Before, however, an attempt be made to show how the game of football became developed as a specific sport, it is without doubt the duty of sober historians first to chronicle the legends which have attached themselves to the foundation of the game. Firstly, it is said that in ancient times it was the custom to kick a large stone from parish to parish, both in Scotland and in England, for the purpose of marking boundaries and asserting rights of way; and that in this practice, which was indulged in by large bodies of the parishioners, each of whom desired to give his kick when he got the opportunity, we are to find the origin of football. Certain it is, at any rate, that the practice of kicking a leather football over a path on Whit-Monday, for the purpose of exercising a right of way, endured into the present century in the Isle of Purbeck in Dorsetshire, a ball being annually presented to the workmen of certain quarries for that purpose. But the origin of the practice, both in that locality and in some other parts of the country where it is known to have been followed, is shrouded in antiquity; and there is little evidence to show that this practice caused the rise of football, instead of having arisen at a time when the game itself was well known. This latter view seems the most probable. The second legend of the origin of the game is one of a gruesome character, and far more suitable to be chronicled in connection with the legendary or mythical stage of history. The ancient Teutons, it is averred, did not scalp the bodies of their slaughtered enemies (as did the Choctaws), nor did they mutilate them (as do the Bashi-bazouks), but in grim sport cut off their heads and kicked them about, after the fashion of the Baron in the Ingoldsby legend of Sheppey, who, after he had donned the famous boots, first killed the holy father with a magnificent “punt,” and afterwards encompassed his own ruin by an ill-timed “place-kick” at the skull of Grey Dolphin. But even granting that our savage progenitors indulged in the amiable pastime which we have described (and after all it is far from improbable), we can still comfort ourselves by feeling certain that football had no such horrible origin; for the game of head-kicking may have been magnificent—may have been superb (to quote the famous mot), but it certainly was not football. It is curious, however, that amongst the traditions of the city of Chester, which is one of the oldest homes of the game, where it was played by all the inhabitants of the town on the Roodee, the head of a Dane is still stated to have been the original ball used in the game. Perhaps it is best to give these two legends, as in duty bound, and then to pass on to matters which are of unquestioned historical accuracy. Indeed, were it not for these legends, it would seem obvious that the foot-ball, as distinguished from the hand-ball, was the product of civilization and invention. Such indeed it seems to have been in fact, although it must be confessed that the subjoined explanation of the origin of the foot-ball is in part hypothetical and based upon à priori grounds. It is probable that the first foot-ball was the Roman follis, or inflated bladder, of which Martial speaks when he advises boys and old men alike to play it. But the follis was, primarily at least, a hand-ball; and a bladder was probably used first for that purpose, for the simple reason that it was able, on account of its lightness, to be struck into the air with the hand without pain, and with ease. At some uncertain but momentous date, an impetuous player must, after missing the ball with his hand, have kicked out petulantly with his sandalled foot, and so unconsciously made the first experiment in the art of drop-kicking, or punting. Swiftly and strongly the ball flew, farther than it could be cast by the strongest arm or smitten by the lustiest hand; and this must inevitably have been the first step to the later development of the game played with the follis, when it was kicked with the foot or struck with the hand at discretion and convenience.
Be this as it may, it is probable that the Romans, along with their other habits and fashions, imported the various games which they played with the follis or with other kinds of ball, into England. One of these balls, used by the Romans, and by them derived from the Greeks, was the harpastum, the game played with which was that the players of one side should try to carry the ball over a line defended by the other side, a pastime which bears no small resemblance to the game of “hurling,” which we shall describe later. But whether football was really introduced into Britain by the Romans, or whether it be an indigenous product of the country, yet, with the exception of the one doubtful reference to an anonymous manuscript to which allusion has formerly been made, we do not find any mention of the game in the annals of our Anglo-Saxon progenitors; and it is not until the 13th century that we find genuine historical authority on the subject.
CHAPTER II.
History of Football before the Puritan Era.
THE first mention of the game of football in English history is made by Fitz-Stephen, who, writing in the 13th century, says, “Annually upon Shrove Tuesday they (the London school-boys) go into the fields immediately after dinner and play at the celebrated game of ball (ludum pilæ celebrem).” But it is only fair to add, that the learned Strutt himself never felt certain that the reference here was to football. He tells us, in his commentary upon the passage, that Stowe, in his explanation of the words, has added, “without the least sanction from the Latin,” the word bastion, “meaning a bat or cudgel,” being of opinion that the game signified was something of the nature of goff (golf) or bandy-ball (sc., hockey). If Stowe was guilty of this bold gloss, and there is no question that he was, then it is clear that the game of the London school-boys is as likely to have been football as anything else, although Strutt is of the contrary opinion. For Strutt’s view is based upon the ground that football, as a pastime, “does not seem to be a very proper game for children.” On the other hand, there are strong reasons for believing that this game may have been football, for in the first place there is good historical evidence to the effect that Shrove Tuesday was a regular day upon which the London apprentices and those of other great cities, such as Chester, and the Scotch peasants, regularly indulged in the game of football. This evidence will be set forth immediately. But it is also a matter to be noted, that London is one of the places where football seems never to have died out, while the London schools, notably Westminster and the Charterhouse, were the places in which one species of the game of football was kept alive in a period of great athletic depression, to emerge, at the time of the recent athletic revival, in the form of the Association game.
