From violent peasants to multi-million pound megastars. Part I. The history of football before the Reformation.

‘Ever since words existed for fighting and playing, men have been wont to call war a game … Indeed, all fighting that is bound by rules bears the formal characteristics of play by that very limitation’ [Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens. A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (1949)]

I’m finding it hard to get excited about the 2026 FIFA World Cup. More teams than ever before, more matches than ever before, more pointless words from journalists and former players than ever before – if such were possible, which it probably will be. There will be 104 games, some doubtless played in extreme heat, a couple perhaps interrupted by thunderstorms. And then there is ‘dynamic pricing’, ensuring that many fans will be ripped off more than ever before. Given how difficult it will be for any established footballing nation not to qualify for the round of 32, except for the odd highlight package I’ll be giving this tournament a miss. At least until the round of 16. Sixteen, incidentally, was the number of teams that used to compete in the tournament stage of FIFA World Cups between 1934 and 1978. Which brings me to the subject of this essay: a brief history of football and associated ball games in England, Scotland and Ireland before the Reformation.

Even if you’re passionate about football, you may only know about the history of Association Football. Yet football has a long, violent, and extremely interesting past. In some ways, as we’ll see, it’s a tale of how a violent peasant pastime became a multi-million pound (or dollar) industry.

In Britain, the first post-Roman literary reference to a ball may be a ninth century chronicler’s remark that at Maes Elledi in the region of Glywysing (Glamorgan), ‘boys were playing ball’. This can be supplemented with the Benedictine schoolmaster Ælfric Bata’s Colloquies (c.1000), the seventh of which described boys’ open-air games: ‘Let’s all go together to play outdoors with our sticks and our ball or hoop … If you want to play with a ball, I’ll lend you both my ball and my stick to play with’. Archaeological evidence from Winchester and London indicates that from roughly the tenth to mid-twelfth centuries balls were small and could be caught in the palm of a hand. They were made by sewing shaped pieces of leather around a core of tightly packed moss and somewhat resembled modern tennis balls. Before the end of the thirteenth century ball games were being played throughout northern Europe; notably sollen in Flanders, soule in Brittany, kolven in the Netherlands, keatsen in Friesland and pärkspel in Gotland. Indeed, several medieval illuminated manuscripts – mostly of continental origin – show that various ball games were popular at this time.

University College, Oxford, MS 165, Bede, ‘Life of St Cuthbert’, (12th century) fol. 8

The Morgan Library & Museum, MS 456, ‘Avis au Roys’ [French] (1347–1350), fol. 68v

Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, MS W.88, ‘Book of Hours’ (c.1300–1310), fols. 59v, 70r

British Library, MS Harleian 4375, Valerius Maximus, ‘Les Fais et les Dis des Romains et de autres gens’ [1473–c.1480], fol. 151v, Scaevola plays jeu de paume

Around 1174 the cleric William fitz Stephen noted that on Shrove Tuesday – i.e. the last day before Lent – after lunch the youth of London would go out beyond the city walls into the fields – possibly Moorfields – to play ‘the famous game of ball’. The scholars of each school had their own ball, while the followers of each trade [i.e. apprentices?] had theirs. This passage has been much debated. It probably refers not to football, as has occasionally been suggested, but to a form of handball. If so, then these youngsters, each of whom possessed their own ball, may have been engaged in jeu de paume – essentially an early type of tennis played in cloisters and elsewhere with the palm of the hand instead of a racquet.

Chronicle of William fitz Stephen, printed in John Stow’s Survey of London (1598)

Whether or not participants used their feet as well as hands, ball games – which sometimes also used bats – required no specialised equipment and were thus open to all social classes. As such, they were quite unlike expensive courtly pursuits such as jousting, hunting and hawking. It is also worth noting that the innovation of a goal (usually a prominent local landmark) may have derived from the chivalric ‘passage of arms’ – that is a military exercise in which a group of knights attempted to defend the gate of a castle or town from attack.

