ordinarily upon their feet again ere one can say 'He's down.' The Violets have brought the ball down to their adversaries' goal-line; but the goal-keeper receives it, and his well-directed toe sends it far out into the debateable land again. Then it is kicked away to the side, where it goes out at the bounds; and when it is brought in again a bully like that at the commencement is formed, and the struggle is repeated, till one side gives way, or goes down. The object of each side is to get a rouge. A rouge is obtained when the ball is kicked over the goal-line, and touched down by a player who is on the opposing side. So as soon as the ball gets free from the bully at the side, the violets, who have it close to the goal-line, which is defended by the players in red, rush forward and kick it over. Then a race ensues; two players are abreast. At every second or third stride one tilts at the other in the hope of overturning, and thus outrunning him, and being first to touch it down. But the fleet-footed goal-keeper passes both while they are making these experiments, and having taken up the ball, brings it to the goal-line, and kicks it back into the middle of the field. All the players are after it again, and it is at the goal-line almost immediately. A fleet runner has all the play to himself this time, and keeps the ball continually before his own toe, making a circuitous path to the goal-line, where he kicks it over, and touches it down; but the umpire will not allow a rouge, as he was not bullied while kicking it; that is, he was not run at or interrupted by any of the opposing players whom he outran. So once more it has to be kicked by the goal-keeper out into the field; and this time it is got away to the goalline at the opposite end, and after a sharp struggle it is driven across the line, and a rouge is obtained by the Reds; for while it was still bounding, a player on that side, who took care not to be behind the goal-line when the ball was kicked there, ran forward, and having charged the goal-keeper so success fully as to leave him on the grass, touched it down. Upon this all the spectators come round to this goal, for the bully that follows a touch down' is always a protracted and interesting spectacle. The ball is brought by the umpire, and placed one yard in front of the centre of the space marked out by the goal-sticks, and which it is the province of the players in violet to defend. The players in red face their opponents' goal, from which they are only a yard distant. The strongest among them, with his toe against the ball, occupies the first place; the others form a semicircle, the entire eleven composing it, and the whole being wedged together as compactly as possible. The players on the other side form a similar semicircle between the ball and the goal. The two semicircles close up with the ball between. Each side tries its best to overthrow the other players, one to push the ball beyond the level of the goal-sticks, and thus win the game, the other to force the ball back into the field. The struggle is a mighty one, and long continued without advantage to either side. The beads of perspiration gather on the foreheads of the players, caps are thrown off, words are but seldom spoken. Every muscle is strained in the effort to heave the opponents over. The backs are bent down, and originally the players' hands are upon their knees; but as the contest goes on they, of necessity, get moved and intertwined. The shoulders of the foremost men of each party touch, and those behind on each side lend their weight and strength. The ball is firmly wedged in among the feet in the centre of this heaving, struggling mass. Spectators move round and round, and watch with bated breaths till one side shows signs of 'giving.' This is the signal to the other for a renewed effort-' a long push, and a strong push, and a push all together;' for, as in the opening bully, the power being nicely balanced, any accident or little loss of position, if taken advantage of, will be sure to turn the scale. Such a moment al ways comes; the extra vigour is always manifested. Sometimes the ball is borne through the goal space amid triumphant cheering, sometimes back into the field; but it more frequently happens that the weaker side giving way goes down en masse, the others falling with them. Then the struggle continues on the ground. Players endeavour to crawl in or out with the ball, according to their party. Some players creep out of the writhing heap utterly exhausted; but after a minute's rest they are down again, and the struggle goes on till one side gives way, and all the players rise, declare it was very jolly,' and look as if they thought so too. Such was the end of the rouge obtained so suddenly by the Reds; but they will, if no goals and no other rouges are obtained, be the winners at the termination of the one hour for which the game at Eton lasts. It is a capital plan to count these touches down.' Goals are proverbially difficult to get, according to all the systems. Sometimes at Rugby play will last for two or three hours on as many consecutive days without either side obtaining a goal, and be drawn at last; but this would not be the case if touches down counted everywhere as they do at Eton. A few minutes pass in inaction after one of these struggles at Eton, but the ball is soon rolling again, and another rouge is being fought for; or it is kicked over the heads of the spectators at the side, and brought just within the line where a new bully is formed, and the old fight is fought over again. St. Andrew's is one of the grand football days at Eton, when there are matches at the Wall' and in the Field,' and when the collegians who have left Eton for Cambridge and Oxford return to their old playplace for a match at their favourite pastime. CHAPTER III. FOOTBALL AT HARROW. Looking down the London side of the hill at Harrow on to the level meadows below, late in the autumn, while the leaves, yellow as buttercups in the soft sunlight, were still upon the elm trees, I saw a pretty semi-rural scene. Farm labourers were ploughing in adjacent fields, cattle and sheep were grazing in others. In the school grounds some two hundred boys were racing after the football, and beyond was London under a canopy of black smoke. Half hidden by the trees at my back was the