About the same time Thomas Cartwright, in his admonition to Parliament, asserts that the parson is as bad as his flock. 'He pusheth it over (the service) as fast as he can galloppe: for either he hath two places to serve, or there are some games to be playde in the afternoon.'However, we need say no more as to the Puritan efforts to suppress athletic sports. The merits of the Puritans can hardly obtain a fair hearing in a history of sport; they, no doubt, succeeded for a time in discountenancing it, and in putting down its practice very effectually upon Sundays, but when the Puritan government fell, its fall, to paraphrase Ridley's words, 'lighted such a fire' of sporting enthusiasm as has never yet been extinguished in England.

However, under the first two Stuart kings both the upper classes and such of the lower classes as were not converted to Puritanism showed an undiminished vigour for athletic sports. Peacham, who published his 'Compleat Gentleman' in 1622, gives a list of the sports which a gentleman should practise. First of all comes, of course, riding. It is the 'great and most noble' sport, for 'kings have always delighted to ride.' Throwing the hammer and wrestling are low-class sports, 'not so well beseeming nobility but rather soldiers in a camp;' 'neither,' he goes on, 'have I read or heard of any prince or general commended for wrestling save Epaminondas and Achmat, the last emperor of Turkey.' This worthy, it appears, made a 'record' for hammer-throwing, and 'there was reared in Constantinople, for one extraordinary cast which none could come near, two great pillars of marble.' Our modern 'record-breakers 'receive a medal sometimes, but the event is not recorded upon marble pillars, because, perhaps, the record-breakers are not emperors. Peacham, however, thinks highly of running, and in its praise he gives a shameful plagiarism from the book of Sir Thomas Elyot, to which we have referred before.

Running is good because Achilles and Alexander were runners, and jumping is good because Epaminondas and Alexander jumped before breakfast. However, he gives his own opinion that these exercises are 'commendable.' Whatever may have been the merits or demerits of the Stuarts, there can be no question that sportsmen owe a debt of gratitude to them. James I., though he was not an athlete himself, and though he objected to football, yet gave a general encouragement to sports, both by precept in his work, 'Basilikon Doron,' and by practice in frequently acting as referee or judge. The following extract from the 'Basilikon Doron,' which was a work of precepts to his son, is interesting: 'And amongst all un-necessaire things which are lawful and expedient I think exercises of the body most commendable to be used by a young prince. For albeit I grant it to be most requisite for a king to exercise his engine, which surely with idleness will rouste and become blunt, yet certainly bodily exercises are very commendable as well for baunishing idleness as for making the body able and durable for travell.' 'The exercises that I would have you use, although but moderately, not making a craft of them' (which means, we suppose, that a prince should be an amateur, not a 'pro'), 'are running, leaping, wrestling, fencing, dancing, and playing at the caitch, or tennise, archerie, palle-malle, and such like other fair and pleasant field games.' Both Peacham and his Majesty seem to despise hammer-throwing, the former expressing his dislike, and the latter saying nothing of it, from which it appears that fashion had changed since the time of Henry VIII.

Sports in time of Queen Elizabeth.

Although we can hardly fancy James I. running or jumping, there is little doubt that athletic skill was honoured in his Court. In Arthur Wilson's life of James I., published in 1653, we hear of the royal favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, that 'no man dances better; no man runs or jumps better.' 'Indeed,' remarks the sarcastic chronicler, 'he jumps higher than ever Englishman did in so short a time, from a private gentleman to a dukedom.' Another chronicler mentions the duke's fame as a 'leper,' which may or may not be another jest. What, however, is more interesting is the knowledge that not only the Court but the people at this time went on with their athletic matches in spite of Puritan opposition. From the 'Annals of King James and King Charles,' published in 1681, we glean the following. As in the case of some of the preceding extracts, the sense is more obvious than the grammar is correct. 'The Reformers,' says the annalist, 'took exception against the people's lawful pleasures and holidays; and at last against all sports and publick pastimes, exercises innocent and harmless, such were leaping, dancing, running, or any mastery for to goal or prize, May-poles or Church ales as deboshed idle persons.

In some of these pastimes several counties excelled, and to entertain community with their mirth the Court progresses took delight to judge of their wagers on their journeys to Scotland, which the people observing took occasion themselves to petition the King for leave to be merry.' The result of this petition was the issue by James I. of the well-known 'Book of Sports' in 1617, by which the people were permitted to have certain sports upon Sundays after church. The edict provoked little opposition at this date, but when it was republished by Charles I., in the eighth year of his reign, it formed one of the chief causes of complaint brought against him by the Puritan party. All the world knows that not long afterwards the Puritans proved stronger in the field; but we have something more than a suspicion that Cromwell's Ironsides must have been brought up in the national athletic sports, or they would not have displayed such skill and endurance. Indeed, their complicity in such criminal sports is rendered highly suspicious from the fact that a round cropped head is to this day the outward and visible sign of a pugilist or a pedestrian.