BL, Royal 10 E.IV, ‘The Decretals of Gregory IX’ [London] (c.1300–c.1340), fol. 98r

Fatalities and serious injuries

Turning to fatalities and serious injuries sustained from sharp objects during ball games, our earliest set of examples date from the 1260s to the 1320s. Thus about 1261 at Bicester Priory in Oxfordshire two children were playing at ball. One ran after the ball but tripped and fell upon his left side, wounding himself on his scissors. He died five days later. Next, on Sunday, 18 April 1266 in the wapentake [administrative division] of Strafford (West Riding of Yorkshire) two men, Alan and Walter de Wyndhul, were playing at ball. Both were running, trying to get it first. They collided, catching each other on the shoulder and falling to the ground. Alan received a wound on his arm between the shoulder and the elbow from Walter’s sheathed knife. Despite getting up and resuming their game, even going to a tavern afterwards to drink new ale, Alan’s arm swelled up. He sent for a leech, but the treatment was ineffectual. Alan died the following Saturday and Walter then absconded. Similarly, an inquisition before the sheriff and coroners of Northumberland concerned a fatality resulting from playing at ball in the village of Ulgham on Trinity Sunday, 16 June 1280. In this instance a player was struck in the belly by the point of a sheathed knife following a heavy collision when running to the ball. The verdict was death by misadventure.

Across the Irish Sea at Dublin in 1308 the jury of a Court of Justiciary deliberated a plea of trespass arising from an incident at a ball game played at Newcastle Lyons on the Sunday after the Nativity of St John the Baptist (24 June). Here a spectator named John McCorcan ran towards the ball pursued by his friend William Bernard who meant to hit it. The impact happened so quickly that William was wounded in the upper part of his right leg by John’s knife, which had pierced its sheath. The jury accepted that John had not intended to wound William and the injured party was awarded five shillings damages. Again, in May 1321 William de Spalding, canon of Shouldham, Norfolk of the Gilbertine order of Sempringham, was granted a dispensation following the accidental death of his friend after a game at ball. As William kicked the ball his friend ran against him, suffering a severe wound from William’s sheathed knife from which he subsequently died.

To take a further set of examples, at York in September 1268 there was an inquisition concerning a fatality at Byram. An argument had ensued after a marriage in which resident villagers were allegedly attacked by drunken wedding guests armed with axes, bows and arrows. Interestingly, the affray had apparently arisen from a quarrel about the customary gift at such nuptials: a ball. This suggests that at Byram locals celebrated weddings with a ball game. Then in June 1277 an order was issued for another inquisition, this time at Lincoln, concerning the death of a twelve-year old boy during a bat and ball game. About eighteen months later in January 1279 at Chippenham, Wiltshire it was recorded that a freeman called Adam Crok had attempted to hit a ball with a staff but instead struck another man on the head, from which he died immediately. Adam fled at once and was outlawed. Again, about 1313 a female child was accidentally killed during a ball game in Kent. Meanwhile, in 1283 a man called Roger had been accused of striking a fellow player with a stone during a game of soule in Cornwall. The blow proved fatal.

Mob football

The earliest unambiguous reference to football in England dates from Cornwall in 1302. Here, in the tithing of Blisland [a tithing was a small administrative unit], a man called Andrew de Ros died after being tripped and knocked unconscious while ‘playing football’. The perpetrator ran away and had his goods confiscated while three more players, all of whom were freemen, were named in subsequent legal proceedings.

A dozen years later, about April 1314, a proclamation for preserving the peace in London was issued during the mayoralty of Nicholas de Farndone. This was at a moment when Edward II could ill-afford domestic civil disorder given that Robert the Bruce was seizing settlements and castles in Scotland (Edward’s army would suffer a heavy defeat at the Battle of Bannockburn two months later). The proclamation itself highlighted the ‘great disturbance in the City, because of the rowdy striking of great footballs in the crush of the people, from which many evils perchance may arise’. Accordingly, football was banned within the city on pain of imprisonment. The original French also makes clear that football was being played on the streets of London rather than in open ground outside the walls.

Staying in London, a coroner’s inquest in June 1337 heard how on Tuesday in Pentecost week the son of a chandler ‘got out of a window … to recover a ball lost in a gutter at play’. But the boy slipped and fell, injuring himself so badly that he died the next Saturday. Then in 1373 eight men were brought to the Mayor’s court of London to answer a charge that they, together with others:

with force and arms, to wit, swords and knives, made an assembly, under colour of playing with a football, in order to assault others, occasion disputes, and perpetuate other evil deeds against the peace in Sopers Lane, Cheap and Cordwainer Street.

