senseless to speak sense to their bowl, and put their trust in intreaties for a good cast"; adding, that bowling was celebrated for three things wasted, viz. :—“ Time, money, and curses.'

Charles II. was nevertheless a lover of the game. Grammont, in his Memoirs, describes his frequent visits to Tunbridge for bowls; and Clarendon says he went to a house called Picadilly, where were bowling-greens and gentry of the best quality.2

When Charles was escaping. after the battle of Worcester, disguised, in company with Mrs. Lane, "they came to Mrs. Norton's house, near Bristol, and it being a holiday, they saw many people about a bowling-green that was before the door; and the first man the king saw was a chaplain of his own who was sitting

upon the rails to see how the bowlers played."3

Pepys records, 1661, "played with our wives at bowles"; and in 1662 he went to Whitehall Gardens, "where lords and ladies are now at bowles."

Surely to the games themselves are not to be attributed the wild excesses of the time; but rather the gathering together of a large number of people bent on pleasure, and unrestrained by fear of the law. They were also actuated by a spice of that religious bigotry, which induces a desire to do violence to the feelings.

1 Sir Walter Scott alludes to this waste, in The Fortunes of Nigel, chap. xiii., when Dalgarno and companions "had laughed sufficiently" at the recent duel between the bravo captain and the disguised apprentice, “some took possession of the alley, late the scene of the combat, and put the field to its proper use of a bowling-ground, and it soon resounded with all the terms of the game, as 'run, run-rub, rub-hold biaz, you infernal trundling timber,' thus making good the saying, that three things are thrown away in a bowlinggreen, namely time, money, and oaths."

2 Encyclopaedia Britannica.

3 Lord Clarendon's History of the Rebellion.

of the opposite party,' a by no means uncommon thing now-a-days.

We have not to go very far back in the history of "sober, religious Scotland," to find a parallel in Sunday desecration. Burns's satirical poem, The Holy Fair, may be taken as a sample, though, happily, bowling is not mentioned. Three of the stanzas may not be unwelcome to the reader, if only as a variety.

"Upon a simmer Sunday morn,

When Nature's face is fair,

I walked forth to view the corn,
An' sniff the caller air.

The rising sun o'er Galston Muirs,
Wi' glorious light was glintin';
The hares were hirplin' down the furs,
The lav'rocks they were chantin'

Fu' sweet that day."

Meeting three hizzies he "speers the name of one

of them,

"My name is Fun-your cronie dear,

The nearest friend ye ha'e;

An' this is Superstition here,

An' that's Hypocrisy.

I'm gaun to Mauchline Holy Fair,2

To spen' an hour in daffin',

Gin ye'll go there, yon runkl'd pair,

We will get famous laughin'

At them this day.

1 Wakes and funeral rites furnished opportunities, in old times, for games and "ongauns" not altogether meeting our present-day ideas of decency. Achilles instituted games at Greek funerals; some of the prizes awarded were curious, viz., handsome captive girls skilled in needlework; a mare; a mule; a fat handsome wild bull, etc.

2 Sacrament Sunday. In these times of uncertain harvest-weather, and a propos of Sunday keeping, the following note from I. Disraeli's Comentaries

F

"Here, some are thinkin' on their sins,
An' some upo' their claes;

Ane curses feet that fyl'd his shins,
Another sighs and prays:

On this hand sits a chosen swatch,
Wi' screwed-up, grace-proud faces;
On that, a set o' chaps, at watch
Thrang winkin' at the lasses

To chairs that day."

During the Commonwealth bowls went out of fashion. Bowling-greens and bowling-alleys became the resort of queer folk," though generally indulged in all over England towards the end of the seventeenth century. Unfortunately public bowling-greens were, nearly always, attached to taverns, ale houses, and inns, which surrounded them with an air of disrepute. Sir John Fielding, writing in 1776, warns strangers against coffeehouses and says, that if anyone “finds in you the least inclination to cards, dice, the billiard-table, bowlinggreen, or any other sort of gaming, you are morally sure of being taken in." This only goes to illustrate how very necessary it was to have legal restrictions on the ownership of such places, and penalties for indulging in the game unlawfully. Stow, in his time, laments that "by the closing in of common grounds, our archers, for want of roome to shoot abroad, crepe into bowling-alleys and ordinary dicing-houses, nearer

on the Life of Charles I. is interesting. Constantine (321 A.D.) observed both Saturday and Sunday as days of rest. He issued the following decree, "On the venerable day of the Sun, let all the magistrates and people residing in the cities rest, and let all the workshops be closed. In the country, however, persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their labour, because it often happens that another day is not so suitable for grain-growing or vine-planting-lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven be lost."

home, where they have roome enough to hazzard their money at unlawful games."

Restrictions naturally followed the unbridled indulgence in gaming at bowls and the like, but the inventive faculties of the gamesters were only stimulated to contrive other forms of games, in order to evade the law and gratify their absorbing passion.

Bubble-the-justice or Bumble-puppy was one of the many imagined plays" and was a substitute for ninepins or cloish; a ball or large marble being rolled into a set of holes, suggesting a kind of ground-bagatelle or "nine-holes." A writer to Mr. Hone in 1841 says he remembers at Mary-le-bone Park the "old queen's Head and Artichoke" with its long skittle and bumblepuppy grounds. Herrick in Hesperides (1648) mentions this game

"Raspe plays at nine-holes, and 'tis known he gets
Many a teaster by his game and bets:

But of his gettings there's but little sign,

When one hole wastes more than he gets by nine."

A word picture of an old English squire, a Mr. Hastings, has particular interest for the bowler. He wore green cloth, kept hounds and hawks of all sorts, and among his out-door sports he used to play with "round sand bowles" on a long on a long bowling-green in a large park, near the manor, the said park being "well stocked with deer, rabbits, and fish-ponds." This fine old English gentleman-bowler lived a hundred years, did not wear spectacles, could mount his cob unaided, and had all his faculties to the last.1

Up till 1735-7 the public had free access to Maryle-bone Gardens. The following announcement in con

1 Dr. Drake in Hutchin's Dorsetshire. Hone's Every Day Book.

nection with the pleasure-giving resort appeared in the Evening Post of 19th March (1835, 6, or 7)— "On Monday next 31st March the bowling-green,

Will be opened, by order of the nobility and gentry.": In addition to those places already mentioned as having been associated with the game of bowls, and in proof of how much the game was in vogue, the following may be noted. The residence of Charles Cotton, poet (adopted son of Isack Walton), at Ashbourne, on the river Dee, Derbyshire, "had a bowlinggreen close by." J. M. Walker mentions BowlingGreen House (Enfield, Putney, and Chigwell); Bowles, a country seat of the Stewart family; the Bowl Inn, St. Giles; Bowling-Green Lane, Clerkenwell; and Bowling-pin Alley, Chancery Lane.

Hampton Court Palace had a bowling-green, which is now a quaint Dutch garden, with a fountain in the centre. The terrace walks round the green are still extant, but when the conversion took place is not certain.

1 Norrison Scatcherd.