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Religion and the Rise of Sport in England
Hugh McLeod
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Published: 2022 Online ISBN: 9780191953286 Print ISBN: 9780192859983
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Subject: Religious Studies

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To Moira
Religion and the Rise of Sport in England
Hugh McLeod
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192859983.001.0001
Published: 2022 Online ISBN: 9780191953286 Print ISBN: 9780192859983
FRONT MATTER

Acknowledgements 
Published: October 2022
Subject: Religious Studies

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
This book began to take shape when I gave the Hulsean Lectures in Cambridge in 2008, and I would like to
thank the people whose generous hospitality and e cient organization did so much to make my two weeks
in Cambridge so enjoyable, especially Clare Daunton, Martin Daunton, Eamon Du y, Peter Harland, Jeremy
Morris, and John Pollard. I would also like to thank those who attended the lectures and whose questions
and comments were consistently stimulating, including, as well as those already mentioned, David Ford,
Boyd Hilton, Graham Howes, Peter Mandler, Stuart Mews, John Nurser, Jim Obelkevich, Jane Ringrose,
Brian Stanley, Graham Stanton, and David Thompson. In 2017 I was invited to give a lecture on ‘Sport and
Religion’ at Lund University in honour of King Carl Gustaf, who, together with Queen Silvia, was
participating in the university’s 350th anniversary celebrations. This gave me a chance to re ect on the
theme more generally. I was invited to give the Hensley Henson Lectures in Oxford in 2021. These never
happened, because of the Covid pandemic. However, I am grateful for the stimulus this invitation gave me to
nishing the book.
Many other people have helped me by discussing the book, answering questions, and sending me copies of
their own work. I would specially like to mention Rex Ambler, Uta Balbier, Clyde Bin eld, Andrew Bradstock,
Douglas Davies, Marjet Derks, Geo Ellis, Clive Field, Alan Fox, Richard Fox, Yashmin Harun, Anders Jarlert,
Peter Marsh, Alexander Maurits, Martin Nykvist, Jim Ormandy, Stephen Pattison, Judith Pugsley, Doug
Reid, John Samways, Mike Snape, Nick Watson, and Andrew Wing eld-Digby. I would also like to thank the
anonymous reviewers of my manuscript.
Sections of the book were the basis for papers at numerous conferences and seminars, and I would like to
thank all those who took part in these events.
Many members of my family have asked pertinent questions, lent me books, or provided introductions to
potential informants. By far my greatest debt is to my wife, Moira, who has read every chapter and has been
p. viii an unfailing source of ideas, critical comment, help, and encouragement.
List of Illustrations

1.1 ‘The Dinner’ by Thomas Rowlandson, 1787. Reproduced by
permission of the Yale Center for British Art. 24
2.1 ‘The Sporting Parson, no. 11,’ by Hablot Knight Browne, undated.
Reproduced by permission of the Yale Center for British Art. 38
4.1 ‘A Bannu Football Team’, date of photograph unknown. From T. L. Pennell,
Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier (London 1909). 88
4.2 ‘School Fleet on the Way through Srinigar,’ date of photograph
unknown. From C. E. Tyndale-Biscoe, Building Character in
Kashmir (London 1920). 90
4.3 ‘Mr A. K. Yapp’, Programme of Leicester YMCA, 1906–7.
YMCA Archive, A49, Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections,
University of Birmingham. Reproduced by permission of the
Director of Special Collections. 95
4.4 Sackville Street Derby Primitive Methodist Football Team, 1909.
Reproduced by permission of Derby Local Studies Library. 96
5.1 ‘Womanly Women who Cycle: Mrs Ormiston Chant’, Cycling,
20 July 1895. 118
5.2 Jack ‘Kid’ Berg at Madison Square Garden, 1931. Reproduced by
permission of Alamy. 132
5.3 ‘Cycling Notes’, Clarion, 28 March 1896. 135
5.4 ‘Village Cricket’, artist not known, date not known. 139
6.1 ‘From the Mining Districts’, Punch, 3 March 1855. Reproduced with
permission of the British Library. 152
7.1 Dronfield Free Church Football Club, 1950–1. Photograph in
possession of Richard Fox. Reproduced by permission of Richard Fox. 177
8.1 Statue of Stanley Matthews, Stoke-on-Trent, unveiled 1987. Photograph by
Judith Pugsley, 2021. Reproduced by permission of Judith Pugsley. 206
9.1 ‘Westside Football Club: Men’s First Team’, 2020–1. Reproduced by
permission of Geoff Ellis and West Side Church. 219
9.2 ‘Westside Football Club: Ladies Team’, 2020–1. Reproduced by
permission of Geoff Ellis and West Side Church. 220
9.3 Frenford and MSA Women’s Football Club, date of photograph
not known. Reproduced by permission of Yashmin Harun and
Muslimah Sports Association. 234
List of Abbreviations

Bell’s Bell’s Life in London
BB Boys’ Brigade
BWSF British Workers’ Sports Federation
CIS Christians in Sport
FA Football Association
IJHS International Journal of the History of Sport
LCC London County Council
LMA London Metropolitan Archives
MFH Master of Fox Hounds
NCRO Northamptonshire County Record Office
NU Northern Union
SIH Sport in History
YMCA Young Men’s Christian Association
YWCA Young Women’s Christian Association
Introduction

In 1820 Christianity appeared to be a dominant force in English society. The
Established Church of England enjoyed wealth and political power, as well as
considerable moral influence, and Methodism was a fast-growing mass move-
ment. Meanwhile the world of sport was often on the defensive in the face of
religious attack. By 2020 it seemed that the roles had been reversed. Sport was
an inescapable presence, lauded by governments as the key to national pres-
tige and individual health, the subject of saturation coverage in television and
newspapers. Outstanding athletes were not only household names—they
were also very rich. Meanwhile, the Christian churches appeared to be in
retreat—partly because of the growth of other religions, but more especially
because of the growing numbers of people with no religion.
Of course, the story is more complicated—and more interesting. In the
early nineteenth century, sportsmen often found ways of resisting or evading
religious attacks, and this was only one of the areas in which the power of the
churches was less all-embracing than it appeared. In the early twenty-first
century, all religions have had to adapt to and react to the very large place
occupied by sport in contemporary society; but this has been a two-way pro-
cess, as sporting authorities and individual athletes have continued to draw
on the resources of religions.
Both religion and sport can exercise power in society through the moral
authority they are believed to carry, through the prestige of ‘star’ athletes or
‘pulpit princes’, through their influence in politics or the media, and of course
because of the passionate attachment of large numbers of individuals. They
have often been in competition with one another for people’s scarce resources
of time and money and can even be in direct conflict. On the other hand, they
can be mutually supportive, and both religion and sport have been very will-
ing to make use of one another. Each of these kinds of relationship has been
seen in modern England.
The relationship with sport offers a vivid reflection of the various phases in
England’s religious history from the Evangelical hegemony of the first half of
the nineteenth century, the growing religious liberalization of the later
nineteenth century, and the ‘diffusive Christianity’ of the first half of the
2 Religion and the Rise of Sport in England
twentieth century, through to the late twentieth and early twenty-first cen-
tury, which have seen increasing secularization, the advent of the multi-faith
society and a resurgent Evangelicalism.
In the history of sport, religion has had both a positive and a negative role.

In the first half of the nineteenth century religious condemnation played a
part in the decline or demise of many sports, though others successfully
resisted. In one area of continuing conflict between many in the religious
world and many followers of sport, namely the prevalence of gambling, the
religious attacks were comprehensively defeated. The more positive contribu-
tion of religion to sport was at its highest point in the later nineteenth and
early twentieth century when churches and Christian youth movements made
a major contribution to the sporting boom of the later Victorian and
Edwardian years. Since the 1960s one might argue that the ever-greater com-
mercialization of sport has gone hand in hand with secularization, and in
some respects that is true—for example, sport made a major contribution to
the collapse of the British Sunday in the later twentieth century. On the other
hand, commercialization has also gone hand in hand with globalization and
has led to the arrival of many fervently Christian or Muslim athletes from
other parts of the world. The increasing religious diversity of the English
population has itself sometimes brought religious issues to the fore, and the
rapid growth of sports chaplaincy suggests that sport needs religion as much
as religion needs sport. And while ‘religion’ as conventionally understood
uses sport for its own purposes, and ‘sport’ as conventionally understood uses
religion, there is also the question of whether sport is itself a religion—as
some sportspeople claim jokingly, while others make the claim in all
seriousness.
Whatever one’s view on claims of this kind, religion and sport are certainly
alike in the fact that they both can form intensely felt loyalties and identities,
and each has been, and is, a central part of the day-to-day life of many people.
I first became interested in the relationship between religion and sport
about twenty-five years ago when I was looking at the so-called crisis of faith
in later Victorian England. I was struck by the fact that churchgoing was in
clear decline by about 1890 at a time when there was a great boom in playing
and watching sport, and I wondered if there was any connection. Indeed,
some historians have suggested that the two trends were connected. On the
other hand, I was well aware that churches were themselves contributing to
the national passion for sport by forming clubs and presenting Christian
youth with sporting role models. Equally, the public schools, which were
Introduction 3
generally credited with an important role in the earlier stages of the boom,
were nearly all headed by Anglican clergymen. Furthermore, few histories of
sport failed to mention the influence of what was called muscular Christianity,
and especially of the novelists, Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes.

In the resulting book,1 I made a first attempt at resolving this problem.
A few years later, I returned to the theme, looking at the rising interest in sport
in the Nonconformist chapels and in Sunday Schools, as well as attempting a
comparison of the inter-connections between religion, politics, and sport in
various parts of Europe.2 In 2008 I was invited to give the Hulsean Lectures at
Cambridge and chose as my theme the relationship between religion and
sport in England during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. I saw it as a
romantic drama, akin to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It began with
repulsion, which gave way to a growing attraction, and then to a co-habitation
(not yet a marriage), but ended with a (mostly friendly) separation.
I was then diverted into another project. But I had not forgotten one of the
questions which had been put to me: ‘What happened after this “separation”?’
In returning now, I am trying to answer this question, as well as giving fresh
consideration to the Victorian and Edwardian periods, developing important
themes which I earlier neglected. The religious focus will be principally on
Christians, and especially Anglicans and Nonconformists, though I shall look
more briefly at Catholics, and I shall also consider Jews, Muslims, and those
who claimed that sport was their religion. I will define as a sport any which
was regarded as a sport by those practising it. This includes some which were
condemned as barbaric by many people both at the time and since, and some,
such as recreational cycling, which would fall outside some definitions of
sport. I have made no attempt to be either comprehensive in the range of
sports discussed or balanced in the amount of space devoted to each sport:
some sports receive much more extended treatment than others, whether
because they are more significant for my main arguments, or because they are
the subject of relevant literature.
1 Hugh McLeod, Religion and Society in England 1850–1914 (Basingstoke 1996), pp. 88–90, 138–9,
150–1, 197–200.
2 Hugh McLeod, ‘ “Thews and Sinews”: Nonconformity and sport’, in David Bebbington and
Timothy Larsen (eds), Modern Christianity and Cultural Aspirations (Sheffield 2003), pp. 28–46;
‘Sport and the English Sunday School 1869–1939’, in Stephen Orchard and John H. Y. Briggs (eds) The
Sunday School Movement (Milton Keynes 2007), pp. 109–23; ‘Religion, politics and sport in Western
Europe, c.1870–1939’, in Stewart J. Brown, Frances Knight, and John Morgan-Guy (eds), Religion,
Identity and Conflict in Britain: From the Restoration to the Twentieth Century (Farnham 2013),
pp. 195–212.
Sport and Religion in Modern England: An Overview
The development of modern sport in England may be roughly divided into

