The earliest writers who discuss football critically, are of the Elizabethan era. We have indeed been informed by a learned antiquary to whom we are largely indebted for the materials of this work, that many years before this there flourished in the City of London a “Guild of Football Players;” but as our friend has lost his reference to this, the first Football Club in existence, and as we have been unable, with much searching, to recover the clue, we are unable to present to our readers any report of exciting matches between the representatives of the various wards or between the opposing teams of the cities of London and Westminster. But of the fact that such an organization existed we feel little or no doubt, and only regret we cannot give more accurate information on the subject. We can only close our notice of the subject by transcribing the comment of the gentle scholar to whom we are indebted for the suggestion, that “probably the players, recognising the danger of the game to soul and body, thought it necessary to combine to employ a special chirurgeon, and a special chaplain of their own,” from which it will be seen that our friend is more fond of antiquities than he is of football.
The first Elizabethan critic of football whose words deserve quotation, is Sir Thomas Elyot, the author of “The Boke called the Governour,” a species of educational manual for the young noblemen and gentlemen of the age. Writing, in 1583, of the sports which should be indulged in by those of gentle birth, he expounds views which, seen through the glass of the opinions of the nineteenth century, appear strange. Archery he praises above tennis, because in tennis a player is compelled to play as hard as his opponent, and cannot, so to speak, make his own pace; so that “if he (the opponent) stryke the balle hard, the othere that intendeth to receyve him is then constrained to use semblable violence if he wyll to retourne the balle.” And “boulynge” (bowls), “claishe,” and “pinnes” (skittles), and “koyting” (quoits), are also spoken of with disfavour as being too furious; and the writer then goes on (we quote verbatim, leaving more learned critics to explain the worthy knight’s grammar): “Verilie as for two the laste” (i.e., pinnes and koyting) “be to be utterly abjected of all noble men, in like wise foote-balle wherein is nothing but beastlie furie and exstreme violence, whereof procedeth hurte and consequently rancour and malice do remaine with them that be wounded, wherfore it is to be put in perpetuall silence.” Perhaps this view would have been coincided with by a certain bridegroom whom we read elsewhere to have attended the revels held at Kenilworth in honour of Queen Elizabeth in 1575, for the gentleman in question, we gather from a letter of the gallant Captain Laneham, to have been “lame of a legge, that in his youth was broeken at foote-balle;” but modern footballers would hardly agree with Sir Thomas or with the learned and pious Puritan writer, Stubbs, who, in our quotations, “follows on the same side.” Stubbs, in his “Anatomie of Abuses” in the realm of England in 1583, not only objected to football for itself, but also for that it was generally played, both in town and village, on Sunday; and one of his reasons for believing that the day of doom, as foretold in Scriptural revelation, was at hand was, that “football-playing and other develishe pastimes” were played on Sunday. “Lord,” he prays, “remove these exercises from the Sabaoth.” What follows is curious: in answer to a question as to whether football-playing is a profanation of the Sabbath, he says, “Any exercise which withdraweth us from godlinesse, either upon the Sabaoth or any other day, is wicked and to be forbiden. Now who is so grossly blinde that seeth not that these aforesaid exercises not only withdraw us from godlinesse and virtue, but also haile and allure us to wickednesse and sin? for as concerning football-playing, I protest unto you it may rather be called a friendlie kind of fight than a play or recreation—a bloody and murthering practise than a felowly sporte or pastime. For dooth not everyone lye in waight for his adversarie, seeking to overthrow him and picke him on his nose, though it be on hard stones, in ditch or dale, in valley or hill, or what place soever it be he careth not, so he have him downe. And he that can serve the most of this fashion, he is counted the only felow and who but he.” We may remark incidentally that it is at least satisfactory to know that the footballers of the time of Elizabeth appreciated the advantages of a good “tackler.” But to resume with Stubbs his opinions. “So that by this means sometimes their necks are broken, sometimes their backs, sometimes their legs, sometimes their armes, sometimes one part thrust out of joint, sometimes another; sometimes their noses gush out with blood, sometimes their eyes start out, and sometimes hurte in one place sometimes in another. But whosoever scapeth away the best goeth not scot free but is either forewounded, craised or bruised so as he dyeth of it or else scapeth very hardlie, and no mervaile, for they have the sleights to meet one betwixt two, to dash him against the hart with their elbowes, to butt him under the short ribs with the griped fists and with their knees to catch him on the hip and pick him on his neck, with a hundred such murthering devices. And hereof groweth envy, rancour, and malice, and sometimes brawling murther, homicide, and great effusion of blood, as experience daily teacheth. Is this murthering play now an exercise for the Sabaoth day?”
