Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

10 Pre-Victorian Society; ‘Gentle And Simple’ who refused to believe that blood was thinner than the fresh water of talent. They were sufficient, nevertheless, to give a wisp of encouragement to aspiring ‘grooms’ and, perhaps more importantly, a straw of comfort to the ‘squires’ that theirs was not a tyrannically closed community. More significantly from the stance of this analysis, it accorded some leeway for inter-class activity, such as eight professional and nine amateur riders contesting a horse race on equal terms. The precedent provided by Hanoverian and Regency cricket in this regard whilst by no mean a technical model for the future was, at best, the bestowal of a blessing that it was possible for men from separate social levels to play or watch cricket together under some form of special dispensation. Having established the premiss, how did ‘gentle’ and ‘simple’ come together cricket-wise in the 18 th and early 19 th century? The brief answer is with difficulty and not frequently. However, this had more to do with social environment than with social classification. Some grasp of this difficulty is necessary to comprehend how the reverse social circumstances of the later period were so much more contributive to cricket played and watched nationally and across the class divide. Chroniclers of the history of particular games have mostly attempted to trace the lineage of their chosen diversion backwards, optimistically seeking an origin, doubtless anxious to add the lustre of antiquity to their favoured sport. Except for games played exclusively by the top brass, the conditions of Georgian and Williamite Britain were not conducive to the development of all-inclusive national sporting pastimes. The original game of tennis came to be called ‘real’ that is as in royal, tennis by journalists early in the 20 th century when the new-fangled lawn variety was becoming exceedingly popular. Real tennis was one of those exceptions that prove the rule that before the industrial revolution sport was rough and ready and extremely diverse. The only fully recognised games were very expensive and very synthetic. Tennis itself had taken some three centuries to evolve around and for the nobility of France, picking up a racket along the way where once a glove had been deployed. Its elaborate gallery of a court derived from monastic and abbey cloisters where primitive versions had been played and, by 1600, Paris alone housed 250 of these venues, strictly for royalty and noble families. Shakespeare shows his usual grasp of upper class vernacular when Henry V, insulted by the Dauphin’s sneering gift of tennis balls, cries that he will ‘play a set shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard...all the courts of France will be disturbed with chases’, set, hazard, court and chase being tennis terms. Henry VIII, as probably Shakespeare was aware, had built a tennis court at Hampton Court in 1530. Anne Boleyn, it is reported, was leisurely watching some former-day Andy Murray when she was arrested. In the 17 th century there were fourteen courts in London and the sport boasts the longest running world championship, as from 1760. Expensive, architecturally complex, stylised rules, as carefully guarded as per participants as a knightly tourney, it was not a pastime you could run out and have the Tudor equivalent of a kick about for an hour or so in the