four periods. In each of these phases Christians, and indeed Jews and more

recently Muslims, have played a part—sometimes, as in the second phase,
very conspicuously, and at other time less visibly. In either case, they have
adapted to the opportunities and the threats which each period has presented.
In the first phase from about 1790 up to about 1860 an older sporting world
continued, and sometimes, as with the field sports of the gentry, it flourished,
but there were also important new developments. One was the publication of
the first sporting newspapers. Another was the increasing number of profes-
sional events attended by large numbers of spectators. The dominance in
England of competitive sports, with betting playing a major role, contrasted
with the situation in many parts of continental Europe, where for much of the
nineteenth century the most widely practised and most prestigious sport was
gymnastics, closely associated with a patriotic agenda of forming disciplined
and physically fit young men, able to defend the fatherland.
In the eighteenth century, the dominant section of the Church of England
had been those known as High Church: Protestant, but strongly opposed to
any kind of Calvinism; closely attached to the Anglican Prayer Book; con-
cerned for decency, order, and tradition in church and society; committed to
paternalist social relations, and to defence of the powers and privileges of the
Established Church. In the 1830s the High Church began to move in a new
direction with what has come to be known as the Oxford Movement, because
many of its founders were academics or parish clergymen in the High Church
stronghold of Oxford. At the time they were more often known as Tractarians
or Puseyites. They were initially spurred to action by what they saw as the
secularizing policies of the Whig governments of Grey and Melbourne,
which, they feared, might culminate in a persecution like that during the
French Revolution. Their answer was to go beyond the idea of the church as a
branch of the state, to rediscover the identity of the Church of England as the
English branch of the universal church, in continuity with the medieval and,
above all, with the early church and the Church Fathers, whose authority they
revered. The liking of some in the movement for more elaborate ritual, richly
decorated church buildings, processions, and music led them to be dubbed
‘Ritualists’. The movement would have an enormous though increasingly dif-
fuse influence on the Church of England in the second half of the nineteenth
century and the first half of the twentieth, and it frequently developed in ways
unintended by the founders.
Introduction 5
But in the first half of the nineteenth century the growing religious force
was the Evangelicals. They were growing both within the Established Church
of England, and even more strongly in the Dissenting (or Nonconformist)
churches. After increasing gradually from around the middle of the eight-

eenth century, these churches enjoyed explosive growth in the years from
about 1790 to 1850. In the industrializing districts of northern England and
the Midlands they attracted large sections of the lower-middle and working
classes, as well as lesser numbers from higher in the social scale. These more
affluent groups were especially attracted by the small but influential body of
liberal Unitarians. But by far the largest section of Nonconformity were the
Methodists, split into numerous branches including most notably the
Wesleyan and Primitive Methodists. The Baptists and the Independents or
Congregationalists were also growing fast. Until 1828 Dissenters were
excluded from holding public office, but after the reform of local government
in 1835 they quickly became a dominant force in the government of many
towns and cities, though it took longer for them to achieve a significant repre-
sentation in Parliament.
In the first half of the century Evangelicals, whether Anglican or
Nonconformist, enjoyed considerable political influence and even greater
social and cultural influence. Many of them had a very critical view either of
sport in general or of the sports which were popular at the time, and as well as
abstaining themselves, they often tried to prevent others from practising any
sport which was considered cruel, brutal, dangerous, or immoral. In this
period relations between the worlds of religion and of sport were at their low-
est level.
My second period, between about 1860 and 1900, saw the great Victorian
sporting boom, including an enormous increase in the numbers of those
playing or watching sport, as well as the invention of new sports such as lawn
tennis. The boom began in the 1860s with men of the upper-middle class, and
these years saw the formation of many cricket, football, athletics, rowing, and
gymnastic clubs by business and professional men. From the 1870s men of
the lower-middle and working classes were increasingly involved, and by the
1880s a small but steadily growing number of middle-class women were going
to gyms, playing tennis and golf and, by the 1890s, cycling. In this period the
amateur ideal came to have a widespread prestige and influence, though it
was frequently a source of conflict. In some sports it remained a powerful
influence until the later twentieth century, though in a few, notably associ
ation football, its importance was short-lived. Connected with this ideal was a
widespread condemnation of the betting which was seen as interfering with
the honest pursuit of victory without concern for the monetary gains result-
ing from victory—and sometimes from defeat. However, betting continued to
be integral to one of the most widely popular sports, horse racing, and indeed
it was greatly increasing from the 1880s.

In 1885 the Football Association (FA) legalized professionalism and in
1888 the Football League was formed. Very soon professional football was
attracting large crowds, and the FA Cup, in particular, generated huge excite-
ment. The other major spectator sports were cricket and rugby. Rugby under-
went its ‘Great Split’ in 1895 when the Northern Union (NU), which
recognized the need to provide ‘broken-time’ payments to the players, many
of whom were miners and mill workers, broke away from the strictly amateur
Rugby Football Union. Following various changes in the rules, the Northern
form of the game became the separate sport of rugby league. Cricket already
had in the nineteenth century and for long retained some unusual features. It
was probably the only sport where elite players included both professionals
and amateurs, and where both the elite and those playing on Saturday after-
noons were drawn from a wide range of social backgrounds. The system of
county cricket, which came to dominate the upper levels of the sport, was
controlled by amateurs, many of them from the aristocracy and gentry. The
same was true of the MCC, with its base at the Lord’s ground in London,
which remained until the 1990s the dominant institution in English cricket.
But the North and Midlands saw something akin to NU rugby, as clubs were
formed based on a single town, and enjoying a fervent local following. Both
county and league cricket attracted substantial crowds, as did the Test Matches
against Australia and South Africa. In the late Victorian years, sports which
had originated in England and Scotland spread across the Atlantic and into
other parts of Europe where they began to challenge the dominance of
gymnastics.
In this second phase, the later decades of the nineteenth century, a rap-
prochement between the worlds of religion and sport was underway. While
the more conservative branches both of the Anglican and the Nonconformist
churches were still powerful, there was a gradual process of liberalization.
From around 1850 Anglicans began to speak of a third force beyond the two
historic wings of the High Church and the Low Church or Evangelicals. This
was the ‘Broad Church’, which was open to critical study of the Bible and
questioned literalistic readings of the sacred text. By the 1870s similar trends
were evident in Nonconformity. The other important development in the
Church of England was the growth in numbers and influence of the Anglo-
Catholics (as those in the High Church tradition were increasingly called).
Introduction 7
Anglo-Catholics were extremely diverse in belief and practice, but the points
most relevant to the relationship between religion and sport were their con-
tribution to the growing anti-puritanism of the later nineteenth century and
the prominence of Anglo-Catholic clergy among the so-called slum priests

working in city parishes during that period, many of whom actively pro-
moted sport.
This was the era of what contemporaries called muscular Christianity.
Initially it was the more liberal wings of the various churches which led the
way in bringing the worlds of religion and sport closer together, but soon
other sections of the churches were joining in. The later nineteenth century
saw a great expansion of British overseas missions, assisted by the extension
of British rule over large areas of Africa and Asia. By the 1890s the affinities
between Christianity and sport were so widely accepted that missionaries and
teachers in Christian schools played an important role in the diffusion of
British sports to other parts of the world. The same period also saw an increas-
ing religious pluralism in English cities— though rural areas were little
affected by the new developments. The relatively small Catholic and Jewish
communities were reinforced by immigration respectively from Ireland, espe-
cially from the 1840s, and from the Russian empire especially from the 1880s.
Liverpool and other parts of Lancashire, as well as some parts of London,
became Catholic strongholds, and large Jewish communities were formed in
London’s East End and on the north sides of Manchester and Leeds.
The third period, between about 1900 and 1960 saw a big growth of wom-
en’s sport. In England, the sporting enthusiasm of young women of the upper
and middle classes continued to grow, causing consternation among some of
their elders and becoming the subject of critical articles in the reviews. And
by about 1900 young women of the lower-middle and working classes began
to be involved too. Women’s sport then grew rapidly in the interwar years,
with hockey, netball, tennis, swimming, and cycling being especially popular.
The other major development in this period was the internationalization of
sport, including the diffusion of Western (principally British and American)
sports to all parts of the world, the growth of international competition,
including most notably the revival of the Olympic Games in 1896, and the
promotion of sport by governments and by newspapers and radio as a source
of national identity and prestige. Internationally, the growth of women’s sport
was reflected in their increasing participation in the Olympics from 1924
onwards, though until 1956 the proportion of women among the athletes
never exceeded 10 per cent and only in the 1970s did participation by women
increase more rapidly.
1930 saw the first football World Cup. The four ‘home’ nations (England,
Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland), while continuing to compete among
themselves, refused until 1950 to take part in the global event, though they
also less frequently played against other countries. Cricket was slowly inter-

nationalizing in the interwar years, with New Zealand, the West Indies, and
India being added to the Test Match nations. As boxing under the
Queensberry Rules took the place of bare-knuckle contests in the later nine-
teenth century, most leading fighters were initially from Britain, the British
colonies, and the United States, but the interwar years also saw world cham
pions from France, Germany, and Italy. During this period attendance at
sporting events reached unprecedented levels. In England, the years immedi-
ately after World War II saw the peak of attendances both in cricket and in
football.
This was the era of American domination of many international sports,
including athletics, swimming, golf, tennis, and boxing, as well as those such
as basketball which had been invented in the United States. After World War
II the Americans faced increasing competition from Australia in tennis and
swimming and from the countries of the Soviet bloc in athletics. The Soviet
Union participated in the Olympics for the first time in 1952, and they
together with other communist-ruled countries, provided formidable compe-
tition to the athletes and gymnasts of the West, and ensured that the political
significance of the Games remained a primary concern.
In this third phase from the end of the nineteenth century up to the 1960s,
churchgoing, both Anglican and Nonconformist, was gradually falling, but it
remained generally agreed, at least until the 1960s, that England was ‘a
Christian country’. The characteristic religious tendency in this period was
what the historian Jeffrey Cox has called ‘diffusive Christianity’.3 Cox applied
it to the working class but it could be applied more widely at a time when
regular church attendance was declining in all classes, I will suggest that the
taken-for-granted position of the church in many areas of social life was
reflected in their large role in recreational sport, as well as in the continuing
use of Saturday as the main day for professional sport, and the rarity of pro-
fessional sport on Sundays.
The fourth period from around 1960 to the early twenty-first century has
seen the commercialization of sport reaching previously unimagined levels.
According to Garry Whannel, who has described a ‘remaking of British sport’
between 1965 and 1985, the most important factor has been television and
3 Jeffrey Cox, The English Churches in a Secular Society, Lambeth 1870–1930 (Oxford 1982), p. 93.
Introduction 9
the possibilities opened up by the televising of sporting events.4 Some key

developments took place in the 1960s, though this process has gone much
further since then. One was the abolition of the maximum wage in football in
1961 and another was the beginnings of elite-level Sunday cricket in 1966.

Professional sport on Sundays had been very rare before that. The first
Football League game on a Sunday came in 1974. The decade saw a consider-
able increase in the sponsorship of sporting events. On the one hand, declin-
ing income from gate money meant that the authorities of the various sports
were on the look-out for new sources of income. On the other, televised
sporting events offered outstanding opportunities for advertisers. Cricket
abolished the distinction between amateurs and professionals, which had
indeed become of very limited practical significance, in 1962. One by one, the
sports where the distinction had greater practical significance followed suit.
Tennis did so in 1967; in athletics amateurism was gradually eroded in the
1970s, but effectively came to an end in 1982; rugby union, where amateurism
had been partly sustained by the long-running feud with rugby league, finally
succumbed in 1995. The biggest changes came in the 1990s, and again televi-
sion and sponsorship by businesses played key roles. The most important
development was the establishment of football’s Premier League in 1992 in
connection with BSkyB television. This led to an enormous increase in the
money available to the leading football clubs and enabled them to attract out-
standing players from all over the world. The dominant interest of television
now meant that football could be played on every day of the year but one—
Christmas Day still being sacrosanct. One product of this new era has been
the ‘sports icon’, able to enjoy a lavish lifestyle not only through the direct
rewards for their sporting achievements but more through associating their
names with products ranging from running shoes to perfumes.
This period also saw the internationalization of sport go much further.
After decades of domination by Americans and Australians, Wimbledon
champions were now coming from a wide range of (European) countries.
There is a similar pattern in golf, though Americans continue to be dominant.
African and Asian countries began to be major players in the Olympics and
in football’s World Cup, and in the early twenty-first century India had
become the dominant force in cricket. Most of the major team sports estab-
lished men’s and women’s world cups in the later twentieth century.
4 Garry Whannel, ‘The unholy alliance: Notes on television and the remaking of British sport
1965–85’, Leisure Studies, 5 (1986), pp. 129–45.
In this fourth phase, from the 1960s, we see four major religious trends.
First there were accelerating processes of secularization, reflected not only in
further drops in church attendance and the rising numbers of people with no
kind of religious affiliation but also, so far as the relationship between religion

