The Ashes Test series currently under way provides an opportunity to consider the English aristocracy’s role in cricket’s early development in the 18th century. In this blog for the Georgian Lords Dr Charles Littleton looks back at some of the early developers of the game.
Foremost among cricket’s early patrons (according to rank) was the heir to the throne, Frederick, Prince of Wales. Within three years of his arrival in England in 1728 he attended a match between Surrey and London, and soon after he was playing himself. Cricket may even have determined the very dynastic fate of Britain. Frederick was said to have been struck by a cricket ball while playing with his children and it was assumed that this led to his early death from a ruptured abscess on 20 March 1751. Even if the autopsy revealed other health problems, it was important to contemporaries that this German-born heir prince died in the service of the quintessentially English game.
Frederick’s death came shortly after that of a nobleman who could claim even greater importance in the game’s establishment. Charles Lennox, 2nd duke of Richmond, had almost as exalted a lineage as Frederick himself. Richmond’s paternal grandparents were Charles II and his French mistress Louise de Kéroualle, duchess of Portsmouth. Through her, a favourite of Louis XIV, he also succeeded as duc d’Aubigny in the French nobility in 1734. Richmond’s father had been well established with estates in West Sussex around Goodwood House near Chichester, where the 2nd duke lived a comfortable and active life.
Besides his career as an army officer and role as a prominent politician, Richmond’s principal enthusiasm was for sport. Next to hunting, his greatest love was cricket for which he has a number of ‘firsts’ to his name. He was involved in what may have been the first attempt to codify the laws of the game. On 11 July 1727 Richmond’s squad played a team fielded by Alan Brodrick, later 2nd Viscount Midleton [I]. Before the competition started Richmond and Brodrick drew up 16 ‘Articles of Agreement’ on the game’s conduct in order to avoid disputes. These are seen as the earliest codification of the game’s laws, and many of them still pertain, with modifications. For instance, Richmond’s and Brodrick’s teams consisted of 12 players each, contrasted with today’s eleven.
These articles formed the basis for another set of laws agreed in 1744, another important date in cricket’s history. Further ‘firsts’ are associated with two matches played at the Artillery Ground in London that summer. The earliest surviving scorecards came from these matches and were collected by Richmond and are still among his papers. The climactic Kent versus ‘all England’ match on 18 June 1744 gave rise to the first known poem about cricket. James Dance dedicated his Cricket: An Heroic Poem to John Montagu, 4th earl of Sandwich, a ‘kind patron of the mirthful fray’. Another aristocrat also featured, as he played for the Kent side that ultimately won. Lord John Philip Sackville was the second son of Lionel Cranfield Sackville, duke of Dorset. Sackville did not notch up many runs, but he made a sensational catch, immortalized by Dance:
And now Illustrious Sackville, where he stood
Th’approaching Ball with cautious Pleasure view’d.
At once he sees the Chief’s impending Doom
And pants for mighty Honours, yet to come.
Swift as the Falcon, darting on its Prey
He springs elastic o’er the verdant Way.
Sure of Success, flies upward with a Bound
Derides the slow Approach and spurns the Ground.
Significantly, Sackville, a scion of a great noble family, played on a side whose other members were commoners. Nor was deference made to his birth by making him captain, which position was filled by the family’s gardener.
Sackville’s elder brother Charles Sackville, earl of Middlesex (later 2nd duke of Dorset), was also a keen player and patron. Their mutual enthusiasm may have led Richmond to look to Middlesex as a candidate for the Sussex by-election in late 1741, which merged Richmond’s two great loves of electioneering and cricket. While Richmond and the Whigs turned to Middlesex, Thomas Sergison put himself forward as the opposition candidate. Victory came through winning the votes of the county’s freeholders, who would be certain to gather at cricket matches. Sergison and Richmond canvassed hard at a match on 15 June between Slindon and Portsmouth. As Richmond described it:
Sergison was at the cricket match attended by…. two or three more of the Chichester Torys. He did not venture to ask a vote, nor could he have got one I do really believe. Tanky [Charles Bennet, 2nd earl of Tankerville,] was there ready to puff his cheeks at him, but he never appeared…. All our friends … were in great spirits especially as Slindon beat Portsmouth, and had nine men to go in. [Richmond-Newcastle Correspondence, 63]
This was a comprehensive triumph for Richmond, both in politics and sport. Matters, however, did not always run quite so smoothly. Sergison and his supporters were more aggressive at a match on 28 July, this time between Slindon and Portslade. The Tories taunted Middlesex with allegations that his father harboured republican sympathies. Blows were exchanged and, at first, the Whigs had the worst of it. As Sir William Gage reported, though, the Slindon cricketers ‘returned with their cricket bats and dealt some heavy blows which carried the victory on our side’. [BL, Add. 32,697, f. 338] Middlesex won the by-election in January 1742. His fellow MP was the duke of Newcastle’s brother Henry Pelham. A little over a year later, he became prime minister, though he does not seem to have needed the assistance of cricket bats to attain his office.
CGDL
Further reading:
Robin Eagles, ‘ “No more to be said?” Reactions to the death of Frederick Lewis, prince of Wales’, Historical Research, lxxx (2007)
David Underdown, Start of Play: Cricket and Culture in 18th-century England (2000)
John Marshall, The Duke who was Cricket (1961)
Timothy McCann, The Correspondence of the Dukes of Richmond and Newcastle, 1724-50 (Sussex Record Society 73) (1983)
