Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

23 assumed, as it might well have been if uniform laws had been in existence. These articles are trying to combat what was self-evidently a somewhat diverse, indefinite situation. A reasonable alternative explanation is of men who had a very rough idea of the generality of cricket but, when it came to high stakes, had to make decisions about fundamentals which for these two matches included the number of players, the length of the pitch, how to score a run and a refusal to allow run outs from a direct throw. In 2009 Martin Wilson plus Martyn and Jeremy Butler valiantly translated a Latin manuscript dated 1723 found resting in the East Sussex Record Office. 13 In mock-heroic poetic style Clava Falcata Torsio , ‘Playing ball with a curved bat’. Even in this pick-up game between two lines of ‘true friends’, there is a wager of £100 riding on the result. Nothing is standardised. The fielders are deployed, rounders style, behind the bowler, for instance. Most significantly, ‘clothes are laid out and rules agreed.’ In many sports, football among them, this issue of agreeing rules beforehand persevered into the modern era. A rational interpretation of the Richmond/Brodrick document is that it was one of several such documents drawn up almost every time a match was played. It was only towards mid-century that gentlemen tried to find some overall acceptance of a central set of laws. Interestingly, this happened about the same time in three different sports and with some sense of sameness across the three, particularly in respect of the control of gaming. These were the formal establishment of the Jockey Club in 1750, the 1743 Broughton Rules, the first attempt to bring orderliness to pugilism, and the first cricket laws issued in 1744 by the very decisively titled ‘Cricket Club’. This was based in London, with grandees urgently seeking some control mechanism amid the flux. The laws come to our attention though the medium of The New Universal Magazine of 1752 and the phraseology – ‘play’d at the Artillery Ground, London’ - is open to the inference that they were drafted for games at that particular venue which for a short while was the key arena for cricket. How far the writ of these laws ran and how many of those playing cricket heard of or abided by them is a moot point. What they do emphasise is the concentration of involvement of London and the south eastern counties, predictable enough given that what would now be called the north-south divide was as much in evidence then as again it is today. All but a hundred or so of the 2000 or so matches known to have been played in the 18 th century were staged in Essex, Sussex, Surrey, Middlesex, Kent and Hampshire. The relatively small knot of wealthy and titled sponsors of cricket matches were chiefly from the home counties, most of them leaning towards London in their affiliations and life-style. As well as the Dukes of Richmond, based at Goodwood House in Sussex, and Alan Brodrick, Viscount Midleton at Peper Harow near Guildford in Surrey, there were the Sackville family, headed from 1720 by the Duke of Dorset, at Knole in Kent and Sir Horatio Mann in the same county, along with the Earl of Tankerville at Mount Felix, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. Where town teams flourished they were often Pre-Victorian Society And Sport