Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/233

 10 s. VIIL SEPT. 7, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

191

THE EARLIEST CRICKET REPORT. (10 S. vii. 441 ; viii. 75.)

FTJKTHEB search has enabled me to gather several early newspaper notices of cricket, which are of considerable interest as throw- ing light upon the evolution and history of the game. The very earliest is that printed by W. I. R. V. at 10 S. ii. 394 from The Post Boy of 28-30 March, 1700. No similar announcement appears in the other three tei-weekly London papers of that time The Post Man, The Flying Post, and The London Post and there is no record of the result ; but Clapham Common as the place, and Easter Monday, 1 April, 1700, as the time of this earliest of advertised cricket matches, can be taken as landmarks in the history of the national game.

I have already given at 10 S. vii. 441 the text of the next discovered newspaper reference to a cricket match in 1705, as well as an account of the legal dispute which attended the London u. Kent matches of 1719 ; and I would now supplement the latter by the following further extract from Mist's Weekly Journal, or Saturday's Post, of 22 August of the same year, plainly evidencing the determination of the Kentish men to live up to their county motto,

Invicta " :

"On Wednesday last [19 August] a Match at Cricket was played in White Conduit-Fields, for a considerable Sum of Money, between the Men of Kent and the Men of London, and the Kentish iMen won the Wager."

That this legal dispute aroused much public attention is to be gathered from the extract from Mist's Weekly Journal of 3 Sept., 1726, already given at 10 S. iv. 95, though I suggest that to be a distorted version of the facts of the original London and $ Kent dispute. But from all these indications, it is to be concluded that cricket in the early decades of the eigh- teenth century was steadily attracting in- creased notice ; and I take the subjoined extract from Read's Weekly Journal, or British-Gazetteer, of 4 June, 1720 with the omission of a few phrases neither necessary to the sense nor welcome to modern taste as including the first newspaper reference I have yet found to cricket as a popular game :

" The Holidays coming on, the Alewives of Islington, Kentish Town, and several other adja-

cent Villages, are in great Expectation of a con- siderable Trade from the Citizens. If the Weather proves favourable, whole Shoals of the former, with all their Living Utensils viz., Their Wives and Children, will be flocking thither, to the utter De- struction of Stuff d Beef, Gammon of Bacon, Cheese- cakes, Bottle-Ale, and Cyder, which will be de- vour'd like Custard on a Lord-Mayor's Day, or Flummery by a Club of Welsh Attorneys. The Fields will swarm with Butchers' Wives and Oyster- Women, with a medley of other Matrons and Damsels diverting themselves with their Offspring, whilst their Spouses and Sweethearts are sweating at Ninepins, some at Cricket, others at Stool-Ball, besides an amorous Couple in every Corner ; so that the poor Town will be left as empty as a long Vacation, or a Pawn - broker's Conscience ; only Stock-jobbers will stick close to Business, and find the Way to the Devil, at Jonathan's. Much Noise and Guttling in the Morning; much Tippling all Day ; and much Reeling and Kissing at Night.

When we go ten years onwards, it will be discovered that cricket was more and more securing journalistic attention. In The Country Journal : or, The Craftsman, Lord Bolingbroke's inspired organ, for Saturday, 18 July, 1730, there were, for instance, two cricket paragraphs, as under :

"On Thursday Se'nnight last a great Cricket Match was play'd on Merrow Downs near Guilford, between the Duke of Richmond and Mr. Andrews of Sunbury, eleven Men on each Side, which was won by the latter.

"And on Thursday the 23rd Inst, will be play'd another Match of the like Number of Men upon Epsom Downs between the parishes of Epsom and Sunbury in Middlesex."

In the same newspaper of the following 29 August, it was recorded :

"Last Wednesday a great Cricket Match was play'd at Walworth Common between Edwyn Stede, Esq : and three other Gentlemen, on the one part, and four Brentford Men on the other, for a considerable Wager, and the Brentford Men got the better " ;

and in The Grub-street Journal for Thursday, 3 September, it was noted that

"on Monday a great cricket-match was play'd between the gentlemen of London and Surrey, eleven on each side, for twenty Guineas, in the Artillery-Ground, when the same was won by the former, oy six notches."

The following year furnishes even more striking examples, for The Daily Advertiser of 27 May, 1731, announced that

"on Monday the 31st Instant, will be played on Kennington Common, a great Cricket Match, be- tween London and Sevenoaks in Kent ; and at the same Place, the next Day following, will be another Match between London and Chelsneld in Kent."

W%The same newspaper of the following SlJune, not now content with merely announcing a match, reported it in the follow- ing terms :

' A very great Match at Cricket was plaid in the