More Than A Game: The Story of Cricket's Early Years. John Major

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СКАЧАТЬ From these Articles of Agreement (reproduced in full as Appendix 1, page 399) we see glimpses of how conformity began to be reached in the rules of cricket.

      Richmond was a keen gambler. Some of his wagers were for a comparatively modest twelve guineas a game, but he was apt to take on far larger bets, although accepting only a percentage of them personally: for example, in April 1730 he and four others shared a wager for a hundred guineas on a game in Hyde Park. In August 1731 he sponsored two matches for two hundred guineas a time against a Middlesex XI led by a Mr Chambers (probably Thomas Chambers, a forebear of the great nineteenth-century MCC figure Lord Frederick Beauclerk). Chambers won the first match on 16 August, and was winning the return on the twenty-third when the allotted time elapsed and it was declared drawn. The latter game drew thousands of spectators, including many ‘persons of distinction of both sexes’. It ended with the near-obligatory affray, in which, as Fog’s Weekly Journal reported, ‘The Duke and his cricket players were greatly insulted by the mob at Richmond and some of the men having their shirts tore off their backs: and ’tis said a law suit will commence about the play.’

      Richmond’s love of cricket was lifelong. Ten years later, in 1741, his correspondence is full of cricket chat as he writes about the Sussex County by-election. There was a lot of cricket in Sussex in June of that year. On the tenth he confides to the Duke of Dorset: ‘My steward is now going about the parishes, he has been at a cricket match today.’ Four days later, Richmond writes to the Duke of Newcastle that ‘Sergison [Thomas Sergison, the Tory candidate] was expected last night at Westdean and ’tis believed he will go to a great cricket match in Stansted Parke tomorrow between Slyndon and Portsmouth.’

To the Duke of Newcastle he added that Sergison was ‘attended by Lisbon Peckham* and four or five of the Chichester Tory’s, butt did not ask for one vote, and I don’t believe could have made one if he had asked. I got Tanky** to come in order to swell and look big at him but Sergison never appeared before us, butt went off as soon as we came.’ So he may have done, but the episode was not over, as a further letter to Newcastle on 29 July revealed: ‘have you heard that Sergison treated his people the night of the cricket match at Portslade and that there was a bloody battle between them and the Slyndoners but the last came off victorious tho’ with some broken heads’ – a reference to the match attended by Newcastle and Sir William Gage.

      Slindon – ‘poor little Slyndon’, as Richmond referred to it – was a favourite side of his, for he wrote again to the Duke of Newcastle apologising that he would be late for a meeting because he wished to see Slindon play ‘the whole County of Surrey’ at Merrow Down. A postscript notes gleefully that ‘wee have beat Surrey almost in one innings’. This correspondence suggests that cricket was not an isolated amusement in Sussex in 1741, but that a series of matches were played, that they were not all sponsored, that they could draw large crowds, and that Richmond was an enthusiast for the game itself, irrespective of whether wagers were involved. Cricket was becoming a settled part of rural life and a proper subject for aristocratic correspondence – even by-election candidates attended games as part of their campaigns.

But Richmond has more information for us yet. In 1745 he was one of the backers of three games between Surrey and Sussex,* the accounts of which are preserved in the Sackville manuscripts at Maidstone:

To 12 gamesters at the Artillery Ground And Moulsey Hurst @ 3 guineas each	£37–16s–
To 10 gamesters on Bury Hill, 9th Sept	£10–10s–
To Martin of Henfield on ditto	£ 2– 2s–
To Adam Newland for going to fetch him	10s–
To the scorer	10s–6d
To half the bill of expenses paid by Mr Smith	£10– 9s–
	___________
	£61–17s–6d

The above bill to be paid for in the following proportions:
Duke of Richmond 40	£24–15s–
Lord Sackville 20	£12– 7s–6d
Mr Taaf 20	£12– 7s–6d
Duchess of Richmond	10 £ 6– 3s–9d
Lord Berkeley 10	£ 6– 3s–9d
	_________
	£61–17s–6d

      Richmond and Lord John Sackville were old allies as patrons, but that did not inhibit Lord John from rebuking the Duke about his team selection: ‘I wish you had let Ridgway play instead of your stopper behind, it might have turned the match in our favour.’

      Two of the other sponsors of the Surrey–Sussex games, ‘Mr Taaf’ and the Duchess of Richmond, merit special mention. Theobald Taafe (c.1708–80) was an Irishman with aristocratic connections and a long purse, having married a wealthy Englishwoman. Sometime MP for Arundel as a Whig, he was a boon companion in ‘riot and gaming’ of the Duke of Bedford and Lord Sandwich. Horace Walpole, that censorious correspondent, wrote to Horace Mann on 22 November 1751:

      He is a gamester, usurer, adventurer, and of late has divided his attentions between the Duke of Newcastle and Madame de Pompadour, travelling with turtles and pineapples in post-chaises to the latter, flying back to the former for Lewes races – and smuggling burgundy at the same time.

      Walpole had a fine disregard of the laws of libel. But perhaps he was right, for later that year Taafe was charged with robbing a gambling associate in Paris and thrown in prison. He was released after representations by the British Ambassador, but his constituents in Arundel were unimpressed: he came bottom of the poll at the next election in 1754. Thereafter he became notorious as a gambler, libertine and confidence trickster, and was twice more imprisoned in France, including a spell in the Bastille.

      As for the Duchess of Richmond, the Goodwood accounts reveal that she bore the costs of staging cricket matches, which suggests that she had absorbed a love of the game from the Duke. In July 1741 she writes him: ‘If there was a leisure day I should be glad to get Slindon and East Dean ready to play at cricket.’ The very next day she writes: ‘Send a servant as soone as you can to lett Robert Dearling at East Dean know he is to get the people att your house on Saturday and the same person must afterwards go to John Newland with the same message.’ Newland was almost certainly John Newland of Slindon, one of three brothers who played for England against Kent in 1744. Nor was the Duchess’s interest short-term. In July 1747 the Whitehall Evening Post was clearly referring to her when it reported of a ladies’ match: ‘They play very well … being encouraged by a lady of high rank in their neighbourhood, who likes the diversion.’

      The dukes were not the highest-born enthusiasts for cricket: that accolade belongs to Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales (1707–51), known to history as ‘poor Fred’. The eldest son of George II and Queen Caroline, from his childhood his life was a constant and deadly feud with his parents, with mutual dislike evident on both sides. The underlying cause of the bitterness between them is unknown, but we can conjecture. Certainly the fact that Frederick was educated in Hanover, and barely saw his parents between the ages of seven and twenty-one, cannot have helped. As an adult he lived in an unimpressive house in the unfashionable area of Leicester Fields (now Square). It was a time of Whig domination, in which Tories were regarded as the enemies of the ruling family and excluded from preferment: only Whigs were ennobled or created baronets. Prince Frederick courted the out-of-favour Tories, welcomed them to his home, and opposed Whig policy. All of this must have hugely irritated the King – which was, of course, its purpose.

      When the Prince put politics aside he turned to cricket, and matches with such as Stead, Gage and the Sackvilles. He was first seen at a cricket ground at Kennington in 1731, after which his interest blossomed. At the end of a game between Surrey and Middlesex at Moulsey Hurst in July 1733 he paid a guinea to each player for their skills, although that afternoon cricket was only the forerunner of the entertainment. As the Prince prepared to leave a hare sped СКАЧАТЬ