and sport is concerned, by the increasing prevalence of Sunday sport. Second
there was the emergence of the so-called multi-faith society. This was mainly
the result of immigration by Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists from the
1950s onwards—though some of the growth, especially of Buddhism, was
through conversions. This had paradoxical effects on the place of religion in
society. On the one hand it undermined claims of Christianity to privileged
status. On the other hand, it also undermined those who wanted a privileged
status for Secularism, not least because the various ethnic and religious
minorities were key players in the politics of many cities. Third there was a
resurgence of Evangelicalism, partly through immigration from the Caribbean
and Africa, but more especially through the impact from the 1970s of the
Charismatic Movement. And fourth there was the growth of what were called
‘alternative spiritualities’, which included the claim that each individual had
the right to find their own ‘path’, drawing from a diverse range of sources.
The Historical Debate
Few historians have explored the relationship between religion and sport in
nineteenth-century England, and even fewer have looked at the twentieth
century. The historians who have written on this theme agree that religion is a
part of the history of sport, but they are completely disagreed as to what that
part is.
Four questions have provoked debate: How do we explain the rise of ‘mus-
cular Christianity’? How significant was the role of religion in the sports
boom, and was its significance brief or longer lasting? Was the role of the
churches in the sports boom proactive or reactive? And behind many of these
other questions is the big question of the relationship between the rise of
sport and secularization.
To start with the first question: muscular Christianity began in 1857 as a
joke by a reviewer of Kingsley’s novel, Two Years Ago. Kingsley disliked the
term, but it soon won general acceptance, and it has remained in use right up
to the present day. Most historians would agree that a mix of factors was
involved, but there is a basic division between those who see muscular
Christianity principally as a religious movement and those who see other
Introduction 11
factors as more significant. The first view has been advanced notably by
Norman Vance, as well as by Dominic Erdozain, who has especially high-
lighted the influence of these ideas on the Young Men’s Christian Association
(YMCA), and by Malcolm Tozer whose main concern has been their influ-

ence on the public schools.5 The second view has been presented most fully
by the contributors to Donald Hall’s collective volume.6
Vance, like Kingsley himself, dismisses ‘muscular Christianity’ as a trivial-
izing epithet. He prefers the term ‘Christian manliness’, which places more
emphasis on the social vision and liberal theological message of these writers,
as well as their insistence that muscularity is in itself of little value unless
combined with moral purpose. As Hughes would write in the 1870s, ‘a great
athlete may be a brute or a coward, while a truly manly man can be neither.’7
Kingsley and Hughes belonged to the liberal wing of the Church of England,
and Kingsley in particular was repelled by anything he regarded as ‘mani-
chean’. This included asceticism, contempt for the body, and any attempt to
separate the spiritual from the secular. Their polemics were directed against
two of the most influential movements within the Anglican Church, the
Evangelicals and the Tractarians. They accused the former of puritanism and
the latter of a sacerdotalism which served to separate the clergy from the
people. Instead, they wished to celebrate the goodness of the body and of the
natural world, as God-given, and the obligation to work for a better world.
Their promotion of sport and physical recreation of many kinds was a prod-
uct of their own love of the open air and of sporting contest, but also it was
part of their agenda for a different kind of Christianity and a different kind of
society.
In questioning Vance’s term ‘Christian manliness’, intended to highlight
the Christianity, Hall prefers ‘muscular Christianity’ because it highlights the
physical. He sees this movement as a response to the ‘intensification’ of ‘the
gender power struggle’ as well as the challenge to ‘ruling class male’ power. He
sees the body as a metaphor for these various forms of power. Beginning with
Thomas Hughes’ novel, Tom Brown’s School Days, he suggests that the subject
of the novel is the white, upper-class, heterosexual male body in a patriarchal
society, which denigrates or excludes all other groups and is often contrasted
5 Norman Vance, Sinews of the Spirit: The Ideal of Christian Manliness in Victorian Literature and
Religious Thought (Cambridge 1985); Dominic Erdozain, The Problem of Pleasure: Sport, Recreation
and the Crisis of Victorian Religion (Woodbridge 2010); Malcolm Tozer, The Ideal of Manliness: The
Legacy of Thring’s Uppingham (Truro 2015).
6 Donald E. Hall (ed.), Muscular Christianity: Embodying the Victorian Age (Cambridge 1994).
7 Thomas Hughes, The Manliness of Christ (London 1874), p. 26.
with ‘the caricatured bodies of lower-class, Irish and non-European men’.8

The principal themes, he suggests, are masculinity, sexuality, and gender rela-
tions. The authors also highlight the social origins of Hughes and Kingsley as
members of the gentry, with tendencies to be critical of the business class and

sympathetic towards, but also distanced from, the working class, and their
fervent patriotism (also discussed by Vance). As one of the contributors,
C. J. W.-L. Wee notes, there is a strong national and imperial dimension to
Kingsley’s work, which presents the idea of a united English nation, under-
pinned by Protestantism and a vigorous masculinity.9 The contributors to
Hall’s volume do not so much refute, as ignore, Vance’s emphasis on the spe-
cifically liberal Christian inspiration of muscular Christianity, so it is not
entirely clear how far the intention is to argue that Vance’s argument is wrong
or irrelevant, or whether it is to show that there is a wider context and other
perspectives are also needed.
As regards the second question, the contribution of religion to the sports
boom, both in the short term and in the longer term, an influential view is
that of Peter Bailey. In his history of the ‘rational recreation’ movement, he
argues that religion had an important role in the early stages of the sports
boom but that this was a temporary phase. From the 1850s clergymen, mainly
Anglican, were providing leisure facilities of various kinds intended both to
ameliorate the lives of working-class people and to divert them from harmful
recreations, focused especially on drinking and betting. They wanted to
encourage other kinds of leisure, beneficial to mind or body, such as attend-
ance at concerts and lectures, walking in parks, and participation in healthy
sports. Facilities for these things were often very limited and most working-
class people lacked the money to pay for them. The churches often had the
resources to pay for free or low-cost facilities, and at least until the 1870s
these were gratefully received. Bailey suggests that working-class membership
of church clubs was ‘instrumental’ ‘calculated to obtain certain benefits often
unobtainable from the resources of working-class life’.10 However there were
always possible tensions. Some of the football teams started by clergymen
broke away from church control. Similarly, working men’s clubs, initially
established by clergymen or pious laymen, eventually declared independence,
8 Donald E. Hall, ‘Introduction’, in Hall (ed.), Muscular Christianity, p. 6.

9 C. J. W.-L. Wee, ‘Christian manliness and national identity’, in Hall (ed.), Muscular Christianity,
pp. 66–88.
10 Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for
Control, 1830–1885 (London 1978), p. 178.
Introduction 13
the main issue often being the provision of alcoholic drinks on the premises.11
However, Jack Williams has shown in a series of studies of the interwar years
that the major involvement of churches and chapels in amateur sport
continued long after the 1880s.12 I shall also argue that a nuanced view of

relationships between churches and working class is needed, which highlights
their complexity and the diversity within both the working class and the
religious world.
The third question is whether churches had a proactive role in the sports
boom or whether they were jumping on a bandwagon which was already well
on its way. Most historians, whatever their overall perspective, have noted
that sport was seen by many churches as an effective means of recruiting new
members, and the formation of a football team or the provision of a gym on
church premises was thus a recognition of the fact that sport was already a
part of life for many people, especially teenage boys and young men. Some
historians have argued therefore that the adoption of sport by the churches
was reactive and essentially opportunist, rather than driven by any real enthu-
siasm. This is the view of the historian of leisure, Hugh Cunningham, who
argues that by the 1870s, ‘the churches were accommodating to society rather
than changing it’: ‘Leisure called the tune and the churches danced to it.’13
Similarly, the historian of religion, Callum Brown, suggests that ‘from the
evangelical standpoint, muscular Christianity was no more than an experi-
ment and not a fundamental change to a dominant negative discourse on
male religiosity.’ The purpose of church-based sport was ‘to contain, capture,
restrain and discipline masculinity’.14
The opposite view has been argued by the historian of leisure in
Birmingham, Douglas Reid, who suggests that the role of the churches in the
rise of sport, at least up to the 1880s was often proactive, with churches and
chapels frequently acting as pioneers.15 He recognizes considerable differ-
ences both between denominations and within denominations in attitudes to
recreation and specifically to sport, with much of the opposition coming from
Evangelicals, whether Anglican or Dissenting. He notes some examples of
clergy who promoted leisure for fear of losing their congregation, rather than
seeing it as anything good in itself. However, Reid, as well as rejecting the idea
11 Bailey, Leisure and Class, pp. 106–19.

12 See, for example, Jack Williams, ‘Churches, sport and identities in the North, 1900–1939’, in Jeff Hill
and Jack Williams (eds), Sport and Identity in the North of England (Keele 1996), pp. 113–36.
13 Hugh Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution (New York 1980), pp. 181–2.
14 Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain (2nd edn. London 2009), pp. 97–8, 107–8.
15 Douglas Adam Reid, ‘Labour, Leisure and Politics in Birmingham, ca. 1800–1875’ (University of
Birmingham PhD thesis, 1985).
that there is any necessary conflict between the church and secular amuse-
ments, goes on to argue that some influential clergy were ‘moulding’ rather
than ‘reacting to’ public opinion.16 Seeing the 1850s as a turning-point, he
highlights the role of two prominent clergymen, the Anglican J. C. Miller at

the historic parish church, St Martin’s, and the liberal Dissenter George
Dawson at the non-denominational Church of the Saviour. Reid notes that
church sports club were often started by the young men of the congregation,
rather than being directly established by the clergy, but he also mentions the
examples of clergymen who were themselves sports enthusiasts, and who
took the leading role.17
Also relevant here is the work of historians of the public schools such as
J. A. Mangan and Malcolm Tozer.18 From the later 1850s onwards these
schools were building gymnasia and including in their curriculum increas-
ingly large amounts of sport, especially cricket and the various codes of foot-
ball. Most of the headmasters and many of the assistant masters in these
schools were clergymen and though the motives for their promotion of sport
varied, many of them were inspired by some form of muscular Christianity.
The big question behind many of the debates is the relationship between
the rise of sport and secularization. We can see three basic positions. John
Lowerson has claimed that there was a direct connection, and that by the last
part of the nineteenth century sport was taking the place of religion in many
people’s lives.19 A second view is that of Jack Williams, who argues for the
continuing importance of the links between religion and sport at least up to
the 1920s and 1930s. Williams’s book on cricket in the interwar period
includes a chapter on religion, and he sees the prominence of church teams as
evidence that the extent of secularization in the early twentieth century has
been exaggerated, though he also comments that a decline in the number of
church cricket and football teams in the 1930s may have been a cause of secu-
larization, in so far as these teams had been a route into the churches.20 His
work parallels that of historians such as Callum Brown, who minimizes the
extent of secularization before the 1960s,21 and Michael Snape who, without
16 Reid, ‘Labour, Leisure and Politics’, pp. 132–5.

17 Reid, ‘Labour, Leisure and Politics’, pp. 102–7, 115–18, 136–9, 163 note 267.
18 J. A. Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School (Lewes 1986); Tozer,
Manliness.
19 John Lowerson, ‘Sport and the Victorian Sunday: The beginnings of middle-class apostasy’, in
J. A. Mangan (ed.), A Sport-Loving Society: Victorian and Edwardian Middle-Class England at Play
(London 2006), pp. 179–97.
20 Jack Williams, Cricket and England: A Cultural and Social History of the Inter-War Years (London
1999); Williams, ‘Identities’, p. 127.
21 Brown, Death, pp. 9–10 and passim.
Introduction 15
entering the debates over the sixties, has highlighted the influence of ‘diffusive
Christianity’ both at home and at the front during the two world wars.22
A third view, which overlaps with the first, but approaches the question
from a different angle, is that of Dominic Erdozain. Drawing especially on the

example of the YMCA, which he sees as representing wider trends in British
Christianity in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he argues
that the churches underwent an inner secularization. This was partly because
of the increasing time devoted to sport which, he suggests, diverted Christians
from more important tasks. But he sees more subtle processes at work even in
those churches which still gave primacy to preaching and worship. The mis-
take, he suggests, was to present sport not as a relatively unimportant extra,
but as integral to the church’s mission.
The literature on the relationship between religion and sport is far more
extensive in the United States than in England. The main reason for this has
been the prominence of Evangelicals in American sport since the 1970s,
which has prompted a succession of books and articles both on the current
relationship between religion and sport and on its longer history. The writers
have included journalists, sporting professionals, ministers of religion, and
academics in many disciplines.23 Much of the writing has been by sporting
Evangelicals addressing other sporting Evangelicals. But there has also been a
more critical literature, written both by Evangelicals and by others, who have
voiced concerns about what one critic called ‘sportianity’.24 On the other
hand, William J. Baker in his history of ‘Religion and Modern Sport’, takes a
more distanced view of contemporary concerns and controversies. He ranges
very widely, going back (briefly) to the early Christians and beyond, before
concentrating on the modern United States. He includes Catholics and
Muslims, as well as many kinds of Protestant. His theme is that intimate rela-
tionships between religion and sport have been the norm and that periods of
conflict have been the exception. He goes further, arguing for a close inter-
connection between religion, sport, and patriotism in the United States. My
emphasis here, however, is on the fluctuating nature of the relationship
between religion and sport in England, sometimes antagonistic, sometimes
mutually supportive, sometimes more distanced. The ‘ “fit” of faith and sport’,
22 Michael Snape, God and the British Soldier (London 2005), p. 58.
23 For example, Shirl Hoffman (ed.), Sport and Religion (Champaign IL 1992); Tony Ladd and
James A. Mathieson, Muscular Christianity: Evangelical Protestants and the Development of American
Sport (Grand Rapids, MI 1999); Christopher H. Evans and William R. Herzog II (eds), The Faith of
Fifty Million: Baseball, Religion and American Culture (Louisville, KY 2002).
24 Frank Deford, ‘Religion in sport’, ‘The Word according to Tom’, and ‘Reaching for the stars’,
Sports Illustrated, 19 April, 26 April, 3 May 1976.
to use Baker’s terminology,25 has never been quite as tight in England as in

the United States—though it came closest to that in the later part of the nine-
teenth century.
I shall return to all of the debated questions, while also opening up other

issues, so far unexplored. In doing this I will draw mainly on four kinds of
primary source. I have used Anglican and Nonconformist local church
records, mainly from London and the Midlands and mainly from urban areas.
I have found church magazines a particularly rich source. I have used the cen-
tral archives of the YMCA, the Young Women’s Christian Association
(YWCA) and Sunday School Union. I have made extensive use of local and
sporting papers in the British Newspaper Archive, especially for the nine-
teenth century and the first half of the twentieth, though after about 1950 the
numbers of newspapers accessible through the archive falls fast. And, for
the most recent period, I have drawn especially on the national press and on
the websites of religious organizations and of sports associations and clubs.
25 William J. Baker, Playing with God: Religion and Modern Sport (Cambridge 2007).
1
‘’E Mun Be Baited, It’s a Rule’

