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<p>"After dinner all the youthes go into the fields to play at the bal…. The schollers of euery schoole haue their ball, or baston, in their hands: the auncient and wealthy men of the Citie come foorth on horsebacke to see the sport of young men."</p> <p>Stow, John, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Survey of London</span> [first published in 1598]. David Block [page 166] gives the full title as <span style="text-decoration: underline;">A Survey of London: Contayning the Originall, Antiquity, Increase, Modern Estate, and Description of that Citie: written in the yeare 1598</span> [London]. Block adds that the term "baston" is described by the OED as a "cudgel, club, bat or truncheon."</p>  +
<p>"People have often regarded Florio's expression in his Italian Dictionary (1598) <em>cricket-a-wicket</em> as the first mention (cf #[[1598.2]] and #[[1598.3]], above) of the noble game. It were strange indeed if this great word first dropped from the pen of an Italian! I have no doubt myself that this is a mere coincidence of sound. . . . [C]ricket-a-wicket must pair off with 'helter-skelter,' higgledy-piggledy, and <em>Tarabara</em> to which Florio gives gives cricket-a-wicket as an equivalent."</p> <p> </p>  +
<p>Florio, John, <u>A world of wordes or Most copious, and exact dictionarie in Italian and English</u> [London], per David Block, <u>Baseball Before We Knew It</u>, page 167. This dictionary defines <i>lippa</i> as "a cat or trap as children use to play with."</p> <p>1598.3 - First Known Appearance of the Term "Cricket"</p> <p>[Cf #1550c.2 above.] A 1598 trial in the Surrey town of Guildford includes a statement by John Derrick, then aged 59. According to a 1950 history of Guildford's Royal Grammar School, "[H]e stated that he had known the [disputed] ground for fifty years or more and that 'when he was a scholar in the free school of Guildford, he and several of his fellows did run and play there at cricket and other plays.' This is believed to be the first recorded mention of cricket."</p> <p>Brown, J. F., <u>The Story of the Royal Grammar School, Guildford</u>, 1950, page 6. <b>Note:</b> it would be interesting to see the original reference, and to know how 1550 was chosen as the reported year of play.</p>  +
<p>[A]  H. Guarinoni describes a game he saw in Prague in 1600 involving a large field of play, the hitting of a small thrown ball ["the size of a quince"] with a four-foot tapered club, the changing of sides if a hit ball was caught.   While not mentioning the presence of bases or of base-running, he advises that the game "is good for tender youth which never has enough of running back and forth."</p> <p>[B] "German Schlagball ["hit the ball"] is also similar to rounders. The native claim that these games 'have remained the games of the Germanic peoples, and have won no popularity beyond their countries' quite obviously does not accord with facts. It is enough to quote the conclusion of a description of "hit the ball" by H. Guarnoni, who had a medical practice in Innsbruck about 1600: 'We enjoyed this game in Prague very much and played it a lot. The cleverest at it were the Poles and the Silesians, so the game obviously comes from there.' Incidentally, he was one of the first who described the way in which the game was played. It was played with a leather ball and a club four-foot long. The ball was tossed by a bowler who threw it to the striker, who struck it with a club rounded at the end as far into the field as possible, and attempted to make a circuit of the bases without being hit by the ball. If 'one of the opposing players catches the ball in the air, a change of positions follows.'"</p> <p> </p>  +
<p>"Shakespeare mentions games of "base" and "rounders. Lovett, <u>Old Boston Boys</u>, page 126."</p> <p>Seymour, Harold - Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809. <b>Caveat:</b> We have not yet confirmed that Lovett or Shakespeare used the term "rounders." Gomme [page 80], among others, identifies the Bard's use of "base" in Cymbeline as a reference to prisoner's base, which is not a ball game. John Bowman, email of 5/21/2008, reports that his concordance of all of Shakespeare's words shows has no listing for "rounders" . . . nor for "stoolball," for that matter [see #1612c.1, below], 'tho that may because Shakespeare's authorship of <u>Two Noble Kinsmen</u> is not universally accepted by scholars..</p>  +
