Before 1600 – Prehistory

image_print

Overview

Christopher Brookes1 refers to the period before 1660 as the era of the folk game. He writes:

…cricket, like all folk-games, was originally played by ordinary people, and rarely, if ever, by gentlemen. Sometimes children would make up the nucleus of players, but on saint’s days and other festivals entire communities would take part – women as well as men, the old as well as the young. In many cases, the opposite sides in a game were all the able-bodied inhabitants of neighbouring villages.

Many will find this description persuasive, but sadly we do not have very much direct evidence to support it.2 Indeed, we have very few references to bat and ball games before 1600 and such as they are, they mostly consist of hints in various ancient manuscripts and illustrations of bat and ball games being played in medieval Europe. None can be pinned down as being cricket, but they set the scene of games being played from which cricket was to emerge.

An important exception however is the game of cricket as played by Stoneyhurst college until around 1860, a game which seems to be fossilised version of the game that was established before the founding of the school in 1593. Beyond that, most studies of cricket in this era have concentrated on two matters, both of which involve a great deal of speculation and no prospect of certainty.

  • The game or games from which cricket evolved
  • The origin of the word cricket

These matters are given further consideration below, but we will start with a timeline of possible early references to cricket.

Timeline

The references below are sometimes connected with cricket although there is no certainty about any of them.

YearEvent
673Life of Cuthbert by The Venerable Bede includes an illustration of a youth playing with a curved stick
c1180Joseph of Exeter, writing in Latin, is quoted in translation as saying; ‘The youths at cricks did play / Throughout the merry day.
c1250A youth holding some kind of sports stick in the Six Ages of Man Window, Canterbury Cathedral
c1250A bat-and-ball game illustrated in a 13th-century manuscript of the Galician Cantigas de Santa Maria.
1300‘creag’ – an unknown pastime referred to in Latin, in the Wardrobe Accounts of Prince Edward, later Edward I.
c1340Pictorial reference on the border of an illuminated manuscript of the Romance of Alexander.
c1350A bat and ball game appears on a stained-glass window in Gloucester Cathedral – most liely a version of hockey called Bandyball
1477‘Handyn and Handoute’ among pastimes listed in a statute of Edward IV.
1478‘criquet’ mentioned in a French manuscript, referring to a place in the district of St Omer, north-east France.
1562‘Clyckett’ mentioned as an unlawful game played in Malden, Essex.
1593St Omer College for English Catholics opens in France, taking with it seems, a version of cricket apparently popular at the time – Stoneyhurst Cricket
1598Sgrillare defined as ‘to make a noise as a cricket, to play cricket-a-wicket and be merry’ in Florio’s Italian-English Dictionary.
1598Creckett’ referred to in a court ease in Guildford during an argument over a piece of land” A witness, John Derrick, stated that when a schoolboy he and his friends played ‘creckett’ on the land about 50 years previously.

Stonyhurst Cricket

In 1593 the Jesuit, Fr Robert Persons, set up a English Catholic school in St Omer for the schooling of the sons of recusant aristocracy and gentry who, following the reformation, were unable to receive an education in line with their religion in Elizabethan England. Most of the pupils came from the South East. The College of St Omer operated until 1762 when, forced to leave what was by that time part of France, it moved first to Bruges, then, Liege (1773) and finally to the supportive and out of the way estate of Stoneyhurst Lancashire in 1794.

The school boys and their teachers who returned to England brought with them their own games including that of cricket.  But it was a form of the game preserved by geographical and cultural distance from the evolution of the game in England, one that almost certainly  dates back some way beyond the College’s foundation in 1593. It is the Coelacanth of Cricket, a survivor from a distant age when all other traces have disappeared. It is also virtually the only clue we have as to what the game may have been like in these very early days.

The following is an extract from T.E. Muir’s Stonyhurst, a modern history of the college

“ On the eve of Ash Wednesday ‘Matches’ boys, subdivided into teams of five, were organised and assigned to their respective cricket stones ranged in a line twenty yards from the back of the garden wall. Bats, three feet in length tapering to an oval head 4 ½ inches in width, were made by villagers in the winter months.  Some consisted entirely of ash, but most had an alder-head spliced on to an ash-handle. Balls which had a core of cork – sometimes with india rubber at the centre – were covered with worsted, soaked in glue and baked before the fire by the boys.  They were then taken to the shoemakers for casing with two hemispheres of hard leather sewn to form a thick seam around the ball.  Pitches were dominated by the single wicket stone; 27 yards away stood the ‘running in’ stone, placed at a slightly oblique angle to give a clear path for the striker.  The ‘running mark’, from which the bowler released the ball underarm and with the seam, was a further three yards away. ‘Play’ was called for the first ball, but thereafter ‘the bowler is at perfect liberty to bowl as quickly as he likes, and if the batsman be not ready, need allow no time’.  At the wicket he was assisted by a ‘second bowler’ and three ‘faggers’ or fielders. Amongst other things the second bowler was required ‘to have the cricket-stone free from all books, bats etc, which may in any way prevent him striking the stone with the ball’. The batsman, who retired after 21 balls, was obliged, from the nature of his implement to slog.  The hard surface of the Playground was well adapted for this and ‘greeners’ could be dispatched 100 yards across its length into the gardens beyond the Penance Walk. Runs were scored by racing to and from the running-in stone and, on the final ball, counted double.”

And below are a photo of the surviving implements of he game together with a photo of a pupil recreating their use. Note the stone wicket, the original is being used here; also note the spoon shaped bat, they look more use to me that the hockey-style stick which seems to have been prevalent before 1720.