Old and New Sporting Worlds
The Old Sporting World
In spite of new trends which pointed to the future, an older sporting world
was still alive in England, and in some respects flourishing around 1800. This
had both an elite and a plebeian branch. The elite branch, belonging to the
aristocracy and gentry, together with some of the larger farmers, was devoted
principally to hunting. This meant above all fox hunting, though hares and, in
some regions, stags and otters were also hunted. In the more plebeian branch
the highlights were linked with holiday seasons, such as a wakes week in
the summer or autumn, Shrove Tuesday, or Whit Monday—thus the name
‘calendar sports’. But there were also sports practised in a less organized way
on Sundays or on summer evenings. In this older sporting world, the clergy
patronized the recreations of their social inferiors and participated in those of
their social equals. The historic connections between popular recreations and
the church and with its calendar continued, but only in attenuated form.
Robert Malcolmson contrasts this with Catholic Europe where ‘the Church’s
participation in these festivities remained vigorous and of fundamental
importance.’1 Many of the sports practised by working men and youths on
Sundays or on summer evenings had no religious significance at all.
The role of the clergy in calendar sports was limited to that of a patron.
This was most conspicuous in the wakes week, the main occasion for sporting
contests in many parishes, both rural and industrial. This traditionally began
on the Sunday following the feast-day of the patron saint of the parish.
Malcolmson has shown that there was a strong seasonal dimension to the
scheduling of wakes, as they took place at times of the year when agricultural
work was less intensive. So although the date was often chosen because of the
patronal festival, there must have been many instances where the saint’s day
1 Robert W. Malcolmson, Popular Recreations in English Society 1700 to 1850 (Cambridge

1973), p. 74.
occurred at an inconvenient time in the year, and a completely different date

was chosen.2 The festival began with a church service that was said to be
unusually well attended—partly because of family members now living else-
where who returned for the wakes.3 A Newcastle clergyman and antiquarian,

Henry Bourne, provided in 1725 a good summary of the main features of the
celebrations:
The Inhabitants deck themselves out in their gaudiest Clothes, and have
open Doors and splendid Entertainments for the Reception and Treating of
their Relatives and Friends, who visit them on that occasion from each
neighbouring Town. The Morning is spent for the most Part at Church. . . . The
remaining part of the Day is spent in Eating and Drinking; and so is also a
day or two Afterwards, together with all Sorts of Rural pastimes and
Exercises, such as Dancing on the Green, Wrestling, Cudgelling, &c.4
While the patronal festival provided the occasion for the celebrations, and the
service in the parish church was the essential starting-point, Bourne was con-
cerned that the original Christian significance of the day had become largely
obscured. After the religious observances in the morning, the church was
reduced to a small supporting role. For example, in the very popular Stamford
bull-running, patronized by many of the town’s elite but finally suppressed in
1840, the bells of St Mary’s church tolled as the bull entered the town.5
Major occasions for calendar sports included Shrove Tuesday and Ash
Wednesday, associated especially with street football; Easter Monday and
Tuesday, also a common time for football, and Whit Monday and Tuesday,
which were times for races, wrestling, morris dancing, and the holding of
fairs.6 Other favoured days may have been more localized. For example, in
Wokingham in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the annual
marketplace bull-baiting, for which the parish overseers provided the bull,
took place on St Thomas’s Day (December 21).7
The street football involved a game with unlimited numbers of participants
on either side with each of the teams representing a different village or a dif-
ferent district of a town, and each side aiming to carry the ball to the opposite
end. A typical example was Derby where the sides represented, respectively,
2 Malcolmson, Recreations, p. 18. 3 Malcolmson, Recreations, p. 19.

4 M. F. Snape, The Church of England in Industrialising Society: The Lancashire Parish of Whalley in
the Eighteenth Century (Woodbridge 2003), p. 28.
5 Malcolmson, Recreations, pp. 47–8. 6 Malcolmson, Recreations, pp. 31–3, 83–4.
7 Emma Griffin, England’s Revelry (Oxford 2005), pp. 64–5.
Old and New Sporting Worlds 19
St Peter’s, the main parish on the south of the town, and All Saints’, the leading
parish on the north side, though each was reinforced by players from other
parishes or from surrounding villages. Play was robust with injuries being
common and considerable damage being done to town-centre shops. Keith

Snell has highlighted the way in which football and cricket matches between
neighbouring villages or pugilistic encounters between the champions of
those villages could become a focus for local rivalries and antagonisms.8 The
other side of this coin, as Michael Snape argues, is that football in eighteenth-
century Lancashire reinforced a strong sense of identity with the parish and
sometimes with the parish church. He cites the case of King Charles the
Martyr Day at Downham, which began with a sermon and distribution of
alms, followed by a football match against a neighbouring parish. He gives the
example of one clergyman in the mid-eighteenth century who was ‘custodian
of the town’s football’, and another in the later part of the century who would
produce a football at the end of the afternoon service and kick it into the
neighbouring field.9 In the case of Derby the contest reflected and reinforced
parish identities within a growing industrial centre. The many attempts to
close the game down finally succeeded in 1846. At the time there were bitter
feelings between those on either side of the argument.10 In later years the
football came to be seen as part of the town’s ‘heritage’ and in 1884 a local
paper published the reminiscences of a well- known player, William
Williamson, nicknamed Tunchy Shelton, who was then living in an alms
house. He said his ribs had never fitted properly since he broke them in the
football. He was a Peterite and his father had also played for St Peter’s
before him:
You know it was a sort of what is called caste. There’s many a hundred dying
for their caste as there is religion and I would have gladly died rather than
give up St Peter’s and so would many another, and some have died for it. All
the lads and lassies were either St Peter’s or All Saints, and the women were
worst of all. . . . Nearly every one was the same high and low. The little chil-
dren in St Peter’s parish would sing in the streets ‘Roast Beef and Potatoes |
For the Bells of St Peter’s | Pig muck and carrots | For the Bells of All
Hallows.’
8 K. D. M. Snell, Parish and Belonging: Community, Identity and Welfare in England and Wales
1700–1950 (Cambridge 2006), pp. 55–6.
9 Snape, Church of England, pp. 31–2.
10 Anthony Delves, ‘Popular recreation and social conflict in Derby, 1800–1850’, in Eileen and
Stephen Yeo (eds), Popular Culture and Class Conflict, 1590–1914 (Brighton 1981), pp. 89–127.
He once had a fight with a man who said he turned his coat: ‘I would not have
turned my coat to save my life and I would not now.’11
There were also calendar sports involving animals. Throwing at cocks trad
itionally took place on Shrove Tuesday, and usually took place in churchyards:

the participants threw missiles at a tethered cock, and the man who succeeded
in killing the bird was able to take it home. In many places, Easter Monday
was as closely associated with bull-baiting as Shrove Tuesday was with foot-
ball or throwing at cocks. Thus the sense of bitter grievance encountered by
those who tried to stop such events. ‘’E mun be baited—it’s a rule,’ was the
response of aggrieved inhabitants of Ellesmere in 1813 when agents of the
Earl of Bridgewater tried to suppress the annual baiting. As Bob Bushaway
argues, the defence of ‘custom’ was one aspect of a ‘contractual framework’
whereby landlords and clergy ‘accepted certain duties and responsibilities’
and ‘in return received due recognition . . . and compliance’.12 In the early
nineteenth century, bull-baitings would become a frequent occasion for con-
flict between a reforming clergyman, driven to challenge traditions which he
saw as ‘shameful’ and ‘wicked’, and parishioners tenacious in defence of time-
honoured custom.
Many popular sports were localized. For example, in Lancashire a running
game called prison bars was popular. Stoolball was especially associated with
Sussex, though Emma Griffin cites an example from Yorkshire.13 Cricket and
football were played in all parts of the country. Football was a mainly plebeian
game, sometimes patronized but seldom practised by elites—though Adrian
Harvey notes some exceptions.14 As well as the annual set-piece matches,
informal games or sometimes matches between the youth of neighbouring
communities took place throughout the year. All of Sunday, but most often
the afternoon, potentially provided times for sport, though a vicar’s son from
the Yorkshire Dales writing in the 1860s recalled that the young men of the
parish would gather for football after service on Sunday evenings.15 It should
be noted that although Sabbatarian restrictions increased with the growing
strength of Evangelicalism in the early and mid-nineteenth century, there
were also many clergymen, especially those of High Church, or later Broad
11 ‘Tunchy Williamson Interviewed’, Cutting from Derby Express, Derby Local Studies Library (BA
796.33 MSS).
12 Bob Bushaway, By Rite: Custom, Ceremony and Community in England 1700–1880 (London
1982), pp. 1–4, 22.
13 Griffin, Revelry, pp. 48–51.
14 Adrian Harvey, Football: The First Hundred Years, the Untold Story (Abingdon 2005), pp. 53–4, 72.
15 Griffin, Revelry, pp. 45–51.
Church, leanings, who did not object to Sunday sport as long as it was in
addition to, rather than instead of, attending church.
Cricket was already in the eighteenth century unusual in that it was played
by men from all sections of society, and less frequently by women too.16 It was

played by gentlemen, including clergymen, and newspapers sometimes
reported their matches. It was also played by farmers, shopkeepers, artisans,
and labourers. The gentry patronized teams made up mainly of poorer men
and took bets on their matches. Sometimes they participated themselves.
David Underdown’s account of the famous Hambledon club, based on a
Hampshire village, but also drawing more widely, shows that the players
typically came from the middle ranks of village society, including farmers,
pub landlords, and builders, but also sometimes those from higher up the
scale, such as the son of a Winchester clergymen. Underdown emphasizes
their respectability and integration into local society, marked for example by
the fact that several sang or played an instrument in the church choir. The
patrons included aristocrats and several clergymen, including most notably
the Rev Charles Powlett, who was both. He was the illegitimate son of the
Duke of Bolton and also curate of a nearby parish. As well as being a key
figure in the Hambledon club and sufficiently respected in the cricket world
to have been a member of the committee which revised the Laws of the game
in 1774, he seems to have been a striking example of what came to be called
the ‘unreformed’ Church of England: he was a pluralist, drawing income from
several parishes, he gambled heavily on Hambledon matches, and was also
interested in hunting, horse racing, and cock-fighting.17
Among the sports of the aristocracy and gentry, fox hunting was growing
in popularity from about 1730 onwards and had reached a high point by the
early nineteenth century. Indeed, for many of the gentry it was the most
important thing in their life, and some of them went out several times a week
during the season, or even every day but Sunday. William Howitt, writing in
1838, admitted the cruelty of the sport, but went on to declare that ‘fox-
hunting is now the chief amusement of the true British sportsman and a noble
one it is—the artifices and dexterity employed by this lively, crafty animal to
avoid the dogs are worthy of our admiration, as he exhibits more devices for
self-preservation than any other beast of the chase.’18 The thrill of a protracted
chase with many obstacles on the way, the companionship and the eating and
16 Griffin, Revelry, pp. 47–8, 215–16; David Underdown, Start of Play: Cricket and Culture in
Eighteenth-Century England (London 2000).
17 Underdown, Start of Play, pp. 66–7, 114–16, 133–4.
18 William Howitt, The Rural Life of England (2 vols, London 1838), I, pp. 44–5.
drinking which followed the hunt, the bond which they felt with their horses
and dogs all combined to make a good day in the field the most intensely felt
experience in the lives of the sporting gentry. Many belonged to local hunts,
and to be master of fox hounds (MFH) was a highly prestigious position in

