndoute which I should suppose to be a kind of cricket, as the term hands is still retained in that game.&quot; The ^word &quot;cricket&quot; first occurs about the year 1550. In Russell s History of Guildford (p. 203), it appears there was a piece of waste land in the parish of Holy Trinity in that city, which was enclosed by one John Parish, an innholder, some five years before Queen Elizabeth came to the throne. In 35 Elizabeth (1593), evidence was taken before a jury and a verdict returned, ordering the garden to be laid waste again and disinclosed. Amongst other witnesses John Derrick, gent., and one of H. M. s coroners for Surrey, cctat. fifty-nine, deposed he had known the ground for fifty years or more, and &quot; when he was a scholler in the free school of Guild- ford, he and several of his fellowes did runne and play there at crickctt and other plaies.&quot; In the original edition of Stovv s Survey of London (1598), the word does not occur, though he says, &quot; The ball is used by noblemen and gentlemen in tennis courts, and by people of the meaner sort in the open fields and streets.&quot; It might justly be surmised that such a national game as cricket would soon be introduced at public schools. Accordingly, the first trace of it is found at Winchester College in 1650, since Lisle Bowles, writing of the good Bishop Ken, who was admitted to Winchester, 13th January 1650-51, says, &quot; On the fifth or sixth day our junior .... is found for the first time attempting to wield a cricket bat.&quot; In 1688 we find a &quot;ram and bat&quot; charged in an Etonian s school bill. Two other noteworthy references to the game are found during the last quarter of the 17th century. The first is in a somewhat ribald poem (1658), entitled The Mysteries of Love and Eloquence, or the Arts of Wooing and Complimenting, by Edward Philips, John Milton s nephew, who, in a dialogue between a country bumpkin and his mistress going to a fair, makes the latter say, &quot;Would my eyes had been beat out of my head with a cricket ball.&quot; The second occurs in the diary of the Rev. Henry Teonge, a naval chaplain to H. M. ship &quot;Assistance,&quot; and states that during a visit to Antioch on 6th May 1676, several of the ship s company, accompanied by the consul, rode out of the city early, and amongst other pastimes indulged in &quot;krickett.&quot; During the first half of the 18th century the game became popular, and is repeatedly noticed by writers of the time, such as Swift, D Urfey, Pope, Soame Jenyns, and Strype in his edition of Stow s Survey of London. In 1748 it was decided that cricket was not an illegal game under the well-known statute 9 Anne cap. 19, the Court of King s Bench holding that it was a very manly game, not bad in itself, but only in the ill use made of it by betting more than ten pounds on it ; but that was bad and against the law.&quot; In these early times even, the pastime was followed by all classes, and Frederick, prince of Wales, died in 1751 from internal injuries caused by a blow from a cricket ball whilst playing at Cliefdcii House. Nevertheless, this commingling of aristocrats and plebeians on the cricket sward was viewed with apprehension, and repeatedly discountenanced by writers of the day. Games were played for large stakes. Ground proprietors and tavern keepers farmed and advertised matches, the results whereof were not always above suspicion. The old artillery ground at Finsbury appears to have been the earliest scene of action of this class of matches. But the true birthplace of the game in its developed state was no cockney inclosure, but the broad open downs of the southern counties of England, and more especially in the great hop-growing districts. The large hop fairs, notably that of Weyhill, were the rendezvous for all comers from the southern counties, and it is probable that the great county matches were arranged on these occasions. The first record preserve 1 of a match is between Kent and All England, which, judging from an advertisement in the General Advertiser of the day, was played on August 4, 1746, at the Artillery Ground, the score being kept in the modern fashion. The old Hambledon Club was the first founded in England, and lasted from 1750 to 1791. Its playing fields were Broad Half Penny and Windmill Downs. When at its zenith the^ club frequently contended with success against All England. Their great players were more or less retained by noblemen and wealthy patrons of the game, and this club remained invincible for some forty years. Though a cricket club existed at Hambledon down to 1825, the original society was broken up in 1791, owing to the distance from the metropolis. A dispersion of its famous players through neighbouring counties took place, and was naturally accom panied with a diffusion of the precepts of the game, which gradually extended northward and westward, till, at the end of the 18th century, cricket had become established as the national game of England. The famous Marylebone Cricket Club now justly ranks as the leading club of the world, frames the laws governing the game, and arbitrates on all disputes connected therewith. This society sprang out of the old Artillery Ground Club, which played at Finsbury till about 1750, when they moved to White Conduit Fields, and became the White Conduit Cricket Club. In 1787 they were remodelled under their present title, and moved to Old Lords Ground, on the site of Dorset square, thence in 1824 to Middle Lords Ground at South Bank on the site of the Regent s Canal, and finally in 1827 to the present Lords Ground, which in 1864 became their freehold property. The Surrey County Club, with the Kennington Oval as their headquarters, was formed in 1845. In the same year the famous I Zingari Club, confined exclusively to amateurs first saw light, and commenced its Bohemian wanderings throughout Great Britain, and often into foreigu