Cotswold Games
Encyclopedia
The Cotswold Olimpick Games is an annual public celebration of games and sports now held on the Friday after Spring Bank Holiday near Chipping Campden
, in the Cotswolds
of England. The Games probably began in 1612, and have continued on and off to the present day. They were started by a local lawyer, Robert Dover, with the approval of King James
. Dover's motivation in organising the Games may have been his belief that physical exercise was necessary for the defence of the realm, but he may also have been attempting to bring rich and poor together; the Games were attended by all classes of society, including on one occasion royalty.
Events included horse-racing, coursing
with hounds, running, jumping, dancing, sledgehammer throwing, fighting with swords and cudgel
s, quarterstaff, and wrestling. Booths and tents were erected in which games such as chess and cards were played for small stakes, and abundant food was supplied for everyone who attended. A temporary wooden structure, Dover Castle, was erected in a natural amphitheatre on what is now known as Dover's Hill, complete with small cannons that were fired to begin the events.
The Games took place on the Thursday and Friday of the week of Whitsun
, normally between the middle of May and the middle of June. Many 17th-century Puritans disapproved of such festivities, believing them to be of pagan origin, and they particularly disapproved of any celebration on a Sunday or a church holiday such as Whitsun. By the time of King James's death in 1625, many Puritan landowners had forbidden their workers to attend such festivities; the increasing tensions between the supporters of the king and the Puritans resulted in the outbreak of the English Civil War
in 1642, bringing the Games to an end.
Revived after the Restoration
of 1660, the Games gradually degenerated into a drunk and disorderly country festival according to their critics. The Games ended again in 1852, when the common land
on which they had been staged was partitioned between local landowners and farmers and subsequently enclosed. Since 1966 the Games have been held each year on the Friday after Spring Bank Holiday. Events have included the tug of war
, gymkhana
, shin-kicking
, dwile flonking
, motor cycle scrambling, judo, piano smashing, and morris dancing. The British Olympic Association
has recognised the Cotswold Olimpick Games as "the first stirrings of Britain's Olympic beginnings".
, one of four children born to John Dover, and may have been admitted to Queens' College
at Cambridge
in 1595, leaving early to avoid swearing the Oath of Supremacy
. Dover was admitted to Gray's Inn
on 27 February 1605, and was probably called to the bar in 1611, the same year he likely moved to Saintbury, near Chipping Campden
, with his wife and children.
It is unclear whether Dover began the Games from scratch, or took over from an existing event, perhaps a church ale
. The Games had the approval of King James
, who in his book of advice to his son, Basilikon Doron
(1599), had written that in order to promote good feeling among the common people towards their king, "certain days in the year would be appointed, for delighting the people with public spectacles of all honest games, and exercise of arms". Although there was at that time in England a growing admiration for the ancient Greeks, Dover may have been motivated by military rather than cultural considerations. His biographer, Christopher Whitfield, claimed that Dover combined ancient countryside practices with "classical mythology and Renaissance culture, whilst linking them with the throne and the King's Protestant Church". Dover believed that physical exercise was necessary for the defence of the kingdom. He may also have believed that the Games would bring rich and poor together, increasing social harmony, an ideal that might explain why the event captured the public imagination.
Endymion Porter
, a member of the court of King James, had an estate in the village of Aston-sub-Edge, close to Dover's home. Dover acted as Porter's legal agent between 1622 and 1640, and through him James sent some of his own clothes to Dover, "purposely to grace him and consequently the solemnity [of the Games]". James may also have granted Dover a coat of arms, with the motto "Do Ever Good", as claimed by Dover's grandson, a claim that was rejected by the heraldic authorities in 1682.
The Annalia Dubrensia (Annals of Dover), a collection of poems praising Dover and his achievements in promoting and managing the Games, was published in 1636. The contributors included well-known poets such as Michael Drayton
, Ben Jonson
, Thomas Randolph
, and Thomas Heywood
. They saw the Games as revitalising traditional English social life, and they countered opposition from the critics of such events, who complained of "drunken behaviour and sexual licence", by stressing the "peaceful and well-behaved" nature of the occasion, and even praising the Games as "a gesture of loyalty to the king". The Games had acquired their title of "Olimpicks" by the time the Annalia Dubrensia was published, a name approved of by Dover. It secularised the proceedings, while adding an air a gentrification to the sports by linking them with the Olympics of ancient Greece. Having been brought up in a Catholic family, Dover might well have been keen not to draw attention to religion, particularly if the Games had taken over from an earlier church ale.