Two of the men were pelters and six were tailors. While one pelter and one tailor pleaded not guilty, the remainder claimed that although they had played football they had ‘done no harm’. Nonetheless, one was mainprized and the rest committed to prison. Whether these men were guilty of using a football match as cover for instigating a riot in the streets of London or whether this contest got out of hand resulting in the assault of non-participants is difficult to establish. But the charge clearly links football with violence. Moreover, this match took place on Shrove Tuesday. This is important because it is the earliest known example of football played on that day, and one of very few recorded instances before the Reformation.

London Metropolitan Archives, CLA/024/01/02/19, mem.3r; alleged riot while playing at football on Shrove Tuesday, 1373

Moving north, there are several examples of ball games in county Durham, Northumberland, and Yorkshire. Thus during a football match at Pontefract on Shrove Tuesday 1477 one Leonard Metcalf accidentally hit Robert Pilkington with his ball. Pilkington drew his dagger, prompting Metcalf to apologise. Metcalf then attempted to resume his game, at which point Pilkington knifed him in the heart. Pilkington had also set fire to a chapel and stolen cattle, for all which crimes he was sentenced to hang. Nonetheless, he was reprieved after claiming benefit of clergy. Less violent were several incidents connected to a dispute about access to land in the vicinity of Shap, Cumberland. A tenant of one of the contending parties had been ‘sore hurt at the football’ by a servant of the opposing party. There was also the presentment of two Northallerton men, who in 1495 were fined for causing an affray during a football game played on the Applegarth just outside the town.

Prohibitions against football

Over the next two centuries there were numerous prohibitions against football. These were often in conjunction with bans against other pastimes such as hurling stones, quoits, skittles, tennis, bowls, handball, club ball, cambuc [probably an early form of golf], cock fighting, cock-thrashing, dice and cards. Most of these prohibitions were issued by royal or civic authorities. And besides London they concerned urban areas in the Midlands and the North. Unspecified ball games were also banned in many graveyards and churchyards. Clergymen, it should be added, were disbarred from participating in games and entertainments like dice, juggling, stage plays and drinking in taverns. This is because they encouraged gambling, blaspheming and licentiousness.

Moving from ecclesiastical spaces to the universities, ball games and associated pastimes were prohibited by statute at several Oxford colleges. Doubtless an unnamed preacher had these statutes in mind when admonishing his hearers during a sermon for playing ball games within their colleges. Football, however, was first specifically banned at St John’s (1555). For its part, Cambridge University explicitly forbade football in 1557 – except at those times when it was permitted by college statutes for exercise. This was considerably later than St Andrews, which had prohibited football under penalty of excommunication in November 1497.

Evidently, the main concern of secular and ecclesiastical authorities was to preserve public order and prevent property damage in urban areas – particularly the breaking of expensive glass windows and sculptures in places of worship and education. In the case of the church, there was an additional need to regulate the morality of its clergy. The Crown also wanted able-bodied men to avoid such activities and instead devote their leisure time on Sundays and festivals to practising archery, since this would benefit the king during wartime. Yet despite a royal proclamation to that purpose issued in 1363, followed by a statute of 1388 forbidding agricultural workers, labourers, and the servants of craftsmen and victuallers from playing at ‘Hand-ball’, ‘Foot-ball’ or other unsuitable games, the sport’s popularity endured. It also remained potentially dangerous – even though the statute of 1388 prohibited the lower social orders from bearing bucklers, swords and daggers in peacetime under penalty of arrest and forfeiture of their weapons.