rural society. The clergy in the ‘better’ livings, were often accepted and
respected parts of the local hunt, and some were even the MFH—though with
the church reform movement of the 1830s the ‘hunting parson’ became a
favourite target for the reformers.
The years since the middle of the eighteenth century had seen a marked
rise in the incomes and social status of many of the clergy, reflected in the
rising proportion of those who were appointed as magistrates. The propor-
tion of magistrates who were clergymen, rose nationally from 11 per cent to
22 per cent between 1761 and 1831. But the increase was much greater in
those Midland counties where the clergy had received land or money in place
of tithes during the frequent Enclosure Acts of this period—and these coun-
ties were also the major centres of fox hunting. Clergymen were appointed as
magistrates because of their perceived competence, but also because they had
often become substantial landowners, and thus were seen as qualified in terms
of income and social respectability.19 So the proportion of the clergy who
were integrated into the life of the gentry was increasing. Conversely, the
‘relaxed and populist style’ and ‘willingness to socialize with parishioners’
which, according to Mark Smith and Michael Snape, had often served the
Lancashire clergy well, was falling into disrepute by the last quarter of the
eighteenth century.20
Participation in the hunt cemented the relations between the Anglican
clergy and the local elite, while doing little for their relationship with the rest
of their parishioners. Accounts of notable hunts in this period often mention
the large clerical presence. For instance, Lord Spencer’s hunting diary named
twenty-one members of the field one day in 1796, among whom five were
clergymen.21 Sporting parsons frequently played a part in sporting anecdot-
age. A family history of the Sykes of Sledmere in east Yorkshire notes both the
close familial and social relations between sporting gentry and sporting par-
sons and also the tensions that could arise between them. Richard Sykes, who
19 E. J. Evans, ‘Some reasons for the growth of English rural anti-clericalism, c.1750–1830’, Past &
Present, 66, pp. 101–4.
20 Mark Smith, ‘The reception of Richard Podmore: The Church of England in Saddleworth
1700–1830’, in John Walsh, Colin Haydon, and Stephen Taylor (eds), The Church of England c.1689–c.1833:
From Toleration to Tractarianism (Cambridge 1993), p. 118; Snape, Church of England, p. 178.
21 Guy Paget, The History of the Althorp and Pytchley Hunt, 1634–1920 (London 1937), p. 65.
died in 1761, enjoyed drinking bouts with his chaplain and hunted hares with
his brother, who held the family living. Sir Mark Sykes, head of the family in
the early nineteenth century, was induced by the large amount of wine drunk
and the generally convivial atmosphere at a sporting dinner in 1803 to lay an

ill-advised wager which was accepted by one of the guests, the incumbent of a
neighbouring parish. The parson later took the squire to court when he
defaulted on payment. ‘To this action,’ the historian remarks, ‘is attributed the
intense dislike of parsons—and especially sporting parsons—which passed
with the estates from Sir Mark Sykes to his successor in the title.’22 I will
return later to the theme of anti-clericalism among the sporting gentry. (By
the middle of the nineteenth century, in fact, their complaint was more often
of the demise, or at least decline, of the old-fashioned sporting parson.) The
point here, however, is that in the years around 1800 the sporting parson was
still highly visible, and that he often had intimate relations with the gentry
(see Figure 1.1).
There was also a different kind of sporting parson, most often found in the
mountain and moorland districts of north and west or in industrial villages,
who belonged to a less affluent section of the clergy and had humbler ante-
cedents.23 Some of these clergy became notorious, but also maybe popular, by
their participation in the amusements of their parishioners. William Moreton,
incumbent from the 1790s to the 1830s of Willenhall in the Black Country, a
parish where the householders had the privilege of electing their parson, was
noted as a cock-fighter. He seems to have divided his parishioners, many of
them regarding him as a disgrace to his calling, and his original election in
1789 was subject to prolonged legal challenge; but he also had a considerable
local following, reinforced, no doubt, by such episodes as his journey to
London to plead for the lives of two parishioners who were due to be hanged.24
In the much more remote Northumberland parish of Alwinton in the eight-
eenth century, cock-fights were so much a taken-for-granted part of local life
that the parish clerk would including the times of forthcoming fights with the
notices given at the church door after morning service.25
22 J. Fairfax-Blakeborough, Sykes of Sledmere: The Record of a Sporting Family and Famous Stud
(London 1929), pp. 23–6, 48–53.
23 Raymond Carr, English Fox Hunting: A History (London 1976), p. 177.
24 Norman W. Tildesley, ‘William Moreton of Willenhall’, in M. W. Greenslade (ed.), Essays in
Staffordshire History (Stafford 1970), pp. 171–85.
25 George Jobey, ‘Cock-fighting in Northumberland and Durham during the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 5th Series, 20 (1992), p. 15.

Figure 1.1 ‘The Dinner’ by Thomas Rowlandson, 1787. Reproduced by
permission of the Yale Center for British Art.
Part of a series of prints of hunting scenes published by Rowlandson between 1786 and 1788. The
parson, who wears black, rather than the red worn by other members of the hunt, sits on the host’s
right hand. As well as being fat, as the conventions of clerical caricature at that time required, he is
apparently fully at ease among fellow hunting enthusiasts and social equals.
In fact, the old-style sporting parson never entirely died out. In histories of
hunts, even when the author laments the declining participation of the clergy,
those who continued to hunt often receive special mention. These were not
only in the less fashionable hunting counties, such as Devon or Cumberland.
Even the famous Midland hunts continued to include a clerical element,
sometimes described as ‘quite one of the old school’. Some were commended
as model paternalists like Rev Sir Valentine Knightley of the Grafton, ‘squar-
son’ (that is, both squire and parson) of Preston Capes in Northamptonshire
from 1836 to 1898: ‘As well as conducting his clerical duties in an able manner
he took the lead in his parishioners’ games, pleasures and holidays. No child
who ever knew that good man will forget the kindness received at his hands.
No man could be more respected in his generation than he was. The poor—
and the foxes—have lost their best friend.’26
26 A Melton Roughrider, Rum ’uns to follow: Memories of Seventy Years in the Shires (London 1934),
pp. 118–19. The claim that an enthusiast for fox hunting was a ‘friend’ to foxes referred to the fact that
The New Sporting World
The years around 1800 also saw the origins of the sporting press and growing
numbers of sporting events attended by large numbers of spectators, with

professionals performing. The first sporting paper, The Sporting Magazine,
was founded in 1792 and Bell’s Life in London, for long the favourite paper of
the sporting gentry, opened in 1822. In terms of numbers of events reported
in the press, the leading sport in the early nineteenth century was horse
racing, followed by cricket, pedestrianism, pugilism, and cock-fighting.27 The
favoured day for sporting events was Monday—dubbed ‘Saint Monday’, as
many working men would take the day off then, especially if an interesting
sporting event were scheduled. The pugilists were professional fighters,
including many who were Irish or Jewish; the jockeys and cricketers included
both amateurs and professionals; the pedestrians were working men who
expected to make money from their running, even if they also had other
sources of income. The cocks were trained and cared for by professionals in
the employ of the birds’ gentleman owners. Among these sports, pedestrian-
ism attracted a mainly working-class following, while the others attracted
more socially mixed audiences. In the case of pugilism, the doubts concern-
ing its legality and the fact that in some counties the magistrates did make
serious attempts to prevent fights taking place acted both as a repellent to
some and an attraction to others. It is an interesting paradox that while many
enthusiasts for the Prize Ring were thrilled by its cloak and dagger aspects,
many were also excited by its aristocratic and royal patronage, including most
notably the Prince Regent. In spite of the sport’s dubious reputation, boxers
such as the Jewish Daniel Mendoza were the supreme sporting celebrities of
the day. Betting was intrinsic to horse racing and cock-fighting, and was
widely practised by those organizing or watching events of the other three
kinds, though of course these could in principle be enjoyed as a contest by
those who came to watch rather than to make bets. As well as the gambling
and the associated drinking, which made these sports targets for moralists,
all, apart from cricket and pedestrianism, were attacked for their cruelty or
brutality.
These sports had very different subsequent histories. Cricket and horse
racing would go from strength to strength as the century progressed, although
racing went through a difficult period in the 1830s and 1840s when attempts
hunting was only possible if there was a sufficiently large population of foxes, and if farmers were thus
prevented from simply shooting as many of them as possible.
27 Adrian Harvey, The Beginnings of a Commercial Sporting Culture in Britain, 1793–1850
(Aldershot 2004), pp. 7–23.
were made in various towns to ban the races, and some of these efforts suc-
ceeded, at least for a time. Cricket on the other hand was increasingly cele-
brated as ‘the national game’. The semi-legal sport of prize fighting evolved
during the nineteenth century into the respectable sport of boxing, subject to

the Queensberry Rules, formulated in 1867. Pedestrianism succumbed in the
latter part of the century to the prestige and influence of the Amateur Athletic
Association and its prohibition, not only on gambling but on monetary
rewards of any kind. Cock-fighting fell into increasing disrepute and was
banned in 1849—though clandestine fights continued to be popular in the
latter part of the century and have continued on a much smaller scale up to
the present day.
Meanwhile the religious world was also changing. The later eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries were the era of the ‘unreformed’ Church of
England, or what one of the church’s historians has called ‘The Age of
Negligence’.28 The need for reform which became increasingly urgent in the
early nineteenth century arose from several factors. One was the very large
disparity between the wealth of the cathedrals and of some of the ‘better’ liv-
ings and the poverty of many of the parish clergy, especially in the remoter
country districts. Most notoriously there was the fact that many of the clergy
holding the ‘better’ livings were non-resident, leaving the work to be done by
a poorly paid curate—though Smith notes that these poorly paid curates often
related to the mass of their parishioners more effectively than the gentleman
incumbent could have done.29 And there was also what many of the critics
claimed was an over-relaxed view of their parochial responsibilities on the
part of those clergy who did live in their parishes.
The need for reform was increasingly recognized by those within the
Church of England, as well as by outsiders. It should, however, be added that
the critics often had a political and/or religious agenda, and clergymen who
were in fact committed to their parishioners, and carrying out their duties in
a conscientious way, were condemned because their conception of these
duties was different from that of the critics. The largest section of the clergy
was ‘orthodox’ or ‘High Church’. According to Peter Nockles,30 this meant that
they accepted the supremacy of Scripture but insisted that it be interpreted in
28 Peter Virgin, The Church in an Age of Negligence: Ecclesiastical Structure and Problems of Church
Reform 1700–1840 (Cambridge 1988).
29 Smith, ‘Podmore’, p. 119.
30 Peter Nockles, ‘Church parties in the pre- Tractarian Church of England 1759–1833: the
“Orthodox”—some problems of definition and identity’, in Walsh, Haydon, and Taylor (eds),
Toleration to Tractarianism, p. 336.
the light of the Prayer Book, Catechism, and Creeds. They ‘tended to cultivate
a practical spirituality’, nourished by the sacramental grace given through
baptism and the eucharist, rather than ‘any conversion experience or unruly
manifestations of the Holy Spirit’. They believed in the state’s duty to protect

the Established Church and its privileges. They were Tory in politics, and, far
from being ‘set apart’ from the laity, they were well integrated into the life of
their social equals, whether that were the gentry in the case of incumbents
of well-endowed country parishes, the professional class in the case of many
of the urban clergy, or the farmers and artisans in poorer rural parishes.
They were also likely to believe in a paternalist social order, in which the
clergy and other members of the local elite recognized their responsibilities
for the well-being of the whole community, including the right to enjoy cus-
tomary celebrations and recreations.
An example might be James Woodforde (1740–1803), who became famous
with the publication long after his death of the diaries kept while he was a
country parson in Somerset and Norfolk. Mark Smith has shown that
Woodforde’s preaching continually stressed ‘holiness and good works’ rather
than the ‘Justification by Faith Alone’ or the personal experience of conver-
sion demanded by Evangelicals. He thus ‘unwearyingly encouraged his
parishioners to avoid bickering and disputes, slander and ill-feeling, and to
set each other an example in forbearance, justice and fair dealing’, and ‘encom-
passing all the practice of charity according to the stations to which they were
called’—‘that virtue on which all the advantages and happiness of social life,
in a great measure depend’.31 He frequently gave his servants leave to attend
fairs and sporting events, and the men who harvested his barley in 1776 were
given beef, plum pudding, and ‘as much liquor as they could drink’.32
Woodforde was generally a patron of rather than a participant in popular
pleasures, but in 1759 he had recorded without comment that he attended a
bear-baiting in the Somerset village where his father was rector.33 Smith also
mentions John Heginbottom, perpetual curate from 1726 and 1771 of
Saddleworth on the borders of Yorkshire and Lancashire, who combined a
conscientious fulfilment of his clerical duties with fiddling at parish dances
on Sunday evenings. He provided a barrel of beer for those parishioners who
helped him gather in the harvest from his glebe.34
31 Mark Smith, ‘The Hanoverian parish: Towards a new agenda’, Past & Present, 216 (2012), p. 99.
32 Malcolmson, Recreations, pp. 20, 51, 59, 61.
33 James Woodforde, The Diary of a Country Parson 1758–1802 (World’s Classics abridged edition
1949), p. 2.
34 Smith, ‘Podmore’, p. 118.
But from the 1790s Evangelicals were in the ascendant. They were increas-
ing rapidly in numbers, mainly because of the growth of the Baptists,
Independents, and especially the Methodists. They were gaining social and
political influence, notably because of their growth among the Anglican

clergy and among upper and upper-middle-class laypeople. They preached
the necessity for an experience of conversion in which Christians made a
clear break with their former life and separated themselves from worldly
things and worldly people. As ‘serious’ Christians, they were very careful
about the right use of time. This included of course a special concern for the
proper observance of Sunday, but even on other days of the week they were
suspicious of any amusement that was merely frivolous, let alone any that
might open a path to more flagrant sins. Both the older and the newer sport-
ing worlds were increasingly in conflict with the world of religion,
2
‘Puritanic Precision and Propriety’