, in Gloucestershire
. They were held on the Thursday and Friday of Whit-Week, or the week of Whitsun
, which normally fell between the middle of May and the middle of June. Dover presided over the Games on horseback, dressed ceremonially in a coat, hat, feather and ruff, donated by King James. Horses and men were decorated with Dover's favours, yellow ribbons pinned to a hat or worn around the arm, leg, or neck. Tents were erected for the gentry
, who came from the surrounding counties of Gloucestershire
, Oxfordshire
and Worcestershire
, and food was supplied in abundance. The poet Nicholas Wallington wrote that:
A temporary wooden building was constructed each year, called Dover Castle, from which gunfire salutes were sounded during the competitions. Competitors were summoned to the hillside by the sound of a hunting horn, to take part in various sports. Mounted cannons were fired to begin the events, which included horse-racing, coursing with hounds, running, jumping, dancing, sledgehammer throwing, fighting with swords and cudgels, quarterstaff
, and wrestling. Prizes included silver trophies for the mounted sports, and perhaps also money for the other events.
The contests were refereed by officials called sticklers, which is the derivation of the phrase "a stickler for the rules". Sticklers were so-named because they carried sticks, with which to safely separate two fighting swordsmen. No scores or times are recorded for any of the events. Portable watches of the time were "rare, costly, and relatively unreliable devices", but perhaps just as importantly "nobody in Dover's time was much interested in sports record-keeping or record-breaking".
Visitors from all strata of society attended, from agricultural labourers to the nobility, some of whom travelled up to 60 miles (96.6 km) to attend the Games. Prince Rupert
attended in 1636.
entertained the crowds, strengthening the classical Olympic theme. There was also a maze, known as a Troy Town
, constructed from piled up turf with walls about 1 foot (0.3048 m) high, through which villagers would dance. Various games were played for small stakes in booths and tents, including chess, Irish a game similar to backgammon
and card games such as cent, a game like piquet
. King James approved of card games "when you have no other thing ado ... and are weary of reading ... and when it is foul and stormy weather", but he considered chess to be "too obsessive a game".
The Games ended with a grand firework display, centred on the castle.
if it was not repented. The Puritans frowned on such festivities as the Games as being of pagan origin, promoting immorality and drunkenness, and disapproved of any celebration on a church holiday such as Whitsun. A Puritan revolt over a 1627 "Bringing in the May" festival at Mount Wollaston
in present-day Massachusetts
resulted in the expulsion of its organiser from the colony. King James, on the other hand, viewed Puritanism as a challenge to the authority of the monarch.
The fine clothes donated by the King, which Dover wore when he presided over the Games, were not just a fashion statement, but also a political one. The feather in Dover's hat was a "flag of defiance to virtue" in Puritan eyes, and even the starch probably used in the washing of his ruff was evil, according to the Puritan writer Philip Stubbes. He described starch as "[a] certain kind of liquid matter ... wherein the Devil hath learned them [non-Puritans] to wash and die their ruffs".
James was succeeded by King Charles I
in 1625. The new King reluctantly consented to an Act of Parliament "for punishing divers abuses on the Lord's Day, called Sunday". The Act restricted the activities that were allowed to take place on a Sunday, and prohibited any meetings of people outside their own parishes on Sunday. Many Puritan landowners went even further, forbidding their workers to attend any church ales, culminating in two Somerset circuit judges ruling in 1632 that "all public ales be henceforth utterly suppressed".
The following year however, 1633, Charles reversed the judges' ruling. He produced a new version of James's Book of Sports
, which he ordered to be read in every church. In it he wrote:
The outbreak of the English Civil War
in 1642 brought the Games to an end.