So much for the opinion of the pious Stubbs, who, it must be recollected, was a Puritan, and one of the party who afterwards almost succeeded in entirely putting down football during the supremacy of their opinions. Perhaps it will be as well to finish the hostile criticism with the opinion of King James I. of England, who, in his Basilicon Doron, a manual of education written for his son, after speaking in praise of various other sports, saith, “but from this count I debar all rough and violent exercise, as the foot-ball meeter for laming than making able the users thereof.” Still James I., taking him for all in all, was something of an old woman, and can hardly have been expected to look with favour upon a “charge” or a “scrimmage.” Added to this, we have something more than a suspicion that his Royal Highness, while posing as an original writer on education, was drawing a great many of his views from Sir Thomas Elyot; for the Basilicon Doron bears a most suspicious resemblance in many places to the work of the earlier writer.
Perhaps the best description we have of the game at this period comes from Carew’s “Survey of Cornwall,” published in 1602. Carew gives a long account of the game of “hurling,” which was another form of the football we have described above, with the addition that the players were allowed, if they liked, to carry sticks and hit the ball towards the goal, besides hurling, kicking, hitting, or running with it. We thus see, as would naturally be expected, that hockey and football started as the same sport but gradually “differentiated” into separate games, according to the true Darwinian law of progress. Hurling is described as a match between two large parties of men, in which each side strives to get the ball as best it can up to the adversaries’ goal. Carew, who is a more genial critic than Elyot, Stubbs, or King James I., describes hurling with much carefulness and acuteness of observation. “For hurling to goales there are 15, 20, or 30 players, more or less, chosen out on each side, who strip themselves to their slightest apparel and then join hands in ranke one against another; out of these ranks they matche themselves by payres, one embracing another, and so passe away, every of which couple are especially to watch one another during the play.” What football-player knows not the phrase, “Mark your men”? “After this, they pitch two bushes in the ground, some eight or ten feet asunder, and directly against them, ten or twelve score paces off, other twain in like distance, which they term goales, where some indifferent person throweth up a balle, the which whosoever can catch and carry through the adversaries’ goals hath won the game.” The hurlers also, we learn, were not allowed to but or handfast (charge or collar) under the girdle, or to “deale a foreballe” i.e., to pass forward to one nearer the goal than the player, in which passage we have the only explicit reference to “off-side” play which is to be found in the early annals of the game. Besides the game in a field of play, there was also, we learn from Carew, a game played over country. “Two three or more parishes agree to hurl against two or three other parishes.” In this game the goals were usually houses, or else villages, three or four miles asunder, and “that company which can catch or carry it by force or slight to the place assigned, gaineth the victory. Such as see where the ball is played give notice, by crying, ‘Ware east,’ ‘Ware west,’ as the same is carried. The hurlers take their way over hilles, dales, hedges, ditches, yea, and thorow bushes, briars, mires, plashes and rivers whatsoever, so as you shall sometimes see twenty or thirty lie tugging together in the water, scrambling and scratching for the ball.” This description of what may be described as a “maul in pond” is certainly interesting, and the whole description of the game lucid. The criticism of the game is also eminently sensible. “The play is verily both rude and rough, yet such as is not destitute of policies in some sort resembling the feats of war; for you shall have companies laid out before, on the one side to encounter them that come with the ball, and of the other party to succour them in manner of a fore-ward.” (Thus we see that the term “forward” in football is no ill-chosen one, the “fore-wards” or “fore-guards” being those who bear the first attack, and protect the rear-guards, who are manœuvring behind.) Carew goes on, “The ball in this play may be compared to an infernal spirit, for whosoever catcheth it fareth straightways like a madman struggling and fighting with those that go about to hold him: no sooner is the ball gone from him than he resigneth this fury to the next receiver, and himself becometh peaceable as before.” (Perhaps, we may here remark, the man who lost the ball became peaceable because he was by that time well “blown.” We have observed the same ourselves in the present age.) Carew ends up with some very thoughtful criticism of the game, “I cannot well resolve,” he says, “whether I should the more commend this game for its manhood and exercise, or condemn it for the boisterousness and harm which it begetteth; for as on the one side it makes their bodies strong, hard, and nimble, and puts a courage into their hearts to meet an enemy in the face, so on the other part it is accompanied by many dangers, some of which do ever fall to the players’ share, for the proof whereof when the hurling is ended, you shall see them retiring home as from a pitched battle, with bloody pates, bones broken and out of joint, and such bruises as serve to shorten their days; yet all is good play, and never attorney or coroner troubled for the matter.”
Perhaps one more extract will be sufficient to show that circiter A.D. 1600, football was considered one of the national sports of England, just as it is to-day. Here is a list of British games in the year 1600. Quoth one bold swain to another his rival (in verse):—
“Man, I dare challenge thee to throw the sledge,
To jumpe, or leape over a ditch or hedge;
To wrastle, play at stooleballe, or to runne,
To pitch the barre, or to shoote off a gunne;
To play at loggets, nine-holes, or ten pinnes,