<p>"Soon after the new year [1609], [we] initiated a ball game played with a bat . . . . Most often we played this game on Sundays. We rolled up rags to make balls . . . Our game attracted the savages who sat around the field, delighted with this Polish sport."</p> <p>A 1975 letter from Matthew Baranski letter to the HOF said:</p> <p>"For your information and records, I am pleased to inform you that after much research I have discovered that baseball was introduced to America by the Poles who arrived in Jamestown in 1609. . . . Records of the University of Krakow, the oldest school of higher learning in Poland show that baseball or batball was played by the students in the 14<sup>th</sup> century and was part of the official physical culture program."</p> <p> </p>  +
<p>A match is thought to have been played between the men of North Downs and men of the Weald.</p> <p>Contributed by Beth Hise January 12, 2010. Beth is in pursuit of the original source of this claim. North Downs is in Surrey, about 4 miles NE of Guildford, where early uses of both "cricket" and "base-ball" are found. It is about 30 miles SW of London. The Weald is apparently an old term for the county of Kent, which is SW of London.</p>  +
<p>Dictionary-maker R. Cotgrave translates <i>"crosse"</i> as "the crooked staff wherewith boies play at cricket."</p> <p>"<i>Martinet</i>" [a device for propelling large stones at castles] is defined as "the game called cat and trap."</p> <p>Cotgrave, Randle, <u>A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues</u> [London, 1611], per David Block, <u>Baseball Before We Knew It</u>, page 168. "</p> <p>Cricket historians Steel and Lyttelton: "Thanks to Cotgrave, then, we know that in 1611 cricket was a boy's game, played with a crooked bat. The club, bat, or staff continued to be crooked or curved at the blade till the middle of the eighteenth century or later: and till nearly 1720 cricket was mainly a game for boys." A.G. Steel and R. H. Lyttelton, <u>Cricket,</u> (Longmans Green, London, 1890) 4<sup>th</sup> edition, page 6.<b> </b></p>  +
<p>A young maid asks her wooer to go with her. "What shall we do there, wench?" She replies, "Why, play at stool-ball; what else is there to do?"</p> <p>Fletcher and Shakespeare, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Two Noble Kinsmen</span> [London], Act V, Scene 2, per W. W. Grantham, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Stoolball Illustrated and How to Play</span> It [W. Speaight, London, 1904], page 29. David Block, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Baseball Before We Knew It</span>, page 170, gives 1634 as the publication date of this play, which was reportedly performed in 1612, and mentions that doubts have been expressed as to authorship, so Shakespeare [1564-1616] may not have contributed. Others surmise that The Bard wrote Acts One and Five, which would make him the author of the stoolball reference. See also item #1600c.2 above. <strong>Note:</strong> can we find further specifics? Russell-Goggs, in "Stoolball in Sussex," <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Sussex County Magazine</span>, volume 2, no. 7 (July 1928), page 320, notes that the speaker is the "daughter of the Jailer."</p>  +
<p>"Ward: Can you play at shuttlecock forsooth?</p> <p>Isabella: Ay, and stool-ball too, sir; I have great luck at it.</p> <p>Ward: Why, can you catch a ball well?</p> <p>Isabella: I have catched two in my lap at one game</p> <p>Ward: What, have you, woman? I must have you learn to play at trap too, then y'are full and whole."</p> <p>Dutton, Richard Thomas, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Women Beware Women and Other Plays</span> [Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999], page 135. The play itself is generally dated 1613 or 1614. Submitted by John Thorn, 7/9/2004</p>  +
<p>Breton, Nicholas, <u>I Would, and Would Not</u> [London], per David Block, <u>Baseball Before We Knew It</u>, page 168. Stanza 79 reads "I would I were an honest Countrey Wench/ . . . / And for a <i>Tanzey</i>, goe to <i>Stoole-Ball-</i>Play." Tansy cakes were reportedly given as prizes for ball play.</p>  +
<p>"And some dayes heare we stayed we shott at butts and bowe and arrows, at other tymes at stoole ball, and some tymes of foote ball</p> <p>William Baffin, from "The Fourth Recorded Voyage of Baffin," in C. M. Markham, ed., <u>The Voyages of William Baffin, 1612-1622</u>, [Hakluyt Society, 1881], page 122. This voyage started in March 1615, and the entry is dated June?? 19<sup>th,</sup> 1615. The voyage was taken in hope of finding a northwest passage to the East, but was thwarted by ice, and Baffin returned to England in the fall of 1615. <b>Note:</b> Ascertain the month, which is obscured in the online copy. Was location of play near what is now known as Baffin Island?</p>  +