of 1660. Dover had died in 1652, and bereft of his influence, the Games became "just another drunken country festival", according to an account written by the poet William Somervile
in 1740. By then the Games, known as Dover's Meeting, were well-established and once again quite popular, and included events such as backsword
fighting. It is unclear whether the contestants fought with metal or wooden swords, but there is no doubt that very real danger was involved. During a fight at the beginning of the 19th century, one of the contestants was so badly injured that he died soon afterwards. The wrestling competitions had become shin-kicking contests, with competitors wearing heavily nailed boots, sometimes with pointed tips. The poet and writer Richard Graves
described the Games in his picaresque novel The Spiritual Quixote (1773) as a "heathenish assembly". Somervile's account of the 1740 Games describes a general riot in which "chairs, and forms, and battered bowls are hurled/With fell intent; like bombs the bottles fly". Graves dramatised the enthusiasm for the women's race for a Holland shift displayed on a pole: "six young women began to exhibit themselves before the whole assembly, in a dress hardly reconcilable to the rules of decency". By 1845, the Games were being organised by a local publican, William Drury, who paid £5 for the right to do so. He hired out space for stalls and booths, and presumably sold alcohol at the event. The rector of Weston-sub-Edge, the parish in which Dover's Hill is located, Reverend Geoffrey Drinkwater Bourne, claimed that up to 30,000 people were attending the Games by then, and that the hillside was full of drunk and disorderly individuals. Bourne also claimed that:
Such accounts may have been exaggerated however, as there are few reports of police being called to the Games, and no court records of prosecutions for drunkenness or fighting.
The staging of the Games depended on the existence of a suitably large area of common land
, but by the mid-19th century much of England's common land was being partitioned up and fenced off. Consent for the enclosure
of the parish of Weston-sub-Edge was given in 1850, signalling the end of the Games in 1852. The parish's 969 acres (392.1 ha) were divided among local farmers and landowners; Reverend Bourne, who a few years earlier had complained so vociferously about the Games, received 63 acres (25.5 ha).
's The Merry Wives of Windsor
, and used that as evidence to suggest that Shakespeare may have seen the Games. However, the allusion is not present in the quarto
edition of 1602, but makes its first appearance in the posthumous First Folio
of 1623, edited by Henry Condell and John Hemminges. It is therefore uncertain whether or not it was written by Shakespeare.
The first Shakespearean scholars to make a connection between Dover and Shakespeare were Samuel Johnson
, George Steevens
, Thomas Warton
, and Edmond Malone
; historian Jean Wilson has commented that it required "quite imaginative leaps such as a hill referred to by Bolingbroke [King Henry IV of England] being the hill on which the games were held". More recently, the historian and secretary of the Robert Dover's Games Society, Francis Burns, has suggested that the wrestling scene in As You Like It
"reflects the wrestling at the Games".
Although Shakespeare may have been acquainted with Robert Dover, there is no evidence that he ever attended the Games.
in 1928, and until recently contained a monument to Robert Dover. The Games were revived for the 1951 Festival of Britain
, but did not return to being a regular event until the Robert Dover's Games Society was founded in 1965. Except when exceptionally bad weather or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease
has forced their cancellation the Games have been held each year since 1966, on the evening of the Friday after Spring Bank Holiday, and attract thousands of visitors. An actor dressed as Dover arrives on horseback to open the games. Events have included the tug of war
, gymkhana
, shin-kicking
, dwile flonking
, motor cycle scrambling, judo, piano smashing, morris dancing, and, in 1976, poetry. After dusk a bonfire is lit, followed by a torchlight procession to the square in Chipping Campden, where the entertainment continues well into the night.
The British Olympic Association
, in its successful bid for the 2012 Olympic Games in London, recognised Dover's Games as "the first stirrings of Britain's Olympic beginnings". Writing in 1972, the athletics coach and sports journalist Ron Pickering
said:
Chipping Campden
Chipping Campden is a small market town within the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, England. It is notable for its elegant terraced High Street, dating from the 14th century to the 17th century...
, in the Cotswolds
Cotswolds
The Cotswolds are a range of hills in west-central England, sometimes called the Heart of England, an area across and long. The area has been designated as the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty...
of England. The Games probably began in 1612, and have continued on and off to the present day. They were started by a local lawyer, Robert Dover, with the approval of King James
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
. Dover's motivation in organising the Games may have been his belief that physical exercise was necessary for the defence of the realm, but he may also have been attempting to bring rich and poor together; the Games were attended by all classes of society, including on one occasion royalty.
Events included horse-racing, coursing
Coursing
Coursing is the pursuit of game or other animals by dogs—chiefly greyhounds and other sighthounds—catching their prey by speed, running by sight and not by scent. Coursing was a common hunting technique, practised by the nobility, the landed and wealthy, and commoners with sighthounds and lurchers...
with hounds, running, jumping, dancing, sledgehammer throwing, fighting with swords and cudgel
Club (weapon)
A club is among the simplest of all weapons. A club is essentially a short staff, or stick, usually made of wood, and wielded as a weapon since prehistoric times....
s, quarterstaff, and wrestling. Booths and tents were erected in which games such as chess and cards were played for small stakes, and abundant food was supplied for everyone who attended. A temporary wooden structure, Dover Castle, was erected in a natural amphitheatre on what is now known as Dover's Hill, complete with small cannons that were fired to begin the events.
