But though it occurs not in any English author, is it found in no rare manuscript yet unpublished? We shall see.
Now as regards the silence of the early poets, a game like cricket might certainly exist without falling in with the allusions or topics of poetical writers. Still, if we actually find distinct catalogues and enumerations of English games before the date of 1685, and Cricket is omitted, the suspicion that Cricket was not then the popular name of one of the many games of ball (not that the game itself was positively unknown) is strongly confirmed.
Six such catalogues are preserved; one in the “Anatomy of Melancholy,” a second in a well-known treatise of James I., and a third in the “Cotswold Games,” with three others.
I. For the first catalogue, Strutt reminds us of the set of rules from the hand of James I. for the “nurture and conduct of an heir-apparent to the throne,” addressed to his eldest son, Henry Prince of Wales, called the ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΟΝ ΔΩΡΟΝ, or a “Kinge’s Christian Dutie towards God.” Herein the king forbids gaming and rough play: “As to diceing, I think it becometh best deboshed souldiers to play on the heads of their drums. As to the foote-ball, it is meeter for laming, than making able, the users thereof.” But a special commendation is given to certain games of ball; “playing at the catch or tennis, palle-malle, and such like other fair and pleasant field-games.” Certainly cricket may have been included under the last general expression, though by no means a fashionable game in James’s reign.
II. For the second catalogue of games, Burton in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” “the only book,” said Dr. Johnson, “that ever took me out of bed two hours sooner than I wished to rise,”—gives a view of the sports most prevalent in the seventeenth century. Here we have a very full enumeration: it specifies the pastimes of “great men,” and those of “base inferior persons;” it mentions “the rocks on which men lose themselves” by gambling; how “wealth runs away with their hounds, and their fortunes fly away with their hawks.” Then follow “the sights and shows of the Londoners,” and the “May-games and recreations of the country-folk.” More minutely still, Burton speaks of “rope dancers, cockfights,” and other sports common both to town and country; still, though Burton is so exact as to specify all “winter recreations” separately, and mentions even “foot-balls and ballowns,” saying “Let the common people play at ball and barley-brakes,” there is in all this catalogue no mention whatever of Cricket.
III. As a third catalogue, we have the “Cotswold Games,” but cricket is not among them. This was an annual celebration which one Captain Dover, by express permission and command of James I., held on the Cotswold Hills, in Gloucestershire.
IV. Fourthly: cricket is not mentioned in “The compleat Gamester,” published by Charles Browne, in 1709.
V. “I have many editions of Chamberlayne’s ‘State of England,’” kindly writes Mr. T. B. Macaulay, “published between 1670 and 1700, and I observe he never mentions cricket among the national games, of which he gives a long list.”
VI. The great John Locke wrote in 1679, “The sports of England for a curious stranger to see, are horse-racing, hawking, hunting, and Bowling: at Marebone and Putney he may see several persons of quality bowling two or three times a week: also, wrestling in Lincoln’s Inn Fields every evening; bear and bull-baiting at the bear garden; shooting with the long bow, and stob-ball, in Tothill Fields; and cudgel playing in the country, and hurling in Cornwall.” Here again we have no Cricket. Stob-ball is a different game.