The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England (56 page)

Chess and tables are mostly played by gentlemen who bet on the outcome, but card games are played everywhere from alehouses to palaces. The most popular are Gleek, Primero, Prima-Vista, Maw, Cent or Saint (like modern Picquet), One-and-Thirty, New Cut and Trumps (like modern Whist).
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The queen is very fond of her card games and bets huge amounts. Playing Maw with Lord North in August 1577, she takes £33 from him, and when they play Primero for double or quits
he has to hand over another £33.
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Shovegroat (shove-halfpenny in later centuries) and dice are very popular with all classes; again, it is not the game that matters so much as the thrill of the betting. But do watch out for cheats. According to Gilbert Walker’s
A Manifest Detection of Dice-play
(1552), fourteen different sorts of false dice are manufactured in the London prisons, such as ‘a bale of cinque-deuces’ and ‘a bale of fullams’, so you can roll a set of dice that will always be odd or even, or always sixes. ‘Fullams’ are weighted on one side with mercury or lead, and ‘bristles’ have tiny bristles set into one face so that it is unlikely ever to settle on that side.
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There is one form of gambling that the government wholeheartedly approves of: the lottery. This is announced in 1567, when 4,000 tickets are offered at 10s each. The first prize is worth £5,000, of which £3,000 is in cash, £700 in silver and silver-gilt plate, and the rest in tapestry and linen. The second prize is £3,500 (£2,000 cash, £600 in plate, the rest in tapestry and linen). There are eleven more prizes in descending value, down to £140; twelve prizes of £100; twenty-four prizes of £50 and so on, down to 10,000 prizes of 15s.
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You have to purchase your tickets by 1 May 1568 and the separate draws take place from 11 January to 6 May 1569 at the west door of St Paul’s Cathedral. It is not a great success: the ticket prices are just too high. The less ambitious three-day lottery of 1586 is more successful, but you may not want to take part in it: all the prizes are pieces of armour.

Outdoor Sports

As a result of the Archery Act of 1542 every man over the age of seventeen and under the age of sixty who is not lame or maimed, a nobleman, a clergyman or a judge must keep a bow and four arrows in his house at all times or pay a fine of 6s 8d. Every father of a boy between the ages of seven and sixteen is also required to keep a bow for his son and two arrows, to train him to shoot. Bows made of elm, ash and hazel have to be sold at 12d or less, and even the best yew bows cannot be sold for more than 3s 4d. No bows or arrows may be exported, and no foreigners may practise with the bow in England. No man over twenty-four years should practise shooting at a mark less than 220 yards away (one-eighth of a mile). Every man must shoot
at the butts on every holy day, and parishes are to be fined if they do not keep their butts in good order. Englishmen cite the victories of Crécy, Poitiers, Agincourt and Flodden as proof that the maintenance of archery is essential to the maintenance of English pride.
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You can hardly doubt that archery is the national sport of England, not just a means of waging war.

Yet archery is slipping. Countrymen prefer crossbows for shooting coneys and game birds. Guns are more frequently employed when mustering for the militia, and they are growing increasingly cheap (the average price is 8s 3d in the 1560s).
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In 1577 William Harrison opines that ‘our strong shooting is decayed and laid in bed’. Archery practice is dangerous: many archers and onlookers are killed at the butts, so why continue to practise in an age of guns?
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Despite the queen’s attempts to bolster her father’s Archery Act by reissuing it in 1566 and 1571, the days of the longbow are approaching their end. In many places the butts are not kept in good order. At Purleigh in 1591 the manorial tenants confess they have not practised shooting for ten months.
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As the reign draws to a close fewer and fewer people observe the legislation. John Stow writes, ‘what should I speak of the ancient daily exercises in the longbow by the citizens of this city, now almost clean left off and forsaken?’ Londoners now more frequently resort to bowling alleys than the butts.

