Page:The Hambledon Men (1907).djvu/201

 and the field placed much as when with the Sidmouth I played the Teignbridge Club in 1826. Mr. Whitehead was the great hitter of Kent; and Frame and Small were names as often mentioned as Pilch and Parr by our boys now.' And now (1793) the game had penetrated further West; for eleven yeomen at Oldfield Bray, in Berkshire, had learned long enough to be able to defeat a good eleven of the Marylebone Club.

In 1795, the Hon. Colonel Lennox, memorable for a duel with the Duke of York, fought—where the gallant Colonel had fought so many a less hostile battle—on the cricket ground at Dartford Brent, headed Elevens against the Earl of Winchelsea; and now, first the Marylebone eleven beat sixteen Oxonians on Bullingdon Green.

In 1797, the Montpelier Club and ground attract our notice. The name of this club is one of the most ancient, and their ground a short distance only from the ground of Hall of Camberwell. Swaffham, in Norfolk, is now mentioned for the first time. But Norfolk lies out of the usual road, and is a county which, as Mr. Dickens said of Golden Square, before it was the residence of Cardinal Wiseman, 'is nobody's way to or from any place.' So, in those slow coach and pack-horse days, the patrons of Kent, Surrey, Hants, and Marylebone, who alone gave to what else were 'airy nothing, a local habitation and a name', could not so easily extend their circuit to the land of turkeys, lithotomy, and dumplings. But it happened once that Lord Frederick Beauclerk was heard to say, his eleven should beat any three elevens in the county of Norfolk; whence arose a challenge from the Norfolk men, whom, sure enough, his Lordship did beat, and that in one innings; and a print, though not on pocket-handkerchiefs, was struck off to perpetuate this honourable achievement.

Lord F. Beauclerk was now one of the best players of his day; as also were the Hon. H. and I. Tufton. They frequently headed a division of the Marylebone, i.