The Warfare between Sport and Religion
From the later eighteenth century onwards, both old and newer sports faced
an increasing volume of religious attack, reaching a high point in the 1820s
and 1830s. These attacks took the form of sermons, pamphlets, sometimes
books; attempts to change the laws through Parliament or through local
authorities, or to implement existing laws more effectively through more
interventionist magistrates. There were direct confrontations when religious
groups or individual clergymen went to sporting events in order to preach
against them or even to try to prevent them taking place. Such attempts were
sometimes violently resisted, but more often the religious critics were coun-
tered with personal abuse or by ridicule in the sporting press.
Religious critiques of sports may be categorized as humanitarian (focusing
on the cruelty or brutality of many of these sports), puritan (focusing either
on the associated drinking or on the fact that betting was intrinsic to most of
them), or Sabbatarian. (Very few of the more highly organized sporting events
took place on Sundays during the nineteenth century,1 but Sunday was of
course a favoured day for more informal sporting activity practised by those
who had been working through the week.) These critiques overlapped both
with moral objections which did not refer to any religious authority and to
more secular arguments concerning the public disorder, damage to property,
and so on associated with some sports. And all of these could overlap with
another kind of argument according to which, in the modern progressive
nineteenth century, anything ‘primitive’, ‘uncivilized’, or ‘barbarous’ was a
ridiculous anachronism.
1 Dennis Brailsford, ‘ “For the encouragement of piety and virtue and the punishing of vice, pro-
faneness and immorality”—religion and sport in eighteenth-century England’, Proceedings of the
Inaugural Conference of the British Society of Sports History (Keele 1983), pp. 30–48. The only major
exception was rowing, in which some big events were still held on Sundays in the early nineteenth
century.
The Religious Critique
Some religious writers focused on one of these types of criticism while ignor-
ing or even rejecting other lines of attack. In particular, prize- fighting,

together with those sports that were seen as inflicting cruelty on animals, was
condemned by many different sections of religious opinion, as well as by
others arguing from a secular or religiously neutral viewpoint.
Griffin argues that from about 1790 a consensus of ‘respectable’ opinion
was developing, according to which certain animal sports, notably the ple
beian pastimes of bull-baiting and throwing at cocks, together with cock-
fighting, which had a more socially mixed clientele, came to be regarded as
‘barbarous’ and ‘inhuman’.2 Her main point, however, is that such condemna-
tions were highly selective. Other animal sports, which might be regarded as
equally cruel, escaped attack. Moreover, few people addressed issues of cruelty
to animals more generally, including, for example, cruelties inflicted in the
course of work as well as play. In her analysis of publications condemning
cruelty to animals she found that books, pamphlets, and published sermons
on this theme were rare before the 1790s but increased gradually from then.
Her analysis of the periodical press suggests that such condemnation occurred
mainly in journals that were Nonconformist in religion and liberal in politics,
and in various denominational magazines. Among the latter she includes the
Methodist Magazine from which she cites a number of substantial articles
published between 1807 and 1814, as well as the Wesleyan Methodist and
Primitive Methodist magazines, which published articles on this theme in
the 1820s.3
Boxing, a sport with a very broad following, ranging from labourers to the
Prince Regent, faced condemnation for similar reasons. Thus Rev Edward
Barry, who described himself as ‘Chaplain to the Bishop of Kildare’, wrote a
pamphlet in 1789 calling for a ban on boxing, which he compared to bull-
baiting and cock-fighting, and which he condemned principally because of
the serious injuries and even deaths resulting from the sport, though he also
noted its degrading effect on the characters of those participating or watch-
ing, the associated gambling, and the fact that it encouraged ‘idleness’, ‘the
fruitful root of every vice’. This latter objection was also voiced by more secu-
lar critics of popular recreation, and I shall return to it later. However, he was
2 Griffin, Revelry, pp. 127–40. 3 Griffin, Revelry, pp. 116–19.

The Warfare between Sport and Religion 31
not opposed to sport as such, and he recommended athletics and quoits as

alternatives.4
Barry made little use of specifically religious arguments and in this respect
his tone was different from that of the Evangelical writers whose influence

was at a peak in the 1820s and 1830s, and some of whom continued for much
longer to take a largely negative view of sport. Michael Hennell has argued
that the more moderate critique of worldly amusements voiced by the gener
ation of Evangelicals born around 1760 was followed by the more thorough
going rejection by many of those in the next generation.5 John Angell James
(1785–1859), minister of Carr’s Lane Independent Church in Birmingham
from 1805 to 1859, and one of the most prominent Dissenters of his time, was
an articulate spokesman for this more extreme position. He published a great
deal touching on recreation, especially in the 1820s. James was renowned for
his opposition to the theatre, and though he recognized in principle the need
for recreation, the only ones he was prepared unequivocally to recommend
were walks in the country, visits to botanical gardens, and the reading of
works of biography and history.6
Like many of the Evangelicals of his time, James had a general preference
for those recreations enjoyed either when alone or within the domestic circle
at home. The extreme caution with which he approached most forms of
amusement was shaped by his acute awareness of the temptations to which
humanity in general and young men in particular were subject, and of the risk
that one false step could lead on inexorably to ultimate damnation. These
temptations were most seductive when young men met in crowds, especially
where they were led by ‘the sound of music, the song and the dance, alluring
the giddy and the thoughtless to its orgies’.7 He was also influenced by two
potentially conflicting concerns, both characteristic of his generation. One
was the gospel of work: ‘Business, young man, business is what you should
attend to. There is pleasure in industry. Employment is gratification.’ A young
man should be concerned with making something of his life through success
in his work. At the same time, of course, the most fundamental source of
happiness was true religion:
4 Edward Barry, A Letter on the Practice of Boxing (n.p. 1789).

5 Michael Hennell, ‘Evangelicalism and worldliness, 1770–1870’, in G. J. Cuming and Derek Baker
(eds), Popular Belief and Practice (Cambridge 1972), pp. 229–36.
6 Reid, ‘Labour, Leisure and Politics’, pp. 98–100.
7 John Angell James, Practical Sermons to Young Men (London 1851), pp. 54–5.
Here is what you want, just what you want, and all you want. RELIGION,
religion, my reader, will prove to be, if you try it, an engaging companion, a
sympathising comforter, an ever present friend, and a sure guide to the
fountain of happiness.8

He concluded:
Young men, we deny you not pleasure, but only say, let it be intellectual and
spiritual, rather than sensual, individual and private, rather than social and
public, economical rather than expensive, an occasional recreation not an
habitual pursuit, and such as shall rather fit rather than disqualify you for
the business of life.9
Betting was an intrinsic part of most of the sports of the time and it was also
condemned, often bitterly, by most Christian moralists. Francis Close
(1797–1882), the Evangelical incumbent of Cheltenham, expressed in charac-
teristically trenchant terms views that were shared much more widely. A ser-
mon of 1827 arguing that the Cheltenham races should be closed down, and
in the meantime boycotted by Christians, noted that ‘gambling is the very
essence of the amusement’. He went on to claim that it was ‘a vice which is
more pre-eminently destructive both of mind and soul, than any other which
Satan ever devised for the ruin of mankind. Every vile passion of our corrupt
nature is excited and inflamed by it; envy, malice, revenge, the lust of money,
pride, contention, cruelty, and, as we have on one occasion known, murder!’10
(The latter was presumably a reference to the most notorious crime of the
1820s, in which John Thurtell, a minor celebrity of the boxing world, mur-
dered a professional gambler who, he believed, had cheated him.) Close had
taken as his text Revelation 18.4, ‘come out of her, my people’, and his call for
a boycott of the races was one example of the wider principle that Christians
should separate themselves from the sinful world and find their rest and
recreation in ‘the lovely solitude of nature’.11
Clergymen condemned popular amusements in sermons, sometimes, it
seems, to good effect, as the Cheltenham races were indeed stopped in 1831,
though they resumed in 1835.12 More long-lasting in their impact were the
8 John Angell James, The Young Man from Home (New York n.d.), pp. 130–1.
9 James, Sermons, p. 39.
10 Francis Close, The Evil Consequences of attending the Races exposed (London 1827), p. 9.
11 Close, The Evil Consequences, pp. 11, 14.
12 Nigel Scotland, Evangelical Anglicans in a Revolutionary Age, 1789–1901 (Carlisle 2004), p. 224.
efforts of Henry Moule, incumbent of Fordington. He is best-known for the

fact that one of his sons was a friend of Thomas Hardy and members of the
family were said to have inspired characters in Hardy’s novels, but he was
‘instrumental’ in putting an end to the Dorchester races in 1833.13 Clergymen

also used their powers as magistrates to stop prize-fights and bull-baitings.
Sometimes clergymen or zealous laypeople intervened more directly, often at
personal risk. At Eccleshall in Staffordshire in the 1830s the Rev Henry Moore
rushed into the bullring and loosed the bull, shouting ‘I am going to put a
stop to this cruelty.’ He was surrounded by what was described as ‘a crowd of
roughs’, who tore off his gown—though he escaped more lightly than the
inspector of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals who died
from injuries suffered while trying to stop a cock- fight at Hanworth
(Middlesex) in 1838.14
The clergy were also to the fore in many of the campaigns to suppress other
traditional sports, such as the Derby Shrovetide football, which could not be
regarded as cruel. A Derby Mercury editorial in 1845 welcomed the fact that a
Requisition to the Mayor demanding suppression of the game had been
signed by ‘a large number of persons, including the clergy, dissenting minis-
ters, bankers, merchants, manufacturers, tradesmen and working people’. The
editor added his own voice to the calls to ‘do away with a custom which every
respectable resident must admit casts great discredit on the borough’.15 The
clergy were part of a broad coalition, driven, as Anthony Delves notes, by
diverse and even contradictory considerations. These included the damage to
the town’s economy by the suspension of work for two days; the damage to
property during the playing of the game; a fear on the part of many well-to-do
residents of large crowds and threats to public order at a time of severe social
tensions; a belief by many radical artisans that the football was a primitive
and undignified form of recreation, and that workers should instead be edu-
cating themselves and joining trade unions; and disapproval of the drinking,
sexual promiscuity, and crime said to accompany the annual event.
While some of these objections were shared by most of the town’s middle
class and some of the working class, regardless of differences of religion or
politics, Delves sees objections of the last-mentioned kind as being especially
voiced by Evangelicals who, he says, ‘were to be found at the centre of most of
13 Arthur Pollard, ‘Henry Moule’ in Donald M. Lewis (ed.), Blackwell Dictionary of Evangelical
Biography (2 vols, Oxford 1995), II, pp. 799–800.
14 Bushaway, By Rite, p. 249; Brian Harrison, ‘Religion and recreation in nineteenth-century
England’, Past & Present 38 (1967), pp. 118–19.
15 Derby Mercury, 1 January 1845.
the debates about recreation in this period, especially those concerning the
working class’.16 They were probably the targets of a letter to the Mercury in
1815, which argued that ‘innocent sports and amusements should be encour-
aged in a free community’ and concluded with a hit at ‘the zealots of every

denomination’, who ought to be showing the ‘forbearance and generosity of
spirit which are exhibited by the Derby Foot Ball players’.17 Delves notes that
while defenders as well as players of the game were mainly working class it
also had its middle-class supporters—most notably the leading industrialist,
Joseph Strutt, who died shortly before the suppression. The defenders were
apt to stress custom, tradition,18 and the fact that the game had been played
‘from time immemorial’.19 On the other hand, the critics all saw themselves as
being on the side of progress—although they had radically different visions of
the future towards which the nineteenth century was progressing. This
applied not least to the Evangelicals, in whose eyes the middle decades of the
nineteenth century were a time when a multitude of moral and social evils
were at last being cleared away.
Among the Evangelicals, the most militant in their opposition to many
aspects of contemporary popular culture were Methodists. In Cornwall where
the Wesleyans and Bible Christians were the dominant branches of the move-
ment, John Rule notes the change of tone around the end of the eighteenth
century in the religious critiques of popular recreations. Anglican clergymen
had attacked the cruelty of some sports and sought to control the drunken-
ness associated with most festivities. But ‘the Methodists went further: their
puritanical distrust of enjoyment led them to regard secular amusement as
inherently sinful’ and they also had ‘a rigid abhorrence of idleness’. He cites a
letter to a local paper in 1829 which presented eight reasons for not attending
wrestling matches: ‘Because I can employ my time better. Because it is throw-
ing my money away. Because I wish not to be seen in bad company. Because I
would not encourage idleness, folly and vice. Because I should set a bad
example. Because God has forbidden it. “Abstain from all appearance of
evil” . . . Because I must soon die.’20
None were more militant in their opposition to most popular recreations
than the strongly working- class Primitive Methodists. After holding an
unauthorized camp meeting at Mow Cop on the borders of Cheshire and
16 Delves, ‘Derby’, p. 107. 17 Derby Mercury, 9 February 1815.