church, and around me the schoolhouses. What charming memories attach to these schools, which have been the dwelling-places of men to whose words the world has since listened! I cannot refuse the invitation to enter the Fourth Form School, to look again at the seat which Byron occupied when he first indulged his taste for poetic composition. How intimately his name is associated with the school! What Harrovian does not know the spot in the churchyard he loved so much, where, in his own words, he used 'to sit for hours and hours when a boy,' and where he once hoped to have been buried, as his daughter was? I never asked one who could not point out the spot, and was not ready to recite those four melancholy verses, 'On revisiting Harrow.' There, too, are to be seen, cut by their own hands, the poet's name, and R. Peel,' and ́ H. Temple,' and many another since famous in the world's history. I am glad that the Harrovians honour these marks of men who have lived there, and that they have taken means to prevent their being erased to make room for others, as it is the customary fate of names written on school desks, famous trees, and ancient ruins to be. How often Sir Robert Peel and Viscount Palmerston must have run up and down this steep hillside! Were they football players? I have never heard that the Prime Minister distinguished himself in kicking the ball; but we all know that it is narrated by an historian that a certain Archbishop of Canterbury was considered to have been highly complimented when it was stated that he was a learned prelate and an excellent player at football. Is there at this moment among those boys intent only upon the way the ball goes a future laureate, a Palmerston, or a Peel? What are the destinies awaiting them? The disappointments through which they will have to struggle, the difficulties that will beset them, and how will they all die? These questions always intrude themselves upon my attention when I look from the hill at Harrow down upon the playground, and see the two or three hundred happy scholars, and hear their laughter and cheers. I have known many people who, at the sight of numbers of young people, could not avoid similar speculations. They vanish when I get to the playground and mingle with the players. Who could look at their glowing faces, radiant with goodhumoured excitement, and think of difficulties they would not surmount as they did those of the game, or of death, with such unlimited health and strength, youth, and manly beauty around? The Harrow football is simpler than that of Eton, and much more so than the Rugby game. It has not half the diversity of either. There are neither scrummages nor bullies. What are called the goals at the other schools are here denominated 'Bases.' They are twelve feet wide. There is no cross-bar, and the ball may be kicked to any height, so that it is clearly within the space marked out. The ground is one hundred and fifty yards long and one hundred yards broad. The games begin at 215, and continue till 3:45. Only bases count, and the sides obtaining most of these win. The matches between the Harrovians and past members of the school from the universities are great contests. Before the game begins each captain places one of his best men at the base; umpires are appointed on each side, and they follow the game, and have to see that every player keeps on his right side, and to prevent any one kicking the ball who has infringed the rule on this sub ject. The game begins by a player kicking the ball off from the centre. I have seen it driven with the aid of the wind nearly the whole of the seventy-six yards between that point and the base. All is running and kicking in the Harrow game. Shinning and tripping up are forbidden. When the ball is driven out at the side lines it is promptly kicked in again. When kicked into the air it may be caught; and if the player cries Three yards,' all the others must clear away from him, and allow him to have a free kick at it. When near the bases this is very valuable; and a good player generally makes a base from it. The effect of the rule is to keep the ball as much as possible on the ground. If a catch is made so near to an opponent's base that the player who makes it can jump the distance, he is allowed to do so. But this is of very rare occurrence; and the game at Harrow is only to be won by a true kick, which sends the ball flying between the posts. There is less violence and less variety in this than in either of the other games; but, played as the Harrovians play it, it is a charming game for the winter months, when cricket is out of the question, when rowing has not the charm it has in spring and summer, and when, in brief, almost all other English openair pastimes are rendered impossible by our climate. During the present season football has again become popular. It is becoming familiar to all our suburban common lands; and the clubs that make use of these have formed an association, and made a new set of rules for the game, which are very like those which regulate the play at Harrow; but under every form in which it is played the game is attractive. It is, in fact, a thoroughly English pastime, particularly adapted to the proclivities of our race, and precisely that kind of sport which will best counteract the effect of our sedentary desk and office work, as it does the bookwork of the students at the universities and schools. J. D. C. THE MERCHANT PRINCES OF ENGLAND. CHAPTER II. THE DE LA POLES OF HULL. GIVE a complete history of the De la Poles would require more than one bulky volume. Coming over with William the Conqueror, the family was one of the first to take firm root in our country, to shake off its Norman prejudices, and to become thoroughly English. Under the early Plantagenets it had sturdy branches in Middlesex, Oxford, and Devon; and some of its members, going with Edward I. into Wales, fought so well that they received a large grant of land in Montgomery by way of recompense. But it was not by fighting alone that they became rich and famous, or won honour for their country. In 1297-a year before Edward's accession to the throne-we find it recorded that William de la Pole, and some other merchants of Totnes, received a sum of 12l. 98. 