<p>Translator Chapman described a scene in which several virgins play stool-ball near a river while Ulysses sleeps nearby: "The Queene now (for the upstroke) strooke the ball/Quite wide off th' other maids; and made it fall/Amidst the whirlpools. </p> <p>Chapman, George, <u>The whole works of Homer: prince of poets, in his Iliads, and Odysses</u> [London, 1616], per David Block, <u>Baseball Before We Knew It</u>, page 168.</p> <p>Steel and Lyttelton indicate that Chapman's translation may date "as early as 1614," and say report that Chapman calls the fragment "a stoolball chance." See A.G. Steel and R. H. Lyttelton, <u>Cricket,</u> (Longmans Green, London, 1890) 4<sup>th</sup> edition, page 2. <b>Note:</b> The year of the translation needs to be confirmed;. It would be interesting to see how other translators have treated this scene.</p>  +
<p>Reacting to Puritans' denunciations of Sabbath recreations, James I in 1617 listed a large number of permitted Sunday activities -including no ball games - and cited as unlawful only "beare and Bull beatinge enterludes & bowlinge. . . ." Axon, Ernest, <u>Notes of Proceedings.</u> V<u>olume 1 - 1616-1622-3</u> (Printed for the Record Society for the Publication of Original Documents, 1901), page xxvi. There was adverse reaction to this proclamation, which is said to have surprised the King.</p> <p>Another source lists the Sunday bans as "Bull-baiting, bear-baiting, interludes, and bowls:" Keightley, Thomas, <u>The History of England</u>, volume II (Whittaker and Co., London, 1839), page 321. One chruchman listed "bear-baiting, bull-baiting, common plays, and bowling:" Marsden, J. B., <u>History of Christian Churches and Sects</u> (Richard Bentley, London, 1856), page 269. Thus, unless "enterludes" then connoted a range of games or "common plays" that included ballplay, contemporary ballgames like stoolball and cricket - and cat games - remained unconstrained.</p>  +
<p>"It was the day of all dayes in the yeare/That unto Bacchus hath its dedication,/ . . . / When country wenches play with stoole and ball,/And run at <i>Barley-breake</i> until they fall:/And country lads fall on them, in such sort/That after forty weekes the[sic] rew the sport."</p> <p>Anonymous, <u>Pasquils Palinodia, and His Progress to the Taverne; Where, After the Survey of the Sellar, You Are Presented with a Pleasant Pynte of Poeticall Sherry</u> [London], per David Block, <u>Baseball Before We Knew It</u>, page 169, who credits Henderson, page 74. Block notes that "Barley-Break" [not a ball game] was, like stoole ball, traditionally a spring courtship ritual in the English countryside.</p>  +
<p>Governor Bradford describes Christmas Day 1621 at Plymouth Plantation, MA; "most of this new-company excused them selves and said it wente against their consciences to work on ye day. So ye Govr tould them that if they made it mater of conscience, he would spare them till they were better informed. So he led away ye rest and left them; but when they came home at noone from their worke, he found them in ye street at play, openly; some at pitching ye barr, and some at stoole-ball and shuch like sport. . . . Since which time nothing hath been attempted that way, at least openly."</p> <p> </p>  +
<p>A Chichester churchwarden indicted a group of men for ballplaying, reasoning thus: "first, for it is contrarie to the 7<sup>th</sup> Article; second, for they are used to break the Church window with the balls; and thirdly, for that little children had like to have their braynes beaten out with the cricket batt."</p> <p>Brookes, Christopher, <u>English Cricket: the game and its players through the ages</u> (Newton Abbot, 1978), page 16, as cited in Bateman, Anthony,"'More Mighty than the Bat, the Pen . . . ;' Culture, Hegemony, and the Literaturisaton of Cricket," <u>Sport in History</u>, v. 23, 1 (Summer 2003), page 29.</p>  +
<p>Shirley, James, <u>The Wedding. As it was lately acted by her Mauesties seruants at the Phenix at Drury Lane</u> [London], per David Block, <u>Baseball Before We Knew It</u>, page 170. A servant in the play describes his master as so mild in manner that "the last time he was in the field a boy of seven year old beat him with a trap-stick."</p>  +
<p>"In 1629, having been censured for playing 'at Cricketts,' the curate of Ruckinge in Kent unsuccessfully defended himself on the grounds that it was a game played by men of quality."</p> <p>Bateman, Anthony,"'More Mighty than the Bat, the Pen . . . ;' Culture, Hegemony, and the Literaturisaton of Cricket," <u>Sport in History</u>, v. 23, 1 (Summer 2003), page 29. Bateman does not provide his source for this anecdote. <b>Note:</b> Can we find and extend this story?</p>  +
<p>"About 1630 a Puritan records that 'Maidstone was formerly a very profane town, where stoolball and other games were practiced on the Lord's Day."</p> <p>M. S. Russell-Goggs, "Stoolball in Sussex," <u>The Sussex County Magazine</u>, volume 2, no. 7 (July 1928), page 318. <b>Note:</b> we need to locate the full citations for this and all other Russell-Goggs references.. We need to sort out how this claim relates to the very similar wording in the quote by Reverend Wilson in entry #1672.1 below.</p>  +