18 Delves, ‘Derby’, p. 92. 19 Derby Mercury, 28 February 1827.
20 John Rule, ‘Methodism, popular beliefs and village culture in Cornwall, 1800–50’, in
Robert D. Storch, Popular Culture and Custom in Nineteenth- Century England (London 1982),
pp. 52, 55.
Staffordshire in 1807, the leaders of the new movement had been expelled
from the main body of Wesleyan Methodists. They joined with another small
breakaway group, the Magic Methodists, and in 1812 they established a for-
mal organization with the name of Primitive Methodists. From their original

base in north Staffordshire they spread rapidly across the Midlands, winning
converts by open-air preaching. They also staged camp-meetings and love-
feasts to coincide with and provide an alternative to wakes and race meetings.21
In 1818, according to Scott Phillips, when the Primitives held a camp-meeting
to counter the wake at Seagrave, ‘two crowds assembled in view of each other.
On one hand the wake crowd enjoyed a game of cricket; and on the other, the
camp meeting people praised God and implored sinners to seek salvation.’22
For the early Primitive Methodists, many of whom had experienced a sudden
conversion, rejection of sport became a tangible symbol of their new way of
life. When they preached at the Darlaston wake in 1832, ‘One who was pre-
sent was so affected that he cut off a cock’s head which he had trained for
fighting and drowned a bulldog he had trained for baiting.’23 When one of
their leaders, William Clowes, had been converted in 1805 and ceased living
‘according to the course of the world’, he abandoned not only fighting, gam-
bling, and drinking but also running races. Robert Colls highlights the
readiness of Primitive Methodists to ‘stand alone’. They separated themselves
from common pleasures and refused conventional deference, confronting
when necessary both their former companions and powerful social superiors,
such as the coal-owner, Lord Londonderry. Citing articles in the Primitive
Methodist Magazine from 1823 to 1853, Colls mentions converts who gave up
cricket, football, or bowling, as well as those who more predictably abandoned
cards, pitch and toss, and strong drink.24
There are parallels here with south Wales in 1904 and 1905. The great
revival came at a time when rugby had become immensely popular, especially
among working-class youths and young men and the Welsh national team
was winning brilliant victories. Evan Roberts, the leading revival preacher,
never directly attacked rugby or any other sport, but he did suggest that even
apparently harmless activities should be given up if they got in the way of
complete surrender to God. ‘A striking feature of the 1904–5 revival in Wales,’
21 Michael R. Watts, The Dissenters (3 vols, Oxford 1978–2015), II, pp. 142–3.
22 Scott Kershaw Phillips, ‘Primitive Methodist confrontation with popular sports: Case study of
early nineteenth-century Staffordshire’, in Richard Cashman and Michael McKirnan (eds), Sport,
Morality and the Media (Kensington NSW 1981), p. 295.
23 Phillips, ‘Confrontation’, p. 299.
24 Robert Colls, This Sporting Life: Sport and Liberty in England, 1760–1960 (Oxford 2020),
pp. 151–4.
writes Gareth Morgan, ‘was the readiness with which pleasurable pursuits
were abandoned. . . . Rugby football was badly affected, with several village
teams disbanded because their members had all been converted. . . . Supporters
now ostentatiously tore up season tickets, buried jerseys and footballs, and

preached against the game’s sinful associations.’25
There was the additional issue of whether a stricter standard was required
of the clergy, and whether they should deny themselves pleasures which were
legitimate for those in their congregations. In the early decades of the nine-
teenth century even a sport like cricket, which few people saw as bad in itself,
was often seen as incompatible with the dignity and sacred character of the
Christian ministry. Thus J. C. Ryle, later bishop of Liverpool, was an outstand-
ing cricketer at Oxford but never played again after his ordination in 1841,
though he retained an interest in the game.26 In 1860 the Evangelical Bishop
of Rochester, noting the case of the ‘younger brother in the ministry, vigor-
ous, athletic, rejoicing in his bodily power . . . and in aptitude for games and
diversion’, who joined a cricket or archery club, ‘perhaps that he may herein
find an opportunity for influencing other young men for good’, warned the
clergy of his diocese against joining cricket and archery clubs. These may have
seemed harmless, but ‘Surely there is an apostolical category of things, though
lawful, not expedient for a minister of Christ, and we may well include in it
whatever operates as a stumbling block to weak brethren, or tends to obscure
the difference between true religion and the system of the world.’ And while
cricket and archery were not bad in themselves, he added that ‘the case of
course is infinitely worse’ when clergymen went to the theatre or the opera or
engaged in hunting and shooting.27
From the 1830s the puritanism of the Evangelicals was reinforced by the
sacerdotal concerns of the Tractarians or ‘Puseyites’. These Oxford Apostles,
though less puritanical, were even more insistent on the separation of the
priest from the secular world. Samuel Wilberforce, the High Church bishop
of Oxford from 1845 to 1869, was trying to stop his clergy hunting or playing
cricket. As Diana McClatchey comments, ‘For him vocation to the priesthood
carried with it a peculiar stamp of apartness.’ In 1846 candidates for
25 Gareth Morgan, ‘Rugby and revivalism: Sport and religion in Edwardian Wales’, International
Journal of the History of Sport [IJHS], 22 (2005), pp. 431, 439. See also Dominic Erdozain, ‘Revival as
cultural spotlight: The strange case of rugby football and the Welsh Revival of 1904–5’, in Kate Cooper
and Jeremy Gregory (eds), Revival and Resurgence in Christian History (Woodbridge 2008),
pp. 275–85.
26 Peter Toon and Michael Smouth, John Clarke Ryle, Evangelical Bishop (Cambridge 1976), p. 22.
27 Joseph Cotton Wigram, A Charge delivered at his Primary Visitation in November 1860 (London
1860), pp. 22–3.
Another random document with
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At first, when the girl spoke to him in her frank fashion about his
home, and asked him if this and the other in her own were like it,
Mark hesitated, and scarcely knew what to say, whilst his face
flushed painfully. How could this dainty maiden realise the difference
between her parents beautiful house and its surroundings and the
cottage he called home! So he turned the talk from furniture to
flowers, and being great on this subject, he delighted and instructed
Dolly by telling her about those she loved, and such as grew in his
father's garden.
As time went on, Mark, after thinking over the matter, decided to tell
this girl friend the exact story of his past life, and to describe, with the
utmost minuteness, the cottage home and its contents, as well as
the narrow circle in which his parents were satisfied to move.
Dolly listened attentively, picturing the while all that Mark was taking
such pains to make clear to her. She could guess, too, what it cost
him; but when he finished she bravely looked in his face and said—
"When people have lived so long in one way they cannot change,
Mark, can they? They are like old trees—if you try to take them up
and plant them somewhere else, the roots cling, and there is no
moving them without breaking some. If people choose to live in a
little house and wait on themselves, instead of in a big one and be
waited on by other people, it is their own business, and nobody has
a right to find fault. One working bee is worth a lot of drones, is he
not? Any way, if your mother has no servants, she has not them to
grumble about all the time she is out calling, as my mamma's visitors
do. I do get tired of hearing them, when I am dressed up and sitting
in the drawing-room sometimes, and I wish they would talk of
something else. So does mamma. I mean to learn how to do
everything, and then when I am grown-up, and have a house and
servants, I shall be able to tell them what they do not know."
Mark agreed with the wisdom of this resolution; then he said:
"You must not think we are without anything that is really necessary.
We have good food, beautifully cooked, and clothes, only they have
to be taken great care of. I know my parents are very fond of me;
only somehow, I have never been a boy like other boys. I never ran,
and jumped, and raced, and got into scrapes, and tore my clothes, or
got sent off to bed, as the neighbours' lads did. I think I was born
rather old."
Dorothy laughed at this, and Mark joined her, then added that he had
been growing younger every day since he came to Claybury, and it
was all through Mr. and Mrs. Mitcheson and herself.
"But you work fearfully hard, Fred says."
"Because I want to get one scholarship at least—two if possible. I

cannot live at Grimblethorpe always, and unless I can give a very
good reason for doing so, my father will insist on my going home,
and working as he does. He calls it 'keeping in the old rut.' If I had
known no different life, I might have done it, but not now."
Months grew into years. Mark Walthew laboured incessantly at his

studies. Daniel would have been more or less than human if he had
not been proud of the place won by his son, of the reports which
came at each term's end, and the prizes he carried off. Mrs.
Walthew's glad tears ran down her cheeks, and even her husband
had to turn his back upon her, that she might not see why his
spectacles needed so much polishing before he could read what
"schoolmaster had written about Mark."
The boy was no country lout or awkward bookworm to look at, but
was growing into a fine youth, whose manners would disgrace no
society. His mother's training had given him right habits to begin with,
and under Mr. Mitcheson's roof he had learnt those practised by
persons in a higher position. Frank, yet modest, simple but refined,
sincere without forwardness, and with a mind richly stored for one so
young, Mark Walthew was indeed a son on whom a father might
have rejoiced to bestow all the advantages money could give.
But all the while Mr. Walthew was saying, "Barbara, this is Mark's
last term. In July, he will come home to stay."
She, with a sinking of the heart, could only answer, "Yes; he will have
had the three years you promised him," and hope for a solution as to
future difficulties which she could foresee, though her husband could
not. Whilst he, nevertheless, confessed that he was not altogether
easy in his mind as to what all this learning would lead to.
CHAPTER IV.
A NEW FACE.
CLAYBURY SCHOOL was richly endowed, and had many valuable

scholarships open to candidates born within a certain radius of its
walls. It had been Mark Walthew's desire to win one of these,
believing that if he succeeded his father would consent to his
continuing his studies after the allotted three years.
His success exceeded his most sanguine hopes. He won two of the
best, and even without further help from Mr. Walthew, might work on
for three more years, and, he trusted, win further distinctions.
"Scholarships!" said old Daniel, when informed of Mark's success.

