In the succeeding age, however, we begin to find foot exercises less thought of by the upper classes. Richard Pace, the secretary to King Henry VIII., could advise noblemen's sons to pursue their sports, ' and leave study and learning to the children of meaner people;' but although his advice was, no doubt, followed by many of his readers, the 'new learning' gradually took hold of the upper classes, and cultivated minds began to be rather contemptuous of rough bodily exercises.

Still, throughout the reign of Henry VIII. gentlemen were accustomed to write in favour of pedestrian as well as of equestrian exercises. Sir William Forest, in his 'Poesye of Princelye Practice,' holds that a prince should

In featis of maistries bestowe some diligence. Too ryde, runne, lepe, or caste by violence Stone, barre or plummett, or such other thinge, It not refuseth any prince or kynge.

About the same time that worthy knight, Sir Thomas Elyot, wrote the manual of education for a gentleman, 'The Boke called the Governour,' from which many succeeding writers borrowed largely without any acknowledgment. Sir Thomas, who was in many senses before his time, expresses himself strongly against the system of unnecessary flogging and in favour of a judicious mixture of athletics and learning for a boy. 'A discrete master,' he says, 'may with as much or more ease both to himself and his scholler lead him to play at tennis or shoote.' In the sixteenth chapter of his work he speaks of 'Sundrye fourmes of exercise necessarye for a gentilman,' and there are, he says, 'some exercises which with health join commoditie:' 'Touching such exercises as may be used within the house or in the shadowe, such as deambulations, labouryng with poyses made of ledde, lifting and throwing the heavy stone or barre, playing at tennis and diverse semblable exercises I will for this time pass over,' and he exhorts his readers to study Galen De Sanitate tuenda upon the subject. What follows about running and jumping is curious, as it makes it plain that Sir Thomas knew that there were some people who decried these sports as being vulgar.

He says, 'Rennyng is bothe a good exercise and a laudable solace' (we presume by solace he means pastime, and not consolation in the sense in which a certain well-known athlete of modern times stated that, whenever he was suffering from disappointed love, he took a walking tour to work it off). He defends running by the argumentum ad hominem, showing that Achilles, Alexander, and others were famous runners, and that Epaminondas not only ran but jumped every morning before breakfast for health and amusement. He goes on: 'Nedes must rennynge be taken for a laudable exercise sens one of the mooste noble capitaynes of all the Romans took his name from it' (meaning Papirius Cursor). In this argument he seems to us to be meeting the scholars of the 'new learning,' who, while they studied the classics and classical models, were irreverent enough to decry athletics. That they did so there is no doubt from other sources. Roger Ascham, in his great book, 'Toxophilus,' says roundly that 'running, leaping, and quoiting be too vile for scholars.'

However, although in the sixteenth century opinions were divided as to whether running, leaping, and bar-casting were genteel or not, there is no doubt whatever that the common people were little affected by this, and went on with their amusements as before. A very few years after 'The Boke called the Governour' was published, we learn from one of the Harleian MSS. that as the great football match which was usually played upon the Roodee at Chester became productive of much inconvenience, it was decided to substitute a footrace; and accordingly, instead of the shoemakers presenting the drapers, 'in the presence of the Mayor at the Cross on the Rodehee,' with a football of the 'value of three shillings and fourpence or above, by consent of all parties concerned the ball was changed into six glayves of silver of the like value, as a reward for the best runner that day upon the aforesaid Rodehee.' This affords a curious picture of sixteenth-century manners. Instead of the annual football match, 'Shoemakers v.

Drapers,' the 'Championship of Chester' footrace is substituted.

Shakespeare, no doubt, saw some running matches both amongst gentle and simple folk. His own experiences of all kinds are reproduced in his pages, and 'private matches' and public competitions are alike mentioned by him. In the First Part of 'Henry IV.,' Act II., Scene 4, we have Falstaff offering to run Poins: 'I could give a thousand pounds I could run as fast as thou canst,' says the stout knight. In the Third Part of 'Henry VI.,' Act II., Scene 3, we have another allusion to foot-racing:

Forspent with toil as runners with a race, I lay me down a little while to breathe.

We are, however, anticipating, for there is evidence nearly a century before Shakespeare of the fondness of the common people for athletic sports. Strutt quotes the following lines from Barclay's 'Eclogues,' first published in 1508. A shepherd says:

I can both hurle and sling, I runne, I wrestle, I can well throwe the barre, No shepherd throweth the axeltree so farre; If I were merry, I could well leape and spring, I were a man mete to serve a prince or king.

A very curious piece of information given in Russell's 'History of Guildford' has a bearing on the sports of the sixteenth century. In a certain law case to decide in 1597 the title to a field near the town, one John Durich, gentleman, figuring as ' the most ancient inhabitant,' who is common in such trials, said that he had known the ground for fifty years, and when a scholar at the Free School did 'runne there and play at cricket.' The most admirable description, however, of the popular sports of the sixteenth century is that often quoted from, the work of the younger Randel Holme or Holmes, one of the wandering minstrels and merry-makers of the North country. Speaking, it is believed, of the men of Lancashire, in lines which show him to be better as a sportsman than as a poet, he says: