Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

Chapter One Early Days Unlike that of most of his contemporary professionals, the parentage of John Herbert King was comfortably middle-class; and seems to have been so for some generations. A mourning ring still in the family’s possession, and containing some crocheted hair under glass surrounded by a circle of seed pearls, commemorates a Matilda King who was born on 7 July 1740 and died in 1805; she was in all probability King’s great-great grandmother. He was also related, in some way which cannot now be accurately determined, to Colonel John King of Stretton, a fact of which his brother James was very proud, since he had asked Eric Snow to mention this fact ‘casually’ in his History of Leicestershire Cricket and then thanked him for promising to do exactly that. 2 11 James King’s letter thanking Eric Snow for agreeing to refer ‘casually’ to his claim to a landed ancestry. 2 This appears to be a reference to Lt-Col John King, who was a landowner at Stretton-under-Fosse (residing at Stretton Hall), about five miles from Lutterworth, in the nineteenth century. Colonel King held land also at Noseley, in the east of the county, in which area the Hazlerigg family – two of them were county captains – had long been prominent. James King may thus have perhaps been trying to point out that his own family history could be measured against that of the Hazleriggs.