In any case too the collaring game must have been highly destructive to clothing of every description; and it is therefore small wonder that at the majority of schools the running, collaring and hacking game should have been tabooed, probably by order of the school authorities or the parents. Now at the present day every large school has a good large grass playground either in the grounds of the school itself or within convenient reach; but in the olden times little or no provision for 'playing fields' appears to have been made by pious or other founders. One school alone seems to have owned almost from its foundation a wide open grass playground of ample dimensions, and that school was Rugby; hence it happens, as we should have expected, that at Rugby School alone do we find that the original game survived almost in its primitive shape. Nor is it difficult to see how the 'dribbling game' arose at schools where the playground was limited. Given a number of boys with that common vehicle of amusement a football, and no space where they could play the traditional game, they would soon learn to dribble it about with their feet for amusement and soon attain to skill and pace in their pastime; indeed we have seen from the extract from M. Misson's account of England that something very like the dribbling game was witnessed by him in the streets of London in 1696, played by those who were forbidden or unwilling to break their heads or limbs by pursuing the sport on hard pavements.

It would require very little ingenuity when the original game was impracticable to borrow the goals and touch-lines from the field game, and simply allow kicking as the only method of propulsion. In proportion therefore as the school was limited in the size of its playground we should expect to trace less of the old 'friendlie fyghte' and more of the dribbling game. Again, we find the very examples which we should expect to prove our theory in the London schools. The Charterhouse boys had originally no ground but their cloisters to play in; we believe the Westminster boys were for a long time similarly ill provided with a playground; and it is from Charterhouse and Westminster that the dribbling game as it is played at present under Association rules came almost in its present form. At Winchester the ancient custom appears to have been to play football upon small strips round the edge of the 'Meads,' the centre being reserved for cricket, and it is from this practice that the peculiar characteristics of the Winchester game arose. There was no danger in shoving upon the Winchester strips of grass, so the shoving of the old game remained in the Winchester rules; and dribbling consequently remained at a discount.

At Harrow, where there was probably more room, a large amount of catching and free kicking was allowed, but running and collaring found no place in the game. It is thus that we obtain the clearest illustrations of the theory that the different schools adapted the old game to the necessities of their own playgrounds. At Eton formerly the only original playground was a small field near the College buildings. Consequently their 'field game' was chiefly a kicking game, but long-kicking and scrimmages were not barred, as they were of necessity bound to be at Charterhouse and at Westminster. The other Eton game, the well-known 'wall-game,' probably drew its rules and character from the space against the wall upon which it was played. In a subsequent chapter we shall give short descriptions of some of the old school games in their turn, and here we can only make sufficient allusion to them to show that historically they owe their characteristics to the ground on which they were played.

1 Football: Its History for Five Centuries. Field & Tuer, 1885.

The different schools, in adopting as a pastime the national game of football in which any and every method of getting the ball through the goal was allowed, included only such parts of the game as were suitable to their ground, or to put the case in another way, eliminated from the game every characteristic which was necessarily unsuitable to the circumstances under which alone the game could be played. As far as we can discover, however, no school but Rugby played the old style of game where every player was allowed to pick up the ball and run with it, and every adversary could stop him by collaring, hacking over and charging or any other means he pleased. No doubt the majority of schoolmasters thought, with Sir Thomas Elyot, that the original football was unworthy of a gentleman's son, and dangerous to limb as well as to clothing, and in the days when butcher's meat was cheap, and cloth was good but dear, the clothing question was a matter of some consideration. What causes led the Rugby authorities to differ from the managers of other schools it is difficult to see, but it is tolerably plain that the 'Rugby game' was originally played at Rugby school alone, while other schools adopted more or less modified forms of the kicking game.

That other schools did play football is clear enough from the annals of Eton, Westminster and Charterhouse, and private schools played the game also without doubt.

When 'Tom Brown' arrived at Rugby as a new boy he said to his cicerone East, 'I love football so and have played all my life. Won't Brooke let me play?' 'Not he,' replied East, 'it's no joke playing up in a match, I can tell you. Quite another thing from your private school games. Why, there's been two collar-bones broken this half, and a dozen fellows iamed, etc' East's description is of course merely given to impress the new boy with awe, and we need scarcely quote any more extracts from the work, as most of our readers doubtless know it as well as ourselves. Chapter V (Jumping, Weight-Putting, Etc). of 'Tom Brown,' which gives a kindly and appreciative description of football as it was played at Rugby school in the boyhood of Mr. Thomas Hughes, shows that the Rugby game was essentially the same game which evoked the wrath of Stubbes. The whole school of three hundred played either between or behind the goals on that immense field which is still the scene of the Rugby lads' matches, and which even affords trees whereon to crack the skulls of innocent visitors, and by dodging round which the wily ones can exercise their sleight as well as their violence, and as Mr. Hughes points out often for long spells together the ball was invisible amongst the struggling mass of scrimmaging competitors.