At this period bowling-greens were as commonly the adjunct of the Tudor mansion, as the croquet and tennislawns of modern times. Aston Hall, near Birmingham, may be cited as a type. Here Sir Thomas Holte, the founder, entertained Charles I. in 1642. James I., 1617, licensed 31 bowling-alleys; Westminster,1 Southwark, Lambeth, etc. he issued The Book of Sports.2 advised his son, Prince Henry, to The following year Among the Among the sports he indulge in, moderately, bowles is recommended and football condemned. Court patronage stamped the game of bowls as the fashion, and up to the time of the Commonwealth, retained the lead as an outdoor pastime among the privileged classes. removed. The romantic story of its advent is as follows:-A daughter of the house of Sydenham, named Elizabeth, became plighted to Sir Francis, prior to one of his cruises against the Spaniards, but on taking leave of his ladye-love, he bade her be true, and he would send her tokens that he was in the land of the living. Drake was absent many years, and either Bess was fickle, or the contemplation of a life of single-blessedness was too much for her, for she accepted the attentions of another. On the wedding morn as Bess and her second lover started on their way to church, the ball rolled into the hall and passed between the two, which being accepted as one of the promised tokens from Drake, this match was taken off. Drake did return and married the daughter of old Sir George at the age of fifty. The date of the settlement of marriage is August 25, 1595. A writer to The Million says the ball is still at Sydenham. 1 Col. Blood, who stole the crown in Charles II.'s reign, died in a house in Bowling-Alley, Dean's Yard Street, Westminster, August 24, 1680. 2 See page 37. HARLES I. was a keen bowler. It is related that when the unfortunate king was a captive at Caversham, near Henly, he rode over, under escort, to a little place called Collins' End, out Goring Heath way on the Oxfordshire side of the Thames; and finding a bowling-green there, indulged in "his favourite game." The sign at the inn bore an inscription having special reference to the game and the king's weakness for it. It read thus "Stop traveller, stop! in yonder peaceful glade And changed a sovereign ere he lost his crown." Richard Shute of Barking Hall, Barking, constructed with great care a bowling-green of such excellence, that it was considered one of the best in England. According to Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, Charles very frequently played with Shute for high stakes; and sometimes, when the king had been more unlucky than usual, he would stop playing, with the remark that he had a wife and family to support, and must consider them. A little above Maple Durham Lock, not far from Caversham, you pass Hardurdy House where Charles I. played at bowls. Charles also made a bowling-green at Spring Gardens; and during his confinement at Holmby House, frequently went over to Lord Vaux's, at Harrowden, and Earl Spencer's at Althorp, where there were good 1J. K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat. bowling-greens. He was, it is stated, engaged playing this game when seized by Cornet Joyce.1 URING this period (1630-5), the notorious edict ordering the people to indulge in certain games (described in The Book of Sports) on Sundays after public worship, was renewed, and the 2 book re-issued by Charles. As before mentioned, James I. was the author of the book in 1618, but afterwards withdrew it. The Puritans strongly opposed this edict, which was considered an act of violence to Puritan feeling, instigated as it was by Archbishop Laud of Canterbury, the head and front of the High-Church party. William Prinne, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, who wrote Histrio-Mastix and Canterburies Doom, in which, with caustic virulence, he denounced the pleasures and recreations of the time, was most unmercifully treated for so doing. The Star Chamber disbarred him, put him in the pillory at Westminster and Cheapside, inflicted a fine of 5000, cut off both his ears (which were afterwards sewed on again'), and sentenced him to imprisonment for life. Those of the clergy who refused to read the decree from their pulpits were punished by deprivation of their livings. 3 Richard Baxter (1615-1691) records, "I cannot forget that in my youth, we lost the labours of some of our conformable godly teachers, for not reading 1 Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2 Cobbett's Parliamentary History relates, that after Cromwell came into power The Book of Sports was ordered to be burnt by the hand of the common hangman in Cheapside. 3 Rushworth says £1000, see L. A. Govett's King's Book of Sports. + Ibid. . publicly the book of sports and dancing, on the Lord's Day. We could not, on the Lord's Day, either read a chapter, or pray, or sing a psalm, or catechise, or instruct a servant, but with the noise of the pipe and tabor, and the shoutings in the street, continually in our ears. And when the people by the book were allowed to play and dance out of public service time, they could so hardly break off their sports, that many a time the reader was fain to stay till the piper and players would give over. Sometimes the morris-dancers would come into the church, in all their linen, and scarfs, and antic-dresses, with morris bells jingling at their legs; and as soon as commonprayer was read, did haste out presently to their play again." Stubb's Anatomie of Abuses contains a detailed description of this sort of revelry. He was a Puritanical writer in Elizabeth's time, and as bearing upon this subject, some of his records are worth repeating here. After describing the assembling, election of the Lord of Misrule, and details of costume, he says the men "sometimes laide a crosse over their shoulders and neckes, borrowed for the most part of their pretie Mopsies and loving Bessies, for bussing them in the darke. they have their hobbie-horses, their dragons and other antiques, together with their baudie pipers, and thundering drummers to strike up the Devil's Daunce withall; and in this sorte they goe to the church (though the minister be at prayer or preaching) dauncing and swinging their hankerchiefes over their heades in the church like Devils incarnate, the foolish people they looke and stare, they and mount upon the forms and pewes laugh to see the goodly pegeants solemnized in this sort, then after this about the church they goe againe and againe and so foorth into the church-yarde and dance all that day, and peradventure all that night too. And thus these terrestrial furies spend the Sabbath-day." In such an atmosphere of social disorder, the game of bowls would very naturally degenerate in its character. says that Laud "used to play bowls this very day (Sunday) a pretty archiepiscopall Sabbath recreation." It is also recorded that Knox, when visiting Calvin on the Sunday, found him playing the game." That the common people took advantage of the license, authorised by The Book of Sports, is not to be wondered at, when those in high places had so little regard for the day of rest. John Earle, Bishop of Worcester, chaplain and tutor to Prince Charles, had no love either for bowls or bowlers, to judge by his writings. His Microcosmography, published about 1628, contains, among other graphic sketches of character, this description of the play at bowls. "No antick screws men's bodies into such strange flexures, and you would thinke them here 1 Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare. 2 L. A. Govett, King's Book of Sports. |