Misericord, Gloucester Cathedral [no. 33]. Image copyright Dominic Strange © 2021

Meanwhile the Scottish Parliament enacted legislation forbidding the playing of football (1424, 1458, 1471, 1491), similarly to little effect. Over in Ireland, the statute of Kilkenny (1367) forbade English colonists from ‘hurlings, with great sticks [and a ball] upon the ground’, because of the ‘great evils’ and injuries that had arisen. It is unclear though whether an antecedent of hurling or a precursor of hockey was meant. A hundred and sixty years later a Galway statute (1527) was more specific: townsmen should practice shooting longbows, crossbows and throwing darts rather than wasting their time ‘hurling of the little ball with hockey sticks or staves’ beyond the town walls. Only playing with ‘the great football’ was permitted, on pain of a fine. While the statute at Galway affected the laity, William Rokeby, archbishop of Dublin, issued an injunction concerning the clergy at a provincial council held at Dublin in 1518: clerics were forbidden to play football and liable for a fine for each transgression.

Shortly we shall turn to how class and customs influenced the development of ball games, and in particular football. Beforehand, however, it is worth looking at two surprisingly revealing instances of supposed miraculous healing.

Miraculous healings

While there are quite a few testimonies regarding ball games during the fifteenth century, I want to highlight two fascinating recollections of supposed miraculous healing. The first was presented as part of the evidence to support the canonisation of Osmund (d.1099), a former bishop of Salisbury. This was formally examined by three Cardinals in 1424. It concerns the testimony of John Combe aged 50 of Quidhampton, Wiltshire who remembered ‘playing at ball with great clubs’ ten years before in the nearby village of Bemerton. A quarrel ensued during which Combe was struck on the head and right shoulder with a club. So violent was the blow that he was apparently unable to hear or see nor move his head or arm for more than three months. Then Combe beheld a vision of a man clothed in white, shining brightly, who instructed him to make a wax model of Combe’s head and shoulder indicating on it where his wounds were. Combe was to make an offering to Bishop Osmund of this crude replica (an ex-voto). On awaking Combe swiftly recovered and thereafter offered his prayer and thanks at Osmund’s tomb in Salisbury Cathedral. This supposed miracle was corroborated by a witness.

The second example derives from an attempt by Henry VII to legitimate his rule by having his murdered half-uncle Henry VI canonized. Vernacular accounts of purported miracles attributed to the dead Lancastrian king seem to have been collected at Windsor Castle, the site of Henry’s reinterred remains. Completed in 1500 and translated into Latin, most likely by a monk based at Canterbury, this compilation was intended for papal commissioners. Among the extant alleged miracles was an unverified and undated case concerning William Bartram. He had been playing football with an unruly crowd of people on a field in the vicinity of Caunton, Nottinghamshire. During this game Bartram was kicked in his ‘intimate parts’. As a result he ‘suffered long and unbearable pain’ until he saw ‘the glorious King Henry in a dream’, at which point the devout Bartram ‘immediately recovered the benefit of health’. The anonymous monk’s disapproving comments about ‘the game at which they had met for common recreation’, ‘called by some the foot-ball game’, remains our fullest pre-Reformation description:

It is one in which young men, rural and unrestrained, habitually propel a huge ball not by throwing it into the air but by striking and rolling it along the ground, and that not with their hands but with their feet. A game, I say, abominable enough, and (in my sound judgment), more common, undignified, and worthless than any kind of game, rarely ending but with some loss, accident, or disadvantage to the players themselves. But what? The boundaries had been marked and the game had started; and, when they were striving manfully kicking in opposite directions, and [our subject] had thrown himself into the midst of the fray, one of his fellows, I do not know which one, came up against him from in front and kicked him by misadventure, missing his aim at the ball.

British Library, MS Royal 13 C VIII, fols. 62v–63r, undated case concerning William Bartram, injured while playing football on a field in Nottinghamshire (before 1500)

Elites and commoners

One noteworthy aspect of these sources is the absence among the laity of any adult males of elite social status. This is because they were exempt from legislation regulating the various games that have been discussed. Yet there is evidence that besides tournaments and hunting with hounds and hawks, some aristocrats and members of the royal family also played ball games. This can mainly be found in their household accounts, which tend to link these diversions with gambling. Thus in 1387 Henry Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry IV, lost 26s. 8d. playing handball with two of the Duke of York’s men. In 1414 Bolingbroke’s youthful son was the recipient of a gift of tennis balls from the Dauphin of France, an insult calculated to impugn the young king’s martial ambition. This incident was recorded in several chronicles and subsequently popularised in Shakespeare’s Henry V, where it served as part of an opening scene before the Battle of Agincourt. Twenty-five years later in mid-July 1439, during an interlude in peace negotiations between England and France, the Archbishop of Rheims hurt his foot playing at ball near Calais.

