Wrestling was emphatically the most generally practised recreation, and the charming sketches in the Spectator of young men wrestling on the village green was no mere picture from the realms of fancy. Such scenes have been frequently witnessed on Royston Heath where the active swain threw his opponent for a bever hat, or coloured waistcoat offered by the Squire, and for the smiles of his lady-love. Wrestling matches were very common events between the villages of Bassingbourn (a good wrestling centre), the Mordens, Whaddon, Melbourn and Meldreth, but when these events came off there was generally something else looked for besides the prize-winning. Sports in 1780 to 1800 were not so refined and civil as those of to-day, and it was pretty well understood that every match would end in a general fight between the two contending villages; indeed, without this the spectators would have come home greatly disappointed, and feeling that they had been "sold."
A favourite spot for such meetings was in a Bassingbourn field known as the Red Marsh, on the left of the Old North Road beyond Kneesworth, nearly opposite the footpath to Whaddon, where the Bassingbourn men—who, when a bonâ fide contest did come off, could furnish some of the most expert wrestlers in the district—frequently met those of the Mordens and other villages, and many a stubborn set-to has been witnessed there by hundreds of spectators from the surrounding districts.
During the whole of the last half of the 18th century, bowling greens did for the past what lawn tennis does for the present, always excepting that the ladies were not thought of as they are now in regard to physical recreation. There was an excellent bowling green at the "Green Man," smooth and level as a billiard table. Earlier in the century another bowling green was situate in Royston, Cambs., for which Daniel Docwra was rated. The gentry had private bowling greens on their lawns.
As to other kinds of out-door sport of a more individual kind, shooting parties were not quite so select as at the present day, and the farmers had good reason to complain of the young sportsmen from Cambridge. Foulmire Mere, as it was sometimes called during the last century, was a favourite spot for this kind of thing.
It seems that about this time the undergraduates were in the habit of freely indulging in sport to the prejudice of the farmers, for in 1787 a petition, almost ironical in its simplicity, was advertised in the Cambridge Chronicle of that date, commencing—
"We poor farmers do most humbly beg the favour of the Cambridge gunners, coursers and poachers (whether gentleman barbers or gyps of colleges), to let us get home our crops, &c." In those days, and for many years after, during the present century, there appears to have been very little of what we now know as "shooting rights," over any given lands, and the man or boy who could get behind an old flint-lock with a shooting certificate went wherever he felt inclined in pursuit of game.
The foregoing were some of the ways in which the people of Royston and the neighbourhood took the pleasures of life, how they sought to amuse themselves, and under what conditions. If the glimpses afforded seem to suggest that they allowed themselves a good deal of latitude it must not be supposed that our great grandfathers had no care whatever for public decency, or no means of defining what was allowable in public morals. In place of modern educating influences they could only trust for moral restraints to proclamations and the parish beadle. Perhaps one of the best instances of this kind of machinery for raising public morals is afforded by the Royston parish books, and I cannot do better than let the old chronicler speak for himself. The entries refer to the proceedings of a joint Committee which practically governed the town of Royston, and was elected by the parishes of Royston Herts. and Cambs., which, as we shall see hereafter, were united for many years for the purposes of local government.
"An Extraordinary Meeting of the Committee was held on 31st October, 1787, for the purpose of taking into consideration the Proclamation for preventing and punishing profaneness, vice, and immorality, by order of the Rev. Mr. Weston, present:—Daniel Lewer, Wm. Stamford, Jos. Beldam, Wm. Nash, Wm. Seaby, Thomas Watson, Michael Phillips, Wm. Butler, and Robt. Bunyan (chief constable).
"Words of the Act—No drover, horse courier, waggoner, butcher, higlar, or their servants shall travel on a Sunday.