The Games took place on the Thursday and Friday of the week of Whitsun
Whitsun
Whitsun is the name used in the UK for the Christian festival of Pentecost, the seventh Sunday after Easter, which commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ's disciples...
, normally between the middle of May and the middle of June. Many 17th-century Puritans disapproved of such festivities, believing them to be of pagan origin, and they particularly disapproved of any celebration on a Sunday or a church holiday such as Whitsun. By the time of King James's death in 1625, many Puritan landowners had forbidden their workers to attend such festivities; the increasing tensions between the supporters of the king and the Puritans resulted in the outbreak of the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
in 1642, bringing the Games to an end.
Revived after the Restoration
English Restoration
The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...
of 1660, the Games gradually degenerated into a drunk and disorderly country festival according to their critics. The Games ended again in 1852, when the common land
Common land
Common land is land owned collectively or by one person, but over which other people have certain traditional rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect firewood, or to cut turf for fuel...
on which they had been staged was partitioned between local landowners and farmers and subsequently enclosed. Since 1966 the Games have been held each year on the Friday after Spring Bank Holiday. Events have included the tug of war
Tug of war
Tug of war, also known as tug o' war, tug war, rope war or rope pulling, is a sport that directly pits two teams against each other in a test of strength. The term may also be used as a metaphor to describe a demonstration of brute strength by two opposing groups, such as a rivalry between two...
, gymkhana
Gymkhana
Gymkhana is a typical Anglo-Indian expression, which is derived from the Hindi-Urdu word for "racket court," is an Indian term which originally referred to a place where sporting events take place. The meaning then altered to denote a place where skill-based contests were held...
, shin-kicking
Shin-kicking
Shin-kicking, also known as purring, is a combat sport that involves two contestants attempting to kick each other on the shin to force their opponent to the ground. It has been described as an English martial art. It originated in England in the early 17th-century, and was one of the most popular...
, dwile flonking
Dwile flonking
The pastime of Dwile Flonking involves two teams, each taking a turn to dance around the other while attempting to avoid a beer-soaked dwile thrown by the non-dancing team....
, motor cycle scrambling, judo, piano smashing, and morris dancing. The British Olympic Association
British Olympic Association
The British Olympic Association is the national Olympic committee for Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It was formed in 1905 in the House of Commons, and at that time consisted of seven national governing body members from the following sports: fencing, life-saving, cycling, skating, rowing,...
has recognised the Cotswold Olimpick Games as "the first stirrings of Britain's Olympic beginnings".
Origins
The first Olimpick Games were probably held in 1612, organised by lawyer Robert Dover, although different sources give dates from 1601 until 1612. Little is known about Dover. He was probably born between 1575 and 1582 in NorfolkNorfolk
Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...
, one of four children born to John Dover, and may have been admitted to Queens' College
Queens' College, Cambridge
Queens' College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college was founded in 1448 by Margaret of Anjou , and refounded in 1465 by Elizabeth Woodville...
at Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
in 1595, leaving early to avoid swearing the Oath of Supremacy
Oath of Supremacy
The Oath of Supremacy, originally imposed by King Henry VIII of England through the Act of Supremacy 1534, but repealed by his daughter, Queen Mary I of England and reinstated under Mary's sister, Queen Elizabeth I of England under the Act of Supremacy 1559, provided for any person taking public or...
. Dover was admitted to Gray's Inn
Gray's Inn
The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, commonly known as Gray's Inn, is one of the four Inns of Court in London. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and Wales, an individual must belong to one of these Inns...
on 27 February 1605, and was probably called to the bar in 1611, the same year he likely moved to Saintbury, near Chipping Campden
Chipping Campden
Chipping Campden is a small market town within the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, England. It is notable for its elegant terraced High Street, dating from the 14th century to the 17th century...
, with his wife and children.
It is unclear whether Dover began the Games from scratch, or took over from an existing event, perhaps a church ale
Parish Ale
The Parish ale was a festival in an English parish at which ale made and donated for the event was the chief drink. The word "ale" was generally used as part of a compound term. Thus there was the leet-ale ; the lamb-ale ; the Whitsun-ale , the clerk-ale, the church-ale etc...