Moving into the early Tudor period, Henry VII lost money at tennis between 1494 and 1499, while his son Henry VIII was a passionate player who built the Chief Close Tennis Court at Whitehall. Indeed, the king played tennis well into middle age, losing a staggering £46-13s.-4d. in October 1532 to two French dignitaries. In 1525 Henry also had a pair of shoes made for playing football costing 4s. Over in Scotland, James I played tennis. James IV played caich (at which he staked large sums), golf and football, as shown in the expenditure of 2s. on 22 April 1497 to purchase ‘fut ballis’ for the King.

Caich Leather balls (c.1600–c.1800)

Although the football played by James IV and Henry VIII may have differed considerably from the variants of the game played outside their courtly circles, the almost complete absence of royal and aristocratic participation in the sport prior to the early sixteenth century requires explanation – particularly since there is evidence of Scottish and, to a lesser extent, English noblemen playing football thereafter. It cannot have been because indulging in sport demeaned authority. On the contrary, such activity may have served as an affirmation of physical prowess and as male bonding exercises – especially when played among peers. Nor can it have been because playing football might lead to injury: Henry VIII was involved in serious jousting accidents in March 1524 and January 1536, while hunting could also be exceedingly dangerous. Rather, it seems that football was frowned upon because it was generally regarded as a game for commoners. Hence in his discussion of the forms of physical exercise appropriate for young men being groomed for governance, the humanist and diplomat Sir Thomas Elyot (c.1490–1546) declared that football, along with skittles and quoits, was an utterly unsuitable recreation for noblemen. In addition, it may be that the unregulated nature of football contrasted markedly with the elaborate rituals associated with tournaments and hunting, not to mention the formalised nature of tennis with its structured passages of play and widely understood scoring system.

Footballs

Surprisingly little can be said about footballs. They were usually described as large or huge, which would have made them suitable for kicking. Yet how big is difficult to say, since surviving visual representations may not have been to scale. Besides their size, footballs were relatively expensive – especially those made of leather. What the evidence points to was something durable that could be used in violent games between sturdy men. Little boys, on the other hand, played a game that involved using their feet and hands to strike a ball into the air. This shiny ball was made from the bladder of a slaughtered pig. The bladder was blown to a great size and then stuffed with beans or peas so that it made a rattling sound. Presumably it was quite light. This can be illustrated from a poem written in 1513 or 1514 by the Scottish-born poet and cleric Alexander Barclay. I have modernised the spelling:

Each time and season / hath his delight and joys,

Look in the streets / behold the little boys

How in fruit season / for joy they sing and hope

In Lent each one / full busy is with his tope

And now in winter / for all the grievous cold

All rent and ragged / a man may them behold

They have great pleasure / supposing well to dine

When men been busied / in killing of fat swine

They get the bladder / and blow it great and thin

With many beans / or peas bound within

It rattleth / soundeth / and shineth clear and fair

While it is thrown / and cast up in the air

Each one contendeth / and hath a great delight

With foot or with hand / the bladder for to smite

If it fall to the ground / they lift it up again

This wise to labour / they count it for no pain

Running and leaping / they drive away the cold

The sturdy ploughmen / lusty strong and bold

Overcometh the winter / with driving the football

Forgetting the labour / and many a grievous fall.

Players of games

Who, then, played these games? Certainly, boys and adolescents did, including students and possibly apprentices. As for girls, they seem mostly to have watched, though there is continental visual evidence of female participation. And even if women did not play football before the Reformation, they may have been spectators.

Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Bodleian 264, ‘Romance of Alexander’ (1338–44), part 1 fol. 22r

Regarding the social status of adult male footballers, this varied. But the vast majority were commoners, an impression reinforced by a derogatory half-line from Shakespeare’s King Lear: ‘you base Foot-ball player’. Thus we know of pelters, tailors and weavers in London. In rural areas there were labourers, servants, attendants, tenant farmers, villeins and a husbandman – but no yeomen. Minor clergy also played games despite various injunctions. These included a canon, clerks, a curate, a rector, and vicars. Determining the age of these adults is more difficult but, judging mostly from court testimonies, between roughly 20 and 40 sounds about right.