Clearly, the basics are all here that constitute a game of cricket –

  • A team game, not an individual game
  • Equipment:
    • Bat
    • Hand-sized ball
    • Wicket
  • Playing roles
    • Batter
    • Bowler
    • Fielder
  • Progress of game
    • Runs being scored by striking the ball and running
    • Batters having an innings of limited duration
    • The ball being delivered to the batter by an opposing bowler from a fixed point
    • The concept of dismissal by being bowled
  • Outcome of game being determined by comparing runs scored by each team

Rowland Bowen (in Cricket: A History) also drew the connection that St Omer, where the school was based, it is also where an an even earlier possible reference to cricket occurs, in a manuscript dated 1478. This however seems like a cul-de-sac; there is no other suggestion that France was the origin of the Stonyhurst game, especially as the College was not generally subject to much by way of local influence.

Clearly, from the description of the game and the appearance of the implements, there were significant changes before the game appeared in the broader historic record in the Eighteenth Century. It looks very much as if, while the rest of the game developed, the St Omer College which later became Stonyhurst, stayed still. This game is a tantalising glimpse of Sixteenth Century Cricket.

Possible predecessors of cricket

Published on 1801, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England is the major source book for early English games. Essentially this divides ball games into three families – Foot-Ball, Club-Ball and Hand-Ball, obviously depending on how the ball is struck. Football need not concern us, but the other two are relevant

Club-Ball games

Included in this category are golf, hockey, bandy-ball (a variation of hockey) and tennis. A game called baseball, apparently close to rounders was around from at least Tudor times. Similar in some respects to cricket, it does not however have a wicket to bowl at.

  • tip-cat or cat and dog (a traditional outdoor game where a player uses a stick to hit a piece of wood into the air and then hits it again to drive it as far as possible).
  • cat and dog which was for three players. Two defend foot-wide holes set about 26 feet apart with a club, or “dog.” A third player throws a four-inch cat toward the hole, and the defender hits it away. 

Cricket clearly could be argued to be a variant of one or more of these games, especially when it is considered that the very old cricket bat, the one in use until perhaps 1720 appears to have been borrowed from hockey or bandy ball.

There was also a version of rounders that dated back to Tudor times, called base-ball, but not to be confused with modern baseball. This involved a bat but no wicket.

Hand-Ball games

Games in this category include fives and, especially the old form of stoolball (illustrated here), which apparently originated in the fifteenth century, where a hand was used to defend a milking stool and scoring runs was by striking the ball away. Stoolball is still played occasionally in Sussex, mostly by female teams but a bat is now used and the wicket is a board on a fairly tall pole. Link to video.

The earliest reference to stoolball is in 1510, not that long before the first reference to cricket. This game clearly has the idea of a wicket, also batting and bowling so has ideas that could have fed into the development of cricket. Or maybe just a game with a common ancestor.

Generally though, the idea that cricket grew out of another game is far from certain and is not greatly favoured by cricket historians.

Origin of the word cricket and other associated words

This is a subject which had attracted a great deal of thought and writing, none of it even vaguely conclusive, and not much of it, I suggest, terribly useful in understanding the game. I think that the appeal of the question arises because there are at least words to be seen in the historic record which might refer to cricket, but there is very little by way of other evidence. Words that have been suggested to be of relevance include:

  • creag – unknown game played by Prince Edward in 1300
  • cricc-crycc – old English word for crutch
  • krick(-e) – middle Dutch, meaning a stick
  • criquet – old French word for stick
  • wiket – old North French word for gate
  • batte – old French word meaning to beat
  • batt – Gaelic word for staff
  • beil – old French word for horizontal piece of wood fixed on two stakes
  • stub – stump of tree

The first seemingly secure reference to the work cricket in the context of games occurs in A worlde of wordes, or, Most copious, and exact dictionarie in Italian and English, first published 1598. An Italian word, Sgrillare, is defined as ‘to play cricket-a-wicket and be merry’.

Concluding comments

My view is that the only impressive evidence to emerge from considerations of the pre-history of cricket is the Stoneyhurst experience. That tells us, with a reasonable degree of likelihood, that an embryonic form cricket was sufficiently well established to make it a viable choice of activity for a newly-formed school before 1600. It was around this date too that the word cricket is definitely associated with game-playing.

The generally held theory is that, cricket would have developed gradually with numerous versions of folk cricket would have been played in villages especially in the South East, where the game was to grow and become established, then spread to schools.

I would like to suggest that another view is possible. Perhaps it didn’t just grow. Perhaps it was invented, most likely by a schoolteacher, with a sets of well developed rules, which were then taken up and adopted by other schools, and then spread out into the community. In favour of this, I would suggest that looking at the Stoneyhurst game, a good deal of structured thought needs to be given to produce a game that makes sense, is capable of being played in a competitive way and sufficiently well-defined to ensure that all participants have a common understanding of what is happening. The Guildford reference is associated with the Guildford Grammar School and the appearance of the game generally coincided with the growth in grammar schools which followed the Reformation. I believe it is worth thinking about.

Further reading

Most books dealing with a general history of cricket address the question of he origins of the game, but particular mention must be made of Percy Thomas (HPT) who wrote six long and thoroughly researched pamphlets about aspects of the early game. Unfortunately, they are not easy to find, though second hard facsimiles are sometimes available for around thirty pounds.

Footnotes

  1. Brookes – chapter 2 ↩︎
  2. In fact, the form of the game suggested by McCann bears some resemblance to a form of the game played in the island of Trobriand in Eastern Papua New Guinea and described in this film commissioned by the Papua New Guinea government in 1976: Trobriand Cricket: An Ingenious Response to Colonialism ↩︎
Scroll to Top