Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

supporting the Congregational Chapel, established in 1684, and producing the ‘wollen manufacturer’ Richard Cole, who was a founding member of the redoubtable Old Gooseberry Show Society. Necessarily bereft of historical documentation, there is a much earlier familial tradition that the Coles were descended from a descendant of the French knight Robert de Brus from Brix, namely Robert I the Bruce, king of the Scots (1306-1329), whose determination was legendarily of arachnid inspiration. James and Ann King had eight children, of whom four died in infancy. The others were Annie Matilda, Emma, James (born on 3 May 1869, and also a Leicestershire cricketer) and John Herbert (often throughout his life called Jack outside the family) who was born in Lutterworth, like his siblings, on 16 April 1871. Little can be ascertained now of John Herbert King’s boyhood and youth. He sang in the choir of the parish church for eight years and both he and brother James were active as young boys, roaming the surrounding countryside and paddling and fishing in the River Swift, where in 1428 Wycliffe’s ashes were cast after his disinterred remains had been burned as those of a heretic by a mob sent by the Bishop of Lincoln. Jack grew into a healthy lad, strong, vigorous, muscular, lean, lissom and tall (ultimately just over five feet eleven inches). In their teenage years they both attended, as boarders though they lived a scant half-mile way, Lutterworth Grammar School (more correctly named at the time the Sherrier School of the Foundation, and recently re-named Lutterworth College), which in later years produced two further cricketers of note for the county. One was Nigel Briers, the youngest player ever to represent Leicestershire, its captain for six years and later a teacher, at Ludgrove Preparatory School, of the royal princes William and Harry before he accepted a post at Marlborough College (where he had been preceded in 1899 by another Leicestershire player and occasional captain, the Cambridge Blue H.H.Marriott). The second was Nick Cook, who played with some distinction in nine Tests before moving to Northamptonshire. King became an excellent sprinter and gained in stamina by accompanying his elder brother, a long-distance runner, on training runs from Lutterworth to Bitteswell and towards Leicester and back. But he was clearly a mischievous lad, on one early occasion playing truant from school to skate on Misterton Pool before the ice was thick enough to bear his weight. Met on the High 14 Early Days