. The Games had the approval of King James
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
, who in his book of advice to his son, Basilikon Doron
Basilikon Doron
The Basilikon Doron is a treatise on government written by King James VI of Scotland, later King James I of England, in 1599. Basilikon Doron in the Greek language means royal gift. It was written in the form of a private and confidential letter to the King's eldest son, Henry, Duke of...
(1599), had written that in order to promote good feeling among the common people towards their king, "certain days in the year would be appointed, for delighting the people with public spectacles of all honest games, and exercise of arms". Although there was at that time in England a growing admiration for the ancient Greeks, Dover may have been motivated by military rather than cultural considerations. His biographer, Christopher Whitfield, claimed that Dover combined ancient countryside practices with "classical mythology and Renaissance culture, whilst linking them with the throne and the King's Protestant Church". Dover believed that physical exercise was necessary for the defence of the kingdom. He may also have believed that the Games would bring rich and poor together, increasing social harmony, an ideal that might explain why the event captured the public imagination.
Endymion Porter
Endymion Porter
Endymion Porter was an English diplomat and royalist.-Life:He was descended from Sir William Porter, sergeant-at-arms to Henry VII, and son of Edmund Porter, of Aston-sub-Edge in Gloucestershire, by his cousin Angela, daughter of Giles Porter of Mickleton, in the same county.He was brought up in...
, a member of the court of King James, had an estate in the village of Aston-sub-Edge, close to Dover's home. Dover acted as Porter's legal agent between 1622 and 1640, and through him James sent some of his own clothes to Dover, "purposely to grace him and consequently the solemnity [of the Games]". James may also have granted Dover a coat of arms, with the motto "Do Ever Good", as claimed by Dover's grandson, a claim that was rejected by the heraldic authorities in 1682.
The Annalia Dubrensia (Annals of Dover), a collection of poems praising Dover and his achievements in promoting and managing the Games, was published in 1636. The contributors included well-known poets such as Michael Drayton
Michael Drayton
Michael Drayton was an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era.-Early life:He was born at Hartshill, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. Almost nothing is known about his early life, beyond the fact that in 1580 he was in the service of Thomas Goodere of Collingham,...
, Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
, Thomas Randolph
Thomas Randolph (poet)
Thomas Randolph was an English poet and dramatist. He was baptized on 18 June 1605 and was the uncle of American colonist William Randolph.-Education:...
, and Thomas Heywood
Thomas Heywood
Thomas Heywood was a prominent English playwright, actor, and author whose peak period of activity falls between late Elizabethan and early Jacobean theatre.-Early years:...
. They saw the Games as revitalising traditional English social life, and they countered opposition from the critics of such events, who complained of "drunken behaviour and sexual licence", by stressing the "peaceful and well-behaved" nature of the occasion, and even praising the Games as "a gesture of loyalty to the king". The Games had acquired their title of "Olimpicks" by the time the Annalia Dubrensia was published, a name approved of by Dover. It secularised the proceedings, while adding an air a gentrification to the sports by linking them with the Olympics of ancient Greece. Having been brought up in a Catholic family, Dover might well have been keen not to draw attention to religion, particularly if the Games had taken over from an earlier church ale.
Proceedings
The Games took place in a natural amphitheatre on what is known today as Dover's Hill, then called Kingcombe Plain, above the town of Chipping CampdenChipping Campden
Chipping Campden is a small market town within the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, England. It is notable for its elegant terraced High Street, dating from the 14th century to the 17th century...
, in Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
. They were held on the Thursday and Friday of Whit-Week, or the week of Whitsun
Whitsun
Whitsun is the name used in the UK for the Christian festival of Pentecost, the seventh Sunday after Easter, which commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ's disciples...
, which normally fell between the middle of May and the middle of June. Dover presided over the Games on horseback, dressed ceremonially in a coat, hat, feather and ruff, donated by King James. Horses and men were decorated with Dover's favours, yellow ribbons pinned to a hat or worn around the arm, leg, or neck. Tents were erected for the gentry
Gentry
Gentry denotes "well-born and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past....
, who came from the surrounding counties of Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
, Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a county in the South East region of England, bordering on Warwickshire and Northamptonshire , Buckinghamshire , Berkshire , Wiltshire and Gloucestershire ....
and Worcestershire
Worcestershire
Worcestershire is a non-metropolitan county, established in antiquity, located in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes it is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three counties that comprise the "Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire" NUTS 2 region...
