lding
their agility." There are some exciting descriptions of old football
matches; and we read of some very fierce contests at Derby, which
was renowned for the game. In the seventeenth century it was played
in the streets of London, much to the annoyance of the inhabitants,
who had to protect their windows with hurdles and bushes. At
Bromfield, in Cumberland, the annual contest on Shrove Tuesday was
keenly fought. Sides having been chosen, the football was thrown
down in the churchyard, and the house of the captain of each side
was the goal. Sometimes the distance was two or three miles, and
each step was keenly disputed. He was a proud man at Bromfield who
succeeded in reaching the goal with the ball, which he received as
his guerdon. How the villagers used to talk over the exploits of the
day, and recount their triumphs of former years with quite as much
satisfaction as their ancestors enjoyed in relating their feats in
the border wars!

The Scots were famous formerly, as they now are, for prowess in the
game, and the account of the Shrove Tuesday match between the
married and single men at Scone, in Perthshire, reads very like a
description of a modern Rugby contest. At Inverness the women also
played, the married against the unmarried, when the former were
always victorious. King James I., who was a great patron of sports,
did not approve of his son Henry being a football player. He wrote
that a young man ought to have a "moderate practice of running,
leaping, wrestling, fencing, dancing, and playing at the caitch, or
tennis, bowls, archery, pall-mall, and riding; and in foul or stormy
weather, cards and backgammon, dice, chess, and billiards," but
football was too rough a game for his Majesty, and "meeter for
laming than making able." Stubbs also speaks of it as a "bloody and
murthering practice, rather than a fellowly sport or pastime." From
the descriptions of the old games, it seems to have been very
painful work for the shins, and there were no rules to prevent
hacking and tripping in those days.

Football has never been the spoilt child of English pastimes, but
has lived on in spite of royal proclamations and the protests of
peace-loving citizens who objected to the noise, rough play, and
other vagaries of the early votaries of the game. Edward II. and
succeeding monarchs regarded it as a "useless and idle sport," which
interfered with the practice of archery, and therefore ought to be
shunned by all loy