That this game flourished in the succeeding century is manifest from the fact that Edward III., in A.D. 1349, found it necessary to forbid it by law. This warlike monarch, who was not quite of the same opinion as a man of at least equally military mind, the Duke of Wellington, sent a formal letter of complaint to the sheriffs of the City of London, that “the skill in shooting with arrows was almost totally laid aside for the purpose of various useless and unlawful games,” and they were thenceforth enjoined to prohibit all such “idle practices” as far as their jurisdiction extended.
Football, however, seemed to have sufficient vitality to outlast the pressure of a statute which, like some of those at present directed against gambling and betting, seems to have been more honoured in the breach than in the observance, for we find that in 1389 another Act was passed by Richard II. (12 Ric. ii., cap. 6) for the purpose of encouraging shooting, at the expense of other sports. This Act expressly forbade throughout the kingdom “all playinge at Tennis, Footballe, and other games called corts, dice, casting of the stone, kailes (a kind of skittles), and other such importune games.” How great must have been the moral effect of the statute we see from the fact that it had to be re-enacted by Henry IV. in 1401, and again by Henry VIII. considerably more than a hundred years later; while the last-named monarch also passed an enactment rendering it a penal offence for any person whatever to attempt to make gain by keeping a house or ground for sporting purposes of any kind—an enactment which some of the present managers of “gate-money” meetings for amateurs would be doubtless sorry to see replaced upon the Statute Book. Another clause of the same Act made it a penal offence for an artificer to play at any of the games mentioned above, save at Christmastide. In Scotland also similar measures were pursued for the purpose of separating those canny sportsmen from their well-loved games of golf and football; for in 1458, James III. of Scotland decreed that displays of weapons were to be held four times a year, and that “footballe and golfe be utterly put down.” Two other pieces of evidence show how constant and how vain was the effort made by our sovereigns to suppress a national sport. Twice in the reign of Elizabeth was proclamation made that “no foteballe play be used or suffered within the City of London and the liberties thereof, upon pain of imprisonment,” and twice were entries of the proclamations having been made entered in the books of the Corporation of London, upon Nov. 27th, 1572, and Nov. 7th, 1581, where they can be seen to this day. But in spite of prohibition and threat of fine and imprisonment, the London apprentices and the country labourers were determined to enjoy their football; and the game was probably never so flourishing or so prosperous as it was throughout the sixteenth century.
And now, it may be asked, What manner of game was this football, which delighted our forefathers so hugely that they persisted in indulging in it although under ban of the law? Strange to say, there was not the chaos of conflicting rules which were found in use when the game was brought into prominence again a few decades ago. The original game appears to have been of the simplest description. Given two boundaries or goals, a ball of any make so long as it were strong enough to prevent its being torn in pieces, and the opposing sides were allowed to get the ball on and make it touch the adversaries’ goal in any manner whatever they pleased, whether by kicking, hurling, shoving, or running, or by stealth. Sometimes we hear of goals a mile or more apart; often the arena of play was a street or a high road, sometimes a whole town; and the attacking party with the ball would try and sneak round by bye-streets in order to escape notice, and plant the ball unawares through the window or against the post which was fixed as the goal. The game, in short, when played in a confined space, was none other than a rough form of the present Rugby Union football, without the rules and prohibitions which have now reduced to order and civilized that game. But it must have been a rough game, that of which the yokels and ’prentices of merry England were so fond; and of broken pates and aching shins there must have been not a few. But let us hear what the writers of the age had to say about it. But before we proceed to give a few extracts of their views, we must premise that football was always looked upon as a vulgar game, a game for clod-hoppers, Irish kernes, and ’prentice lads, which a gentleman of quality should shun, lest perchance his eye be blackened or his skin be raised in lumps by a wight of low degree. Hence we can only expect the writers of gentle birth of the age of Elizabeth and James I., and indeed of all the later ages up to the present generation, to look upon so rough a game as unfitting for a man of refinement. But a game does not need to be defended now because it brings men of different rank to meet on equal terms with no favour; and ardent footballers might indeed be still able to adhere to their game although it had been deemed vulgar by James I. and by Sir Thomas Elyot. Nor is there anything in the contempt of these dignitaries which will depress the spirits or hurt the sensitive pride of the football-player especially; for he will find upon study that football was not the only game condemned by the aristocratic classes. On the contrary, almost all athletic exercises which did not immediately and obviously conduce to knightly skill, were held in equally low esteem; and the game of cricket itself was equally lightly regarded. In fact, it is not too much to say, that it was not until the present century was well advanced that men of gentle birth and education gave up putting away boyish sports when they reached man’s estate. But of this we shall speak later.