, and food was supplied in abundance. The poet Nicholas Wallington wrote that:
A temporary wooden building was constructed each year, called Dover Castle, from which gunfire salutes were sounded during the competitions. Competitors were summoned to the hillside by the sound of a hunting horn, to take part in various sports. Mounted cannons were fired to begin the events, which included horse-racing, coursing with hounds, running, jumping, dancing, sledgehammer throwing, fighting with swords and cudgels, quarterstaff
Quarterstaff
A quarterstaff , also short staff or simply staff is a traditional European pole weapon and a technique of stick fighting, especially as in use in England during the Early Modern period....
, and wrestling. Prizes included silver trophies for the mounted sports, and perhaps also money for the other events.
The contests were refereed by officials called sticklers, which is the derivation of the phrase "a stickler for the rules". Sticklers were so-named because they carried sticks, with which to safely separate two fighting swordsmen. No scores or times are recorded for any of the events. Portable watches of the time were "rare, costly, and relatively unreliable devices", but perhaps just as importantly "nobody in Dover's time was much interested in sports record-keeping or record-breaking".
Visitors from all strata of society attended, from agricultural labourers to the nobility, some of whom travelled up to 60 miles (96.6 km) to attend the Games. Prince Rupert
Prince Rupert of the Rhine
Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria, 1st Duke of Cumberland, 1st Earl of Holderness , commonly called Prince Rupert of the Rhine, KG, FRS was a noted soldier, admiral, scientist, sportsman, colonial governor and amateur artist during the 17th century...
attended in 1636.
Other diversions
A harper dressed as the Greek poet HomerHomer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
entertained the crowds, strengthening the classical Olympic theme. There was also a maze, known as a Troy Town
Troy Town
Many turf mazes in England were named Troy Town, Troy-town or variations on that theme presumably because, in popular legend, the walls of the city of Troy were constructed in such a confusing and complex way that any enemy who entered them would be unable to find his way...
, constructed from piled up turf with walls about 1 foot (0.3048 m) high, through which villagers would dance. Various games were played for small stakes in booths and tents, including chess, Irish a game similar to backgammon
Backgammon
Backgammon is one of the oldest board games for two players. The playing pieces are moved according to the roll of dice, and players win by removing all of their pieces from the board. There are many variants of backgammon, most of which share common traits...
and card games such as cent, a game like piquet
Piquet
Piquet is an early 16th-century trick-taking card game for two players.- History :Piquet has long been regarded as one of the all-time great card games still being played. It was first mentioned on a written reference dating to 1535, in Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais...
. King James approved of card games "when you have no other thing ado ... and are weary of reading ... and when it is foul and stormy weather", but he considered chess to be "too obsessive a game".
The Games ended with a grand firework display, centred on the castle.
Controversy
In the 17th century many Puritans believed that the slightest action might lead to sin, and even to HellHell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
if it was not repented. The Puritans frowned on such festivities as the Games as being of pagan origin, promoting immorality and drunkenness, and disapproved of any celebration on a church holiday such as Whitsun. A Puritan revolt over a 1627 "Bringing in the May" festival at Mount Wollaston
Quincy, Massachusetts
Quincy is a city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. Its nicknames are "City of Presidents", "City of Legends", and "Birthplace of the American Dream". As a major part of Metropolitan Boston, Quincy is a member of Boston's Inner Core Committee for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council...
in present-day Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
resulted in the expulsion of its organiser from the colony. King James, on the other hand, viewed Puritanism as a challenge to the authority of the monarch.
The fine clothes donated by the King, which Dover wore when he presided over the Games, were not just a fashion statement, but also a political one. The feather in Dover's hat was a "flag of defiance to virtue" in Puritan eyes, and even the starch probably used in the washing of his ruff was evil, according to the Puritan writer Philip Stubbes. He described starch as "[a] certain kind of liquid matter ... wherein the Devil hath learned them [non-Puritans] to wash and die their ruffs".
James was succeeded by King Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
in 1625. The new King reluctantly consented to an Act of Parliament "for punishing divers abuses on the Lord's Day, called Sunday". The Act restricted the activities that were allowed to take place on a Sunday, and prohibited any meetings of people outside their own parishes on Sunday. Many Puritan landowners went even further, forbidding their workers to attend any church ales, culminating in two Somerset circuit judges ruling in 1632 that "all public ales be henceforth utterly suppressed".
