I would now (says the writer) make a safe retreat, but that methinks I am stopped by one of your heroic games called football; which I conceive (under your favour) not very conveniently civil in the streets, especially in such irregular and narrow roads as Crooked Lane. Yet it argues your courage, much like your military pastime of throwing at cocks, since you have long allowed these two valiant exercises in the streets.

This seems to give an absolute proof that the statutory repression of football never was enforced at all, or even recognised except in cases where death or at least a riot resulted from the game. In fact, about a.d. 1600 the game must have been played from one end of the kingdom to the other. One of the most sensible and kindly critics of the game is Carew, who mentions it in his 'Survey of Cornwall,' published in 1602, as being popular throughout the West country. We should say that Carew describes the game as 'hurling.' The name 'hurling' was afterwards generally appropriated to a game more resembling hockey than football, at which a small ball was knocked through the goals with hurlets or hurling-sticks; but the game of hurling, as described by Carew and others under different names, is simply football with much running and little or no kicking. Carew discusses two games, called 'hurling to goales,' and 'hurling over country.'

For hurling to goales there are fifteen, twenty or thirty players, more or less, chosen out on each side, who strip themselves to their slightest apparel and then join hands in ranks one against another: out of these ranks they match themselves by payres, one embracing another and so passe away, every of which couple are especially to watch one another during the play. 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 ball the which whomsoever can catch and carry through the adversaries' goals hath won the game.

The remainder of the description, which is too long to give in full, says that no one was allowed to 'but or handfast under the girdle' (i.e. to charge or collar below the waist) or to 'deal a foreballe'(i.e. to 'pass forward'). From this it is evident that even at this period there were definite rules and tactics of the game. There must also have been care and skill in choosing sides, since before the game began the opponents were selected in pairs, and each player had one of the other side 'marking' him. Besides, however, this orderly and carefully managed game, there was also the other (and no doubt the original) game, the 'hurling over country.' The description shows this to have been something like a 'cross-country big-side.' Says Carew, 'Two, three or more parishes agree to hurl against two or three other parishes.' The goals were trees or buildings which could be seen, or were known as landmarks, three or four miles apart, and in Carew's words: -

That company which can catch or carry the ball 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 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.,

It is a relief to find in this writer some kindly criticism which shows that he was manly enough to see the good points of the rough game.

The play (he says) is verilie 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 the manner of a fore-ward. 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. . . I cannot well resolve whether I should the more commend this game for its manhood and exercise or condemn it for the boisterousness and harm which it be-getteth; for as on the one side it makes their bodies strong, hard and nimble, and puts a cotirage 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 even 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.

Staunch Cornishman! Thy opinions are better than those of forty Stubbeses. The game of hurling, however, was by no means confined to the West country. The same, or a similar game, was known throughout the Eastern counties as 'camping,' or 'camp-ball' An old book of Norfolk antiquities quotes a fifteenth-century couplet: -

Get campers a ball

To camp there with-all; and there are frequent references in documents of this century to 'camping closes' and 'camping fields.' In Cullum's 'History of Hawstead' there is also a reference, under the date 1466, to the 'camping-fighte,' which serves to justify Stubbes' description of the game as a 'friendlie fyghte.' It is not, however, until 1673 that any actual description of the game is given. A more modern writer, however - Moor, writing in 1823 - gives a long description of the game, which evidently had not changed its character for centuries: -

Each party has two goals, ten or fifteen yards apart. The parties, ten or fifteen on a side, stand in line, facing each other at about ten yards distance midway between their goals and that of their adversaries. An indiffere?indifferent spectator (' indifferent' is the very word used by Carew also) throws up a ball the size of a cricket ball midway between the confronted players and makes his escape. The rush is to catch the falling ball (no doubt the ' indifferent' person under the circumstances is no longer indifferent to 'making his escape'). He who first can catch or seize it speeds home, making his way through his opponents and aided by his own sidesmen. If caught and held or rather in danger of being held, for if caught with the ball in possession he loses a snotch, he throws the ball (he must in no case give it) to some less beleaguered friend more free and more in breath than himself, who if it be not arrested in its course or he jostled away by the eager and watchful adversaries, catches it; and he in like manner hastens homeward, in like manner pursued, annoyed and aided, winning the notch or snotch if he contrive to carry or throw it within the goals. At a loss and gain of a snotch a recommencement takes place.