The preferred sport of noblemen and gentlemen is hunting, mainly for deer, hares and game birds. Spaniels are used to rouse the bird or beast and chase it out; hounds then continue the chase. ‘The spaniels and bloodhounds with their hanging ears seek out the game by smelling of soot of the foot,’ writes William Horman, adding, ‘a greyhound overtaketh the hare and catcheth him in his mouth’. Many people scorn the hunting of hares with greyhounds as being too easy. Male red deer are the most highly valued quarry, especially stags and great stags (deer of four or five years) and, best of all, harts (six years or more). These make fine gifts for the park owner to offer to friends and relatives, or to make into venison pasties for visitors, being a mark of high status. If you witness a large hunt go by late in the afternoon of a hot summer’s day, you will hear the baying of the hounds and the noise of the hunters’ horns and see the hart dashing through the wood as it seeks safety. After a moment the pack will come into sight, chasing it towards water. As the deer plunges in and starts to swim away, with its antlers like the sails of
a galleon, the hounds go after it, both along the bank and in the water. Then you will hear the galloping of hooves. The riders will appear, pulling on their reins as they twist and turn beneath the boughs. The footmen will come after them, running along in their leather jerkins. All are caught up in the thrill of the chase – and look forward to the feast at the end. As Robert Laneham writes in 1575, it is ‘a pastime delightful to so high a degree as for any person to take pleasure by most senses at once’.
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One of the virtues of hunting in Elizabethan England is that it is almost the only physically demanding activity that men and women can enjoy together. The queen loves to hunt and so do many other English noblewomen, enthusiastically showing off their horsemanship in the chase. For those of a gentler disposition, hawking remains popular, as this too can be enjoyed by both sexes. Normally you will use a falcon or hawk to go after rabbits or other birds. A goshawk will cost you between 10s and £1 – albeit more for a very fine bird – but do not forget the greater costs of keeping it in meat and keeping it healthy and clean: contemporary treatises suggest they should be bathed every third day.
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The art of fishing is also practised by both gentlemen and women, and enjoyed for the catching as well as the eating. But make sure you obtain permission: fishing on a river without the landowner’s consent will see you indicted at the quarter sessions for poaching. Expert anglers use a rod and a selection of flies as well as the net. Books such as
The Arte of Angling
(1577) and William Gryndall’s
Hawking, Hunting, Fouling and Fishing
(1596) will teach you the rudiments. The following comments appear in a dialogue book of the time:

First lady:
What a fair pond there is! … What fishes be in it?

Second lady [the owner of the pond]:
Truly, Madam, we put in a great store of fish, as of tench, bream, roach and carp; but I believe that the pirate-pikes have made good prize of the most part. The boat is at the other end but if it please you to set these gentlemen at work we will try to take some fish with the net.

First lady:
I had rather fish with the line.

First gentleman:
Here, Madam, is one all ready, that hath a good hook. I go to seek some bait. I beseech you, let me bait it for you. Now, cast your line in the water. I trust that the fishes will not be better able to keep themselves than so many brave hearts whom the
sugar-sweet and forcible bait of your good grace and rare virtues do draw to himself. O happy hand! Draw, Madam, you have caught – but softly, for fear the line do break, for it is big.
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To which the second gentleman, who is as much a creep as the first, replies ‘O fish, thou hast had a happy destiny to be taken by so worthy a fisher. Thou couldst never have had a better end.’