The following year however, 1633, Charles reversed the judges' ruling. He produced a new version of James's Book of Sports
Declaration of Sports
The Declaration of Sports was a declaration of James I of England issued in 1617 listing the sports that were permitted on Sundays and other holy days. It was originally issued in consultation with Thomas Morton, bishop of Chester, to resolve a dispute in Lancashire between the Puritans and the...
, which he ordered to be read in every church. In it he wrote:
The outbreak of the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
in 1642 brought the Games to an end.
First revival, 1660–1850
The Games were revived at some uncertain date after the RestorationEnglish Restoration
The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...
of 1660. Dover had died in 1652, and bereft of his influence, the Games became "just another drunken country festival", according to an account written by the poet William Somervile
William Somervile
William Somervile or Somerville was an English poet.-Ancestry:The name Somervile is derived from a town near Caen in Normandy subsequently named Somervile....
in 1740. By then the Games, known as Dover's Meeting, were well-established and once again quite popular, and included events such as backsword
Backsword
A backsword is a sword with a blade on one edge, or an "edge-and-a-quarter." The back of the sword is often the thickest part of the blade and acts to support and strengthen it....
fighting. It is unclear whether the contestants fought with metal or wooden swords, but there is no doubt that very real danger was involved. During a fight at the beginning of the 19th century, one of the contestants was so badly injured that he died soon afterwards. The wrestling competitions had become shin-kicking contests, with competitors wearing heavily nailed boots, sometimes with pointed tips. The poet and writer Richard Graves
Richard Graves
Richard Graves was an English minister, poet, and novelist.Born at Mickleton Manor, Mickleton, Gloucestershire, to Richard Graves, gentleman, and his wife, Elizabeth, Graves was a student at Abingdon School and Pembroke College, Oxford...
described the Games in his picaresque novel The Spiritual Quixote (1773) as a "heathenish assembly". Somervile's account of the 1740 Games describes a general riot in which "chairs, and forms, and battered bowls are hurled/With fell intent; like bombs the bottles fly". Graves dramatised the enthusiasm for the women's race for a Holland shift displayed on a pole: "six young women began to exhibit themselves before the whole assembly, in a dress hardly reconcilable to the rules of decency". By 1845, the Games were being organised by a local publican, William Drury, who paid £5 for the right to do so. He hired out space for stalls and booths, and presumably sold alcohol at the event. The rector of Weston-sub-Edge, the parish in which Dover's Hill is located, Reverend Geoffrey Drinkwater Bourne, claimed that up to 30,000 people were attending the Games by then, and that the hillside was full of drunk and disorderly individuals. Bourne also claimed that:
Such accounts may have been exaggerated however, as there are few reports of police being called to the Games, and no court records of prosecutions for drunkenness or fighting.
The staging of the Games depended on the existence of a suitably large area of common land
Common land
Common land is land owned collectively or by one person, but over which other people have certain traditional rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect firewood, or to cut turf for fuel...
, but by the mid-19th century much of England's common land was being partitioned up and fenced off. Consent for the enclosure
Enclosure
Enclosure or inclosure is the process which ends traditional rights such as mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock on common land. Once enclosed, these uses of the land become restricted to the owner, and it ceases to be common land. In England and Wales the term is also used for the...
of the parish of Weston-sub-Edge was given in 1850, signalling the end of the Games in 1852. The parish's 969 acres (392.1 ha) were divided among local farmers and landowners; Reverend Bourne, who a few years earlier had complained so vociferously about the Games, received 63 acres (25.5 ha).
Shakespearean connection
Some historians have suggested that the Games were alluded to in playwright William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare, first published in 1602, though believed to have been written prior to 1597. It features the fat knight Sir John Falstaff, and is Shakespeare's only play to deal exclusively with contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life...
, and used that as evidence to suggest that Shakespeare may have seen the Games. However, the allusion is not present in the quarto
Quarto
Quarto could refer to:* Quarto, a size or format of a book in which four leaves of a book are created from a standard size sheet of paper* For specific information about quarto texts of William Shakespeare's works, see:...
edition of 1602, but makes its first appearance in the posthumous First Folio
First Folio
Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. is the 1623 published collection of William Shakespeare's plays. Modern scholars commonly refer to it as the First Folio....
of 1623, edited by Henry Condell and John Hemminges. It is therefore uncertain whether or not it was written by Shakespeare.
