School cricket

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General

In Tudor England, Edward VI reorganised grammar schools and instituted new ones so that there was a national system of “free grammar schools.” In theory these were open to all, offering free tuition to those who could not afford to pay fees. In practice, the vast majority of poor children did not attend these schools since their labour was economically critical to their families. Nevertheless, the Sixteenth Century saw a large increase in the amount of schooling that was taking place and it was in this century that cricket first appears, often associated with schools. A feature of education at the time was that apart from Eton and Westminster School, all schools in the 17th century had local intakes and no class segregation. Therefore, the sons of rich and those of such less well-off families who send their sons to school mixed together.

References to cricket in schools

Before 1720

Guildford Fee School (now Royal Grammar School, Guildford)

In 1598 a dispute over a piece of land in Guildford came to court. In his testimony John Derrick, aged 59, stated that he and his fellow pupils of the Guildford Fee School (now Royal Grammar School, Guildford – pictured) used to play cricket there, which must have been in the years around 1550. This has been widely regarded as the earliest certain reference to cricket. The full testimony reads as follows:

“And also this deponent upon saith that he being a scholar in the free school of Guildford he and diverse of his fellows did run and play there at cricket and other plays. And also that the same was used for the baiting of bears in the said town until the said John Parish did enclose the said parcel of land“.

A second important event is the founding of St Omer College in France for the Catholic education of the sons of recusant aristocracy and gentry. When this College returned to England two hundred years later it brought with it an embryonic form of cricket which had apparently being unchanged since the school was originally set up. Our knowledge of that game provides our only substantial information about the conduct of the game in its very early days.

We know from descriptions of the game, which continued to be played into the Nineteenth Century, that it contained all of the main element of modern cricket.

St Omer College buildings, c1700
St Omer College buildings, c1700

Among the few references to cricket in the seventeenth Century, there are some that relate to the game being played at or in the vicinity of schools. One tells us that the sport was being played by pupils at Eton College and Winchester College in 1650. There is also a reference to the game at St Paul’s School, London about 1665 concerning John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, who studied there. Based largely on this, in his Social History of English Cricket, Derek Birley speculates that the game “must have been known to every schoolboy in the south-east” of England. However, he doubts that the sport at this time was part of any school’s curriculum.

In 1706, William Goldwin (1682–1747) published his Musae Juveniles, which included a Latin poem called In Certamen Pilae (On a Ball Game). This has 95 lines and is about a rural cricket match and is a key source of information about the game at the time. Goldwin himself attended Eton and then graduated to King’s College, Cambridge in 1700 and it is almost certain that he encountered cricket at both establishments.

Cricket at the Free School, Maidstone
Cricket at the Free School, Maidstone

After 1720

Horace Walpole entered Eton in 1726 and later wrote that “playing cricket as well as thrashing bargemen was common”. The Sackville family which produced the Dukes of Dorset, most notably the 3rd Duke, sent its sons to Westminster, the 1st Duke studying there at the end of the 17th century; and it was through playing cricket at school that the game became a Sackville family tradition. This would have been a common way that cricket became an important leisure pursuit of the Aristocracy and the Gentry.

The spread of cricket to the northern counties by 1750 was partly due to “its transmission by interested clergy, schoolmasters and others educated at southern boarding schools”. In the middle part of the 18th century, games involving teams of alumni became popular. These fixtures ranged from a team of Old Etonians playing the Gentlemen of England in 1751 to a game at the newly opened Lord’s Old Ground in 1788 which was entitled “Gentlemen Educated at Eton versus The Rest of the Schools”. The first school cricket match which has been recorded was in 1794 between Westminster School and Charterhouse School with pupils playing as City of London and City of Westminster at Lords Old Ground. Westminster School played its games at Tothill Fields, which was where Vincent Square now stands. It is known to have played matches against Eton in 1792 and 1796.

Cricket at Charterhouse School, 1780
Cricket at Charterhouse School, 1780

Birley recorded that the “sharpest rivalry” in the middle to late 18th century was between old boys of Eton and Westminster, as these were the two oldest public schools. Notable cricketing patrons who attended those schools include the 3rd Duke of Dorset (Winchester), the 4th Earl of Tankerville and the 9th Earl of Winchilsea (both Eton). Their fellow patron Sir Horatio Mann attended Charterhouse School, an indication that cricket was gaining acceptance at many other schools. By 1800, it was firmly established in all public and most grammar schools. The most famous inter-school match, Eton v Harrow, still played annually at Lord’s, began in 1805 and is one of the longest-running annual sporting fixtures in the world.

Concluding comments

Clearly, schools were a key element in the development of the game, and one which, I think, has not always been sufficiently emphasised. I suggest that is particularly significant that the game appears at the time when Free Schools were first established. Cricket is generally thought to have been a game which evolved over a long period, but this is largely based on supposition. I suggest that an alternative hypothesis would be that it was specifically invented within the school system with a body of rules not unlike that of the Stoneyhurst game. It may then have spread from school to school, making itself known to both the general population and the upper echelons, who would continue to play as they reached adulthood.

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