Missing the #football? The authorities in 17th Century England wouldn’t have rued the cancella
Missing the #football? The authorities in 17th Century England wouldn’t have rued the cancellation of the season brought on by the #coronavirus - they certainly weren’t fans!.Football as we know it began in the 19th Century, but ‘folk football’ had been played for centuries in England - a rough-and-tumble ill-defined game with an animal bladder or ball of rags thrown or kicked by any number of players per side. It was seen as an excuse for violence and in 1608, authorities in Manchester complained: “With the ffotebale…[there] hath beene greate disorder in our towne of Manchester we are told, and glasse windowes broken yearlye and spoyled by a companie of lewd and disordered persons …" That same year, the word "football” was used disapprovingly by William Shakespeare in King Lear: “Nor tripped neither, you base football player”. James I’s Book of Sports (1618) however, listed football as one of the activities Christians should indulge in on Sunday afternoons after worship, enraging Puritans who believed Sundays were for church and praying only. They had some success in suppressing “disorderly” sports including football after the English Civil War - players were fined or sentenced to public humiliation in the pillory. The Mayor of York fined 11 players 20 shillings each when their game resulted in a smashed church window in the winter of 1659-60. The prosecution triggered a violent protest and resulted in over 100 armed men breaking into the Mayor’s house; the ringleader was later fined 10 pounds or 400 shillings. Football became even more popular following the Restoration in 1660.. Carl Pedleyhttps://www.instagram.com/p/CAWMSk_nRlC/?igshid=1kipl8geqnejq -- source link
#football#coronavirus