5§d. for cloths sold by them to the Crown at the fair of St. Giles, at Winchester; and later in the same year it appears that the wools of one William de la Pole, a merchant of Rouen, were detained at Ipswich to prevent their being taken to Flanders; while in 1272 we have reference to a Nicholas de la Pole, as one of the authorized collectors and receivers of the goods of the Flemish merchants in England. Whatever his relation to this Nicholas, it can hardly be doubted that William, the merchant of Rouen, was also the merchant of Totnes, belonging to both places, because he travelled from one to the other, after the fashion of all the great dealers of his day, buying and selling goods. This same man, also, we may with safety assume to have been the William de la Pole who settled, a few years later, in the newlyfounded town of Ravensrod, at the south-eastern extremity of Yorkshire. Ravensrod has a curious history. Originally an island, formed by the gradual heaping-up of sand and stones, and separated from the mainland by more than a mile of sea, it was for a long time used only by the fishermen of those parts for drying their nets. By degrees, however, a narrow shingly road, the breadth of a bow-shot, was cast up through the joint action of the sea on the east and the Humber on the western side; and as soon as this road was completed, the inhabitants of the neighbouring towns, especially of Ravenser, an ancient port and manor on the Humber, determined to make use of it. In this way was founded the town of Odd, called Odd juxta Ravenser, and after a while, Ravenser-odd, or Ravensrod. Its convenience as a landing-place, and, at first, its freedom from civic interference, soon made it an important mart. In 1276, the people of Grimsby, on the other side of the river, complained to the king of the great damage it was doing to their trade, their loss in a year being more than 100l. Of this complaint no notice appears to have been taken by the Crown. But the people of Ravensrod used it in an unlooked-for way. With unseemly zeal they made it a practice-so, at least, said their enemies -to go out in boats, intercept the trading ships and fishing-smacks, and urge them to stop at Ravensrod, asserting, for instance, that while trade was there so brisk, that 40s. could easily be obtained for a last of herrings, the people of Grimsby would not be able to pay them half as much. This persecution of the Grimsbymen, however, did not last long, if indeed it was every really practised. In 1361 a great flood came and compelled all the inhabitants to take refuge in the neighbouring villages. Spurn Head lighthouse now marks the site of Ravensrod, while of Ravenser there remains no trace at all. At least fifty years before the time of the flood, William de la Pole had done with Ravensrod. Having lived and prospered in it for a little while, he died in or before 1311, leaving a widow, Elena, who soon married again-her second husband being John Rottenherring, a famous merchant of Hull - and three sons, Richard, William, and Thomas, who carried on their father's work with notable success. Of the youngest of these three we know very little indeed, and about the private history of the other two we also have but scanty information. But their public life and work are very clearly decipherable from the scattered records of the time. As far as commerce is concerned, they were the greatest men of the fourteenth century; if not the first of a long and noble line of merchant princes, at any rate the first whose history has come down to us, and whose deeds are known to have been rewarded with the public approval of their country. of Richard was born somewhere near the year 1280, William a few years later. They learnt to be adventurous of life and money amid the stirring incidents Edward I.'s reign, often, doubtless, crossing with their father, in the largest and swiftest of his ships, to the coast towns of Flanders and France, there to meet the richest merchants in the world, and treat with them for the selling of English wool and leather, and the taking in exchange of foreign wine and timber. Those short journeys were full of peril. At any moment there was the risk of being met unawares by French or Scottish pirates, and then -unless they were strong enough to defeat their assailants, or fleet enough to be saved by flight-they could expect no pleasanter fate than VOL. V.-NO. XXVIII. that their goods should be seized, the common sailors left hanging to the mast-head, and the masters only kept alive on account of the money that would be paid for their release. These things were bad enough under the vigorous rule of Edward I. They were much worse during the disastrous period of Edward II.'s misgovernment. And it was, doubtless, for greater security that the brothers De la Pole, soon after their father's death, removed a distance of twenty miles, to the fortified and rapidly growing town of Hull. They could not have settled in a better place. All In the history of Hull, originally called Wyke-upon-Hull, are well illustrated the growth and character of an English commercial town during the middle ages. Owned by the monks of Meaux, who themselves made shrewd tradesmen, and who knew well how to encourage trade in others, it had been a thriving mart since 1198, and doubtless from a much earlier date. The Exchequer Rolls of the thirteenth century show that its exports, consisting chiefly of wool, rough sheepskins, and prepared leather, were in some years half as great as those of London. through that time it was a favourite resort of the great wool merchants, about one-third of them being foreigners, especially Flemings and Florentines. Perhaps it was at the suggestion of these Italian merchants, great money-lenders, and therefore men very useful to the king, that Edward I. took it under his especial protection. Bo that as it may, Edward bought it of the monks of Meaux in 1293, and conferred on it a civic charter in 1296. Henceforth, with the new name of Kingston-uponHull, it prospered more than ever. With John Rottenherring, stepfather of the brothers De la Pole, for its most influential citizen, it received each year some fresh benefit either from the Crown or from the enterprise of private individuals. nave and chancel of the noble church of Holy Trinity had been set up in 1270, and its splendid tower was now in course of erection, to be completed in 1312. The Augustine 8 The |