The first Shakespearean scholars to make a connection between Dover and Shakespeare were Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
, George Steevens
George Steevens
George Steevens was an English Shakespearean commentator.He was born at Poplar, the son of a captain and later director of the East India Company. He was educated at Eton College and at King's College, Cambridge, where he remained from 1753 to 1756...
, Thomas Warton
Thomas Warton
Thomas Warton was an English literary historian, critic, and poet. From 1785 to 1790 he was the Poet Laureate of England...
, and Edmond Malone
Edmond Malone
Edmond Malone was an Irish Shakespearean scholar and editor of the works of William Shakespeare.Assured of an income after the death of his father in 1774, Malone was able to give up his law practice for at first political and then more congenial literary pursuits. He went to London, where he...
; historian Jean Wilson has commented that it required "quite imaginative leaps such as a hill referred to by Bolingbroke [King Henry IV of England] being the hill on which the games were held". More recently, the historian and secretary of the Robert Dover's Games Society, Francis Burns, has suggested that the wrestling scene in As You Like It
As You Like It
As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in the folio of 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility...
"reflects the wrestling at the Games".
Although Shakespeare may have been acquainted with Robert Dover, there is no evidence that he ever attended the Games.
Second revival, 1951–present-day
Dover's Hill was bought by the National TrustNational Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty
The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, usually known as the National Trust, is a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland...
in 1928, and until recently contained a monument to Robert Dover. The Games were revived for the 1951 Festival of Britain
Festival of Britain
The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition in Britain in the summer of 1951. It was organised by the government to give Britons a feeling of recovery in the aftermath of war and to promote good quality design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities. The Festival's centrepiece was in...
, but did not return to being a regular event until the Robert Dover's Games Society was founded in 1965. Except when exceptionally bad weather or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease
Foot-and-mouth disease
Foot-and-mouth disease or hoof-and-mouth disease is an infectious and sometimes fatal viral disease that affects cloven-hoofed animals, including domestic and wild bovids...
has forced their cancellation the Games have been held each year since 1966, on the evening of the Friday after Spring Bank Holiday, and attract thousands of visitors. An actor dressed as Dover arrives on horseback to open the games. Events have included the tug of war
Tug of war
Tug of war, also known as tug o' war, tug war, rope war or rope pulling, is a sport that directly pits two teams against each other in a test of strength. The term may also be used as a metaphor to describe a demonstration of brute strength by two opposing groups, such as a rivalry between two...
, gymkhana
Gymkhana
Gymkhana is a typical Anglo-Indian expression, which is derived from the Hindi-Urdu word for "racket court," is an Indian term which originally referred to a place where sporting events take place. The meaning then altered to denote a place where skill-based contests were held...
, shin-kicking
Shin-kicking
Shin-kicking, also known as purring, is a combat sport that involves two contestants attempting to kick each other on the shin to force their opponent to the ground. It has been described as an English martial art. It originated in England in the early 17th-century, and was one of the most popular...
, dwile flonking
Dwile flonking
The pastime of Dwile Flonking involves two teams, each taking a turn to dance around the other while attempting to avoid a beer-soaked dwile thrown by the non-dancing team....
, motor cycle scrambling, judo, piano smashing, morris dancing, and, in 1976, poetry. After dusk a bonfire is lit, followed by a torchlight procession to the square in Chipping Campden, where the entertainment continues well into the night.
The British Olympic Association
British Olympic Association
The British Olympic Association is the national Olympic committee for Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It was formed in 1905 in the House of Commons, and at that time consisted of seven national governing body members from the following sports: fencing, life-saving, cycling, skating, rowing,...
, in its successful bid for the 2012 Olympic Games in London, recognised Dover's Games as "the first stirrings of Britain's Olympic beginnings". Writing in 1972, the athletics coach and sports journalist Ron Pickering
Ron Pickering
Ronald James Pickering , was an athletics coach and BBC sports commentator. Born in Barking, Essex, he coached several Olympic athletes, including Lynn Davies, a Welsh Olympic Games gold medallist long jumper. He was also the first host of the BBC1 children's sports programme We Are the...
said:
External links
- Old shin sport alive and kicking" at BBC NewsBBC NewsBBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...
- Videos Of Shin Kicking 2006
- Chambers' Book of Days May 31
- The Times Online: "A Very English Olympics"