"Hasn't he been getting scholarships these last three years? He went
for learning, and he should have put some by for future use by this
time. I don't know what you mean by two scholarships. I always
lumped the whole concern, and called it learning. Well, if he has got
a double dose, so much the better; I reckon it will last longer. And
when he is settled down at home, he will have plenty to serve him
his lifetime."
Then came the struggle. Mark bared his heart, and told his hopes to
his father, and was answered by a torrent of reproaches—told that
he wanted to set up for a fine gentleman, instead of keeping to the
old rut, and doing the work his father had been proud to do well.
This story begins with some of the words used by the wrathful old
man; many others, far more bitter and cruel, sank deep into Mark's
memory, and grieved him to the heart, but they need not be repeated
here.
"If," said Mr. Walthew, "you are resolved to turn your back on home,
and choose a new road for yourself, go, and never darken my doors
again. But if you think of being kept in idleness by the old father's
money, you will find your mistake out; I will never leave you a penny!
You choose now—once and for all!"
"Then I must choose to go, father," said Mark. "God has given me
some talents to account for, and I must use them. I will never ask
you for money; but some day I hope I shall hear you say I have
chosen wisely. If you are not now proud of my success—and, oh, I
had so counted on hearing you and mother say, 'Well done, Mark!'—
you shall not be ashamed of me in after years."
"I am proud of you, Mark," cried Mrs. Walthew, "so proud that I would
not have you stay and be tied down from youth to age, to such a life
as we have led! We are too old to change; but for you it would be a
living death. Go, my son, my one darling, if so be you can choose,
and have no fear of want before your eyes. I have been twenty-eight
years always going the same daily round, without change in
anything, except the growing older. Talk of money! What is it worth if
it never gives a day's brightness, and the only pleasure the owner
has is the being able to say, 'I have so many thousands of pounds,
or hundreds of acres'?"
"Listen, my boy. It is terrible for a wife to take the opposite side to her
husband, but I could not bear to think of your growing into a man like
your father. Not that he is dishonest! To gain a hundred pounds, he
would not take a penny wrongfully, or refuse to pay what is fairly due.
He has only robbed himself and me of everything that money could
have bought in the way of happiness for ourselves, or enabled us to
give it to other people. Those who have wealth, and neither the heart
to spend nor give of their abundance, are the poorest of the poor.
You may be blessedly rich with very little money."
Need it be said that Daniel Walthew was not present when his wife
spoke these words to her son? They cheered Mark, for they told him
that his mother's blessing would be on his head, his mother's prayers
ever offered on his behalf. And both hoped that in time the father's
views might change. How could he stand singly against the world?
The world meant Claybury and the country round, for naturally
Mark's success had made his friends proud of him—none more so
than the Mitchesons, and most of all his friend Dolly. Many a time the
true-hearted girl had cheered the boy on, until her own brothers used
to say that the adopted one took the first place of all in her thoughts,
and had more than an eighth share thereof.
Mr. Mitcheson tried to move Mr. Walthew from his resolve, but in
vain. The headmaster of the school used his influence, and spoke in
such terms of Mark's talents and industry, that any other man would
have been delighted beyond measure to call him son.
Not so Daniel Walthew. "I don't hold with learning that takes a man
out of his proper spear, and makes him ashamed of the honest work
his father does," said he, and refused to hear any argument on the
other side, or to speak again on the subject.
So the cottage door closed behind Mark Walthew, and all the articles
purchased for his use went with him. The old man would not suffer a
scrap belonging to him to remain, and the goodly pile of handsome
books which had brightened the dingy parlour no longer lay on its
table, to tell of the boy's school victories.
Daniel Walthew neither spoke of Mark nor allowed any other person
to mention his name.
In his heart he must have felt for the sorrow of his faithful wife, for he
did not hinder her from receiving letters; and he knew that the tidings
they brought must be good by the glad light on her face, though
tears often accompanied it—tears because her husband did not
share her joy.
Mr. Mitcheson still transacted Daniel's legal business, found new

investments for his hoards, and made out deeds when some fresh
purchase was completed. But he felt equal pity and indignation at the
sight of his self-willed client, and his inability to value the good gift
bestowed on him in the shape of his talented and worthy son.
Years passed on. Mark did wonders, and his friends rejoiced that his
career had more than fulfilled their most sanguine expectations.
He was at Claybury, the honoured guest of the headmaster of the old

school, and his name was mentioned in the columns of the principal
local papers. Copies of these came to Mrs. Walthew, who, entering
the kitchen gently, found her husband eagerly reading the
paragraphs relating to his boy.
At sight of her, he angrily thrust the paper between the bars and saw
it burn to ashes. But his wife had caught the expression on his face
as he read, and thanked God for this, as for a ray of light and hope.
"He is not so hard as he seems," she said to herself. And this she
not only thought, but told her son in a letter, written in a cramped
hand and imperfectly spelled, but which the youth kissed—soft-
hearted fellow that he was—because it came from that dear
unselfish mother whom he had only seen very rarely for seven long
years.
He was turned four-and-twenty, tall, straight, and healthy, despite

hard brain work, for he had lived temperately, taken outdoor
exercises, and not "burned the candle at both ends."
There was a fair face that lighted at his coming—a warm, loving
heart that did not try to hide its gladness, when, at an evening
gathering at the headmaster's house, in honour of his old pupil, Dolly
Mitcheson's hand was clasped in that of Mark Walthew.
Dorothy was twenty-two now, and for years past she and Mark had
known that each held the first place in the other's heart. Friends—
adopted brother and sister!—these might be and were sweet
relationships; but that which subsisted now was nearer and dearer
still.
Dolly had been wooed by wealthy suitors. Mark's father would never
break his word, so that he had only himself to rely upon; but she
knew that a time would come when her lover would be able to claim
his bride, and offer a home of his own winning. And Mark knew that
wealth had sought in vain for Dorothy's regard, and that she would
wait, no matter how long, for her one love.
"There is one chance as to old Daniel," said Mr. Mitcheson to his

wife. "He will hate to go to any other lawyer; it would be stepping out
of his rut. He may not make a will at all. He has said he will leave
nothing to Mark. Let him die intestate, and the lad will get the money,
and the old man keep his word."
The same thought had passed through Mrs. Walthew's mind; and, if
truth may be told, through that of Daniel also.
Before Mark left Claybury, he paid a brief visit to Grimblethorpe, and

saw his mother; not in the cottage—never would he cross its
threshold without his father's leave—but in a field-path, between the
waving corn, they walked and talked together, whilst Daniel Walthew
kept a business appointment with Mr. Mitcheson at Claybury.
The mother fed on that happy meeting for many a day—looking back
on it, and forward to the next.
Winter came, and sturdy old Daniel, who had never known a day's
illness before, was attacked by severe bronchitis, and confined, not
only to house, but to bed for many weeks. It would have been going
out of the regular rut to have outside help; so Barbara toiled and
watched, and nursed him tenderly, getting often hard words and
never thanks—for Daniel was a most impatient patient. It was only
when he was fairly well again, and grumbling over his sadly-
neglected plots, that Barbara's strength gave way. She was simply
worn out with loss of rest and overwork. She had been as hale as
Daniel; as independent of doctors and their physic; but now a great
dread fell upon her husband. What if his wife were to die? He had
always made sure she would outlive him, and counted on her careful
nursing to the last.
Who was to nurse her? They had kept themselves to themselves.

They had no neighbours in the ordinary sense, and were unused to
asking favours of anyone.
Worse still, Daniel must go to Claybury on the very day that Barbara
broke down, as deeds had to be signed, and the other party to them
would come a long way to meet him.
Barbara suggested the name of an elderly woman who would bear

her company during his absence, and she further said, "There are
nurses at Claybury. Ask Mr. Mitcheson to give you the name of one."
The lawyer felt sorry to see the trouble of his stout old client, despite
his stubbornness and unreasonable treatment of Mark, and called
Mrs. Mitcheson into consultation about finding a nurse for Mrs.
Walthew.
"I think I can find one," she said. "I will do my best, for I am grieved
to hear of Mrs. Walthew's illness. No doubt she has broken down
through overwork and anxiety."
When Daniel Walthew was ready to return, the nurse was

forthcoming. She was young, and pleasant to look upon, but such a
picture of neatness! No frizzled hair or finery, but smooth braids
under a cottage bonnet, whilst wholesome-looking prints, ample
aprons, and snug caps, with stout serviceable boots for outside, and
noiseless slippers for indoor wear, composed her visible wardrobe.
How deft she was in her movements! How tender in her manner
towards the poor invalid! How clever in preparing little things to tempt
her appetite, and how patient and considerate to Daniel himself!
The old man saw his wife's face become more hopeful-looking, and
in time overspread with a faint colour. He noted that her spirits
improved, and that this young presence had a cheering effect on
himself, for the nurse told bright tales, and as her patient gained
strength, went singing about the cottage in a voice that sounded
wondrously sweet, when compared with anything he had ever heard.
Barbara and her young nurse had always plenty to talk about, but
sometimes they stopped suddenly when Daniel came in. He noticed,
too, that she had very pretty ways, and what he called "lady hands,"
and yet how clever they were at whatever they attempted!
Barbara went on improving to a certain point, and then stopped. The

doctor was puzzled, and said so. Day after day passed, and no
progress was made. Then she began to go back a little. In mortal
dread, Daniel consulted the nurse, who calmly answered, "Mrs.
Walthew wants a medicine which only you can give her. She wants
her son's arms round her neck, and the sight of his face."
An angry exclamation fell from Daniel's lips, and he left the cottage
for a time. When he returned the nurse was standing with her
outdoor garments on and her box packed ready to depart, as it was
the carrier's day for Claybury.
"You will not leave her!" he cried, aghast at the sight and at the tears
of his wife.
"I would not, if I could do more for her, but I cannot stay to see her
die when it is in your power to save her. If Mrs. Walthew dies, the
blame will be on your head."
The nurse looked fearlessly at Daniel, who turned from her to his
wife as these plain words fell on his ears.
"Have your will," he said. "She must be saved. It is human nature for
a mother to want her only son."
Joyfully the nurse prepared a telegram, and ran with it to the post-
office, Daniel watching the while beside his wife. Not many hours
later Mark stood by his mother, and that too by his father's wish, and
from that moment Mrs. Walthew began to mend.
"I may have been wrong in keeping in one rut all my life, and keeping
other people at a distance," said old Daniel. "Nurse Dora has taught
me a good many lessons in a few weeks, more than I had learned in
seventy years before. I don't know how we shall do without her, and
she will have to leave us soon, she says. Here is Mark, far and away
happier without money than mine has ever made me. That is a good
thing. For I have said I will not leave him any, and I will not break my
word."
"Do not make a will at all," said Nurse Dora.
"But I shall, my dear," said the old man, his eyes twinkling with a
knowing expression, such as Mark had never seen in them before. "I
shall make a will, that I may leave you a legacy. And there is no need
to trouble for a way out of the difficulty. I never said I would not give
Mark anything. I am free to do that, and I am not sure but what there
is more pleasure in giving than leaving, for you can see the fruits of
one, and not the other."
"Ah, Miss Dorothy," he continued, "the old man is not quite so blind
as you thought! You have not come to speak to me of late years, but
you have some of the child's face left yet, and you favour your
mother. And my ears have caught old words now and then, and I
know how good and true a heart my lad has won, and what a clever
housewife and nurse can be joined to a born lady. You have won old
Daniel as well as young Mark, and all I can say is, 'May God bless
you both, and forgive me!'"
Is it worth while to add another word? To tell how Dolly Mitcheson's

wise resolve, "to learn everything," brought good fruit, or to speak of
the way in which Daniel opened his purse as well as his heart, or of
the renewed health of Mrs. Walthew, the changed cottage, the
abandoned rut, the perfect union between the faithful young pair
when they twain became one, or of the manner in which Daniel kept
his word?
He gave a handsome sum to Mark, and that, too, before his

marriage; and when he and Barbara have done with the rest, it will
go to "Nurse Dora," as old Daniel delights to call his daughter-in-law.
No fear that this bequest will disturb the true union between Mark
and his wife, despite the power put into her capable hands by the
Married Women's Property Act!
Dorothy tells her husband in confidence, that however proud she

may be of him, his devoted love and his great attainments, the
conquest on which she plumes herself most of all is her victory over
old Daniel's prejudices, and on having coaxed him out of the narrow
path to which he had restricted himself for threescore years and ten.
THE END.
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay.

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Religion and The Rise of Sport in England David Hugh Mcleod Full Chapter PDF

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Religion and the Rise of Sport in

England David Hugh Mcleod

Charles I and the People of England David Cressy

Corporate spirit: religion and the rise of the modern

Joseph Butler: The Analogy of Religion David Mcnaughton

Intense Group Behavior and Brand Negativity: Comparing

Experiencing God in Late Medieval and Early Modern

An Effective Strategy for Safe Design in Engineering

The psychology of perfectionism in sport, dance and

The Dao of Madness: Mental Illness and Self-Cultivation

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Subject: Religious Studies

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,

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It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,

and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of

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© Hugh McLeod 2022

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First Edition published in 2022

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a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the

prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted

by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

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Printed and bound in the UK by

Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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Subject: Religious Studies

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Sport and Religion in Modern England: An Overview

The development of modern sport in England may be roughly divided into

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Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/44526/chapter/376524090 by University of Birmingham user on 10 September 2023

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the possibilities opened up by the televising of sporting events.4 Some key

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The Historical Debate

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with ‘the caricatured bodies of lower-­class, Irish and non-­European men’.8

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8 Donald E. Hall, ‘Introduction’, in Hall (ed.), Muscular Christianity, p. 6.

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11 Bailey, Leisure and Class, pp. 106–19.

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16 Reid, ‘Labour, Leisure and Politics’, pp. 132–5.

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to use Baker’s terminology,25 has never been quite as tight in England as in

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with ‘the caricatured bodies of lower-class, Irish and non-European men’.8

efforts of Henry Moule, incumbent of Fordington. He is best-known for the