Calendar customs

Turning from who to when, we have 26 specific dates for when ball games were played in England, Scotland and Ireland before the Reformation. Of these at least 16 concern football. The most common days of the week were Sunday (14) and Tuesday (7). The most common months were February (9) and March (5). There is also evidence for calendar customs, notably Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday and various feasts and vigils.

* * * * *

It would be fair to say that prior to the Reformation we know more about where, when and by whom various ball games were played, as well as what happened when players were seriously injured or even killed, than what these games consisted of. This includes the various forms of football that have been discussed here. Nor should this surprise us since there were no written rules at this period, with local knowledge of these ball games doubtless passed down to succeeding generations through oral tradition. In short, the manner in which football was played depended upon custom, memory and perhaps also innovation.

To take one final and vivid example that illustrates several of these themes, on Saturday, 10 February 1481 a farmer named Richard Carpenter was preparing to plough a piece of land called Courtfield. The field was in Bethersden, Kent and held by the prior of St Gregory’s, Canterbury. Ploughing that day would have been a breach of the Sabbath. But of greater concern to the vicar, Alexander Syda, was that Courtfield was where locals played football. Accordingly, Syda was accused of having ‘cunningly plotted maliciously to harm, frustrate and disturb’ Carpenter by causing ‘to be made various foot balls called ffoteballs’ and on Sunday, 11 February, which was a holiday:

gathered together into his company as many unknown evil-doers and disturbers of the peace … as he possibly could, to the number of 20 persons, who helped him in a riotous manner, with force of arms, namely with staves and knives, and he entered the aforesaid piece of land and then and there played at football … for a greater part of the same day with the aforesaid malefactors, and trampled and ruined the grass ... by walking on it with his feet and beating it, riotously singing, exclaiming, and making a hue and cry and keeping on openly and publicly, and saying in these words ‘This is the common Ground and common playing place for all men of this parish. I would the prior or his [tenant] were now here to let us to play here and if he or his [tenant] would now begin to [plough] this ground to let us of our playing place in good faith we shall tear their hoods’.

Thereupon Carpenter’s farming equipment, including his plough, was broken and ‘ripped to pieces’ then scattered about various parts of Courtfield with the wheels hung high in the trees. Apparently ‘the game of football had not been seen or played in that said parish for many years before then’. Clearly the legal language here is formulaic and the narrative framed from the plaintiff’s perspective. Nonetheless, that the incident resulted in a judicial inquiry indicates both how infringing customary rights could exacerbate local tensions and how football could be used as a pretext to assert or reclaim those threatened rights. Indeed, during the seventeenth century there were several riots in eastern rural areas linked to football; notably in the Fens of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Lincolnshire where there was strong opposition to land reclamation through drainage schemes as well as to enclosures.

The National Archives, KB 9/365/22, account of football played on Sunday, 11 February 1481 at Bethersden, Kent

* * * * *

By the dawn of the Reformation football was a game that had been played in England for more than 200 years. And it was a game mostly for commoners, played on customary ground, on the Sabbath and festivals, often violently, and usually without royal or ecclesiastical approval, let alone that of civic authorities. What rules it may have had were local and unwritten, transmitted orally by custom and memory rather than written codes. The Crown sought to quell it and instead channel physical recreation into military preparedness. The Church was concerned with maintaining morality. Local magistrates were focused on keeping the peace. Property owners wanted to avert damage, particularly broken windows. And farmers wanted to plough their fields.

Yet as we have seen, there is more to football than a straightforward story of elite prohibition and popular resistance. Ball games crossed social boundaries. Monarchs, princes and aristocrats gambled on the outcome. Scottish kings paid for footballs. An English king played in customised footwear. Taken together the evidence therefore suggests a more complex picture than might have been expected. For football was not a single game, but rather many closely related games often involving hands as well as feet. What is more, these games varied by region, season and social setting. How these many types of games eventually became one will be the subject of the second and concluding part of this essay.

Misericord, All Souls College, Oxford (mid-15^th century) [detail]