As noted in
chapter 4
, gentlemen might take part in many other sports and games, including swimming, wrestling, athletics, horse riding and fencing. This last art is most important. Even if you wear a sword only as a badge of status, you need to know how to use it – in case someone challenges you to a duel. For this reason go to one of the fencing schools in London; they are at Ely Place in Holborn, the Greyfriars within Newgate, Bridewell, the Artillery Gardens to the north of the city, Leadenhall and Smithfield. There are also fencing schools at the larger inns where plays are performed, such as the Belle Savage on Ludgate Hill and the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, and at the Curtain Theatre, just to the north of the city.
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Here certified members of the Company of Masters of the Science of Defence will teach you how to use the rapier, the quarterstaff and the broadsword. Students progress up the scale of learning from ‘scholar’ (beginner) to ‘free scholar’ (after seven years’ training) and eventually may become ‘provost’ (after another seven years). In the early part of the reign the teaching only goes as far as the use of the rapier and buckler (a small round shield); but the arrival of Italian and Spanish masters in the 1560s means that you can learn new techniques. The method pioneered in Italy by Giacomo di Grassi informs one school of combat. His followers teach by example and principle, citing maxims such as: ‘he who is closest to his opponent can strike him soonest’; ‘there is greater force on the outer edge of a circle than on the inner side’; and ‘the most direct way to kill a man is the shortest distance for the sword to travel’. From 1594 you can buy an English translation of di Grassi’s
The True Arte of Defence
and try to teach yourself. It contains sections on fighting with a single rapier or sword; with a rapier in one hand and a dagger in the other; with a rapier and cloak; with a sword and target (small shield); with a pair of rapiers; with two-handed swords and with long weapons. It also teaches you how to fight against men wielding all these combinations of weapons and so is doubly useful – as long as your adversary has not also read it.

POPULAR SPORTS

Wrestling is one of the most popular pastimes in the country. A ring is drawn out, the two competitors strip down to their breeches and each attempts to throw the other to the ground and hold him there – very much as in modern wrestling.
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In London, competitions take place on Finsbury Fields in August, overseen by the lord mayor and the city’s aldermen. In country towns there is often wrestling on a market day or during a fair: the traditional prize for the victor is a ram. Gentlemen also wrestle, but, of course, they only do so with other gentlemen and in private. No sport makes inroads into breaking down class barriers.

Elizabethan football has more in common with modern rugby than soccer. There are no rules against picking up the ball and running with it or tripping up your opponent. There are also no limitations (other than local custom) on the number of players or the size of the pitch. You might be invited to join in a game in the streets of London; in the country it might be played across all the ground between two villages.
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One of the very few innovations that sets the game apart from its medieval version is that it is now played with an inflated leather ball rather than a pig’s bladder filled with peas; William Horman refers to playing football ‘with a ball full of wind’ and Shakespeare describes a football as cased in leather in
The Comedy of Errors
.

Be careful, though: Elizabethan football is a far more violent game than its later incarnation. Sir Thomas Elyot dismisses it as nothing but ‘beastly fury and extreme violence whereof proceedeth hurt; and consequently rancour and malice do remain with them that be wounded …’
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Philip Stubbes is of a like mind, declaring that football

may rather be called a friendly kind of fight than a play or recreation; a bloody murdering practice than a fellowly sport or pastime. For doth not everyone lie in wait for his adversary, seeking to overthrow him and to pitch him on his nose, though it be upon hard stones, in ditch or dale, in valley or hill, or whatsoever place it be he careth not so he have him down … By this means sometimes their necks are broken, sometimes their backs, sometimes their legs, sometimes their arms … sometimes their noses gush out with blood, sometimes their eyes start out … And no marvel, for they have sleights to meet one betwixt two, to dash him against the heart with their elbows, to hit him under the short ribs with their gripped fists and with their knees to catch him upon the hip, and to pitch him upon his neck … Is this murdering play now an exercise for the Sabbath day?
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Although deaths from football are nowhere near as common as those caused by practising archery, Stubbes is not wholly exaggerating.
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Henry Ingold, aged twenty-four, is killed after colliding with another player during a two-hour-long game between eight men of White Roothing and three men from Hatfield, on a March afternoon in 1567. In 1582 a Gosfield vs Bocking match results in a dead goalkeeper when Richard Elye collides with John Pye, who is defending Gosfield’s goal. In a match at West Ham in April that same year a man is killed after being knocked down by an opponent. These incidents are treated as felonies: a game in which someone is killed ends up with all the players being reported to the coroner, tried for manslaughter and fined for playing an illegal game. The courts do not usually hang the player responsible for the accident; that would be bad sportsmanship. Nevertheless sometimes a verdict of murder is returned by the coroner, and a certain ‘John at Stile’ is found guilty instead of the named player.
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