In London, however, in the reign of Charles II., football still appears to have gone on merrily, and this was only to be expected, for Charles was, as we have seen, a great patron of athletic sport; indeed, there is a precedent for the royal patronage of football which was seen when the Prince of Wales visited Kennington Oval, in March, 1886. One hundred and ninety-five years before this date Charles II. attended a match which was played between his own servants and those of the Duke of Albemarle. Some years before this too (1665) Pepys tells us that on January 2, there being a great frost, the streets were full of footballs. Modern footballers give up their games in frosty weather for fear of accidents upon the hard ground, but the 'prentice lads who played in the streets were probably doing little more than 'punt-about' to keep themselves warm. Even the 'prentices of the period, however, were occupying their leisure hours with more serious pursuits than football, for as a scornful contemporary writes: -

They're mounted high; contemn the humble play Of trap or football on a holiday In Fines-bury fieldes. No; 'tis their brave intent Wisely to advise the King and Parliament.

The Tappertits of this day, however, had not all of them souls too big for football, for the oft-quoted M. Misson, who published, in Paris in 1698, his 'Memoires et Observations faites par un Voyageur,' apparently saw many games of football during his visit to England. His description shows plainly that the 'street football' which he saw cannot have been the original 'friendly-fight' game, but must either have been something in the nature of a dribbling game, or, what is more likely, simply boys or men kicking the ball about for amusement. He says: -

En hiver le Footbal est un exercice utile et charmant. C'est un balon de cuir, gros comme la tete et rempli de vent; cela se balotte avec le pied dans les rues par celui qui le peut attraper: il ny a point d'autre science.

The passage is interesting, although it is evident that M. Misson cannot be describing the same game which evoked the wrath of Stubbes and the disparagement of James L, for surely no Frenchman would describe the old rough-and-tumble game as 'charmant.'

THE DRIBBLING GAME.

Whether he saw a real dribbling game, or merely saw men 'punting about' a ball for amusement, is perhaps of little importance, as there is little doubt that the dribbling game arose out of the practice of kicking about a football without doing damage to limbs or clothes; but the extract is interesting at any rate in showing that the ball itself had by this time assumed its present shape and make.

The same number of the 'Spectator' from which we have already quoted in our account of the history of athletics, also makes mention of a football match. The 'Spectator,' while on a visit to Sir Roger de Coverley, visits a country fair, and there sees, besides athletes and cudgel-players, a game of football.

I was diverted (he says) from a further observation of these combatants (i.e. the cudgel-players) by a football match which was on the other side of the green, where Tom Short behaved himself so well that most people seemed to agree it was impossible that he should remain a bachelor until the next wake. Having played many a match myself, I could have looked longer on the sport had I not observed a country girl.

One can hardly fancy the courtly Joseph Addison playing at football, unless he did so when he was a boy at Charterhouse, but he certainly writes as if gentlemen played the game as well as rustics, though unluckily he gives no description of the style of play he saw upon the village green.

Unfortunately also, the great historian of English sports, Joseph Strutt, gives but a short description of the game of football, but from what he says it is evident that at the time he wrote (1801) the game was fast decaying. 'Football,' he says, 'is so called because the ball is driven about with the feet instead of the hands.' It is not likely, however, that he means that kicking alone was allowed, as his paragraph on football immediately follows that on 'hurling,' which he describes in his day as being played with sticks or bats, with which the ball was struck. The following is the only description he gives of the game: -

When a match at football is made an equal number of competitors take the field and stand between two goals placed at a distance of eighty or an hundred yards the one from the other. The goal is usually made with two sticks driven into the ground about two or three feet apart. The ball, which is commonly made of a blown bladder and cased with leather, is delivered in the midst of the ground, and the object of each party is to drive it through the goal of their antagonists, which being achieved the game is won. The abilities of the performers are best displayed in attacking and defending the goals; and hence the pastime was more frequently called a goal at football than a game at football. When the exercise becomes exceeding violent the players kick each other's shins without the least ceremony, and some of them are overthrown at the hazard of their limbs.

The last sentence shows pretty clearly that Strutt was describing not the dribbling game, but the old hacking and tripping game which in its civilised form is now known as the Rugby Union game. What is perhaps the most significant part of Strutt's description is that he says 'The game was formerly much in vogue among the common people, though of late years it seems to have fallen into disrepute and is but little practised.' Indeed, the decline in the popularity of the game which Strutt noticed at the opening of this century seems to have gone steadily on for the next fifty years, in England at any rate. Hone, in his ' Year Book,' 'Every Day Book,' and 'Table Book,' (1838 to 1842) treats of football and football customs more as interesting survivals of past ages than as contemporary pastimes. Although he says nothing of the celebrated Derby and Corfe Castle games, he quotes from Hutchinson's ' History of Cumberland' an account of an annual Shrove Tuesday match at Bromfield. By ancient custom the scholars of a certain school at that place were allowed to 'bar out' their master, and after a sham fight a truce was supposed to be concluded whereby the scholars were allowed to have some cock-fighting and a football match.