Lives in Cricket No 51 - Rev ES Carter

current century progresses and the game is played professionally more as a career than as a recreation. The best known clerical cricketer is generally recognised as being the Right Reverend David Sheppard, Bishop of Woolwich and then Liverpool but there were a few others who became Bishops, including Henry Montgomery, father of the field marshal. Sheppard was not the only one to have played Test cricket, for the Rev Vernon Royle played once for England, as did Edgar Killick (twice) and Clement Wilson of Yorkshire (also twice). Wilson did give up the first-class game on his ordination, as did probably, and save for the very occasional match, most of the clergy cricketers. But a few continued like Canon Gillingham of Essex and the appropriately named Canon Parsons of Warwickshire. Yorkshire had a few clerical cricketers – for apart from Clement Wilson, the Reverends Edgar Firth, William Law, Charles Sharpe, Herbert Sims, and Hugh Wood played between them 21 times for Yorkshire. Wilson featured in eight matches. Edmund Carter only played 14 matches for Yorkshire but his 19th century influence on Yorkshire cricket was considerable. It was he who introduced Edmund Peate into the Yorkshire team, and he who strove, more than many, to widen the ambit of Yorkshire County Cricket Club beyond its Sheffield base. He liked his amateurism but tried to link up any amateur and professional divide. Above all, his own talent spotting led, without doubt, to the introduction of the Honourable Martin Hawke into the Yorkshire side, and his support of Hawke led in time to years of Yorkshire success. For that alone Carter deserves strong recognition and this brief book endeavours to single out his cricketing endeavours in the wider context of a vigorous clerical vocation. Preface 6