With many beans and peason put within:
It ratleth, soundeth, and shineth clere and fayre,
While it is throwen and caste up in the ayre,
Eche one contendeth and hath a great delite
With foote and with hande the bladder for to smite;
If it fall to grounde, they lifte it up agayne,
And this waye to labour they count it no payne. [427]
"It had been the custom," says a Chester antiquary, [428] "time out of mind, for the shoemakers yearly on the Shrove Tuesday, to deliver to the drapers, in the presence of the mayor of Chester, at the cross on the Rodehee, [429] one ball of leather called a foote-ball, of the value of three shillings and fourpence or above, to play at from thence to the Common Hall of the said city; which practice was productive of much inconvenience, and therefore this year (1540), by consent of the parties concerned, the ball was changed into six glayves of silver of the like value, as a reward for the best runner that day upon the aforesaid Rodehee."
In an old comedy, the Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, by John Day, [430] one of the characters speaks thus of himself: "I am Tom Stroud of Hurling, I'll play a gole at camp-ball, or wrassel a fall a the hip or the hin turn." Camp-ball, I conceive, is only another denomination for foot-ball, and is so called, because it was played to the greatest advantage in an open country. The term may probably be a contraction of the word campaign.