SPORTS AND PASTIMES.

W

HOEVER the minister was who set his hymns

to good old secular airs, and said he did not see why the devil should have all the good tunes to himself, he only partook of an old feeling among the clergy, that all pleasant pastimes were not invented expressly for sinners. In the matter of Sports, however, the common and the canon law were at issue. The former allowed certain pastimes to the clergy; the latter forbade them altogether; and in this case, the clergy obeyed the common and disregarded the canon law.

In Canute's time, dice and chess were only for kings and nobles, not for churchmen. The clerics, however, would play with the same toys as monarchs and the great barons. "It is a damnable art that of dice playing!" said John of Sarum in the twelfth century. "The bishops and clergy are fond of it," said Ordericus Vitalis. Henry III. tried to compel the clergy to abandon both dice and chess, but they would not yield upon compulsion.

Perhaps Canute thought these games were too seden

tary for churchmen, and so allowed the "better sort," that is, prelates and abbots (who were excessively addicted to hunting and hawking in their own enclosures) to kill a deer whenever they happened to be wending through any of the royal forests. Do you hear the winding of that horn in yonder glade? A sporting bishop has just sent an arrow through one of Canute's stags in the absence of the king's forester. The prelate's varlet gives that note upon the horn to let the official know that a deer is stricken, and that he does not want to steal it. Were he to carry it off, Canute would treat him worse than Coeur de Lion afterwards treated poaching curates who presumed to keep a greyhound.

In the days of that King Canute there was no more eager clerical hunter in the north of England than Licolphus, dean of Whalley. While hunting in the forest of Rossendale, he captured and slew a wolf, and set an example which seems to be still followed at the killing of a fox. The dean cut off the wolf's tail, as the huntsman does the fox's brush. The act must have been a novelty in sporting incidents, as the reverend gentleman obtained a sirname thereby, being thenceforth popularly known as " Licolphus Cutwulph." This was rather a slang name than a sirname, but such popular appellations stick. Porson's epithet of

Bishop Proteus," for the shifty prelate, Porteus, was swiftly taken up and passed on by the popular tongue; and, as I have already stated, a certain niggardly

Field and Home Delights.

57

Archbishop of Dublin is never spoken of by the people otherwise than as "Agar the naygur."

Winifred, the proto-Archbishop of Mayence, who converted the Germans, did not give all his time to missionary work. He was a rare hand at training hawks and falcons in his leisure hours. Kings consulted with him on matters of sport, and those royal personages even condescended to ask the ecclesiastic to lend or give them one (or two if he could spare them) of those famous falcons which he had so capitally instructed to strike at cranes.

The lower class of clergy seem to have successfully asserted their right to amuse themselves with field sports, though custom did not allow them to employ the same birds of prey as their betters did. Indeed all men who hunted had different birds according to their own degree. The gir-falcon was for the king alone. A priest was happy to be allowed to carry a sparrowhawk, while a "musket" was considered a sufficiently good instrument for a holy-water clerk.

Among the sports of those old times, that of listening to minstrels or jesters was not considered the worst. They were not only welcomed in monasteries, but the ordinarily grave inhabitants there occasionally practised among themselves: it was the only "amateur acting" known in those days. The Normans, however, came in with an intimation that there was to be no more fun, at least of that quality. Lanfranc, the Archbishop of Canterbury, excommunicated the whole

profession of fools. In his "Eleucidarium" he declares that jesters have no hope. "In their whole design," he says, "they are the ministers of Satan They know not God, therefore God despiseth them. The Lord shall have them in derision. The mockers shall be mocked." The fools stood their ground, and Greathead, Bishop of Lincoln (1235-53), found some difficulty in preventing the Festival of Fools from being held in his own cathedral. Nevertheless, some prelates continued to have a "John Goose" in their houses till the Reformation, when the fool ceased to dwell officially in priests' houses.

It is known that three among the young fellows who rowed in the first race between Oxford and Cambridge became bishops. This sort of athletic sport would have been readily sanctioned by our early AngloSaxon bishops, who loved a muscular Christianity and good fellows with thews and sinews and active spirits, as well as they did the weaker-built and gentlerspirited brethren of their household. St. John of Beverley, Bishop of Hexham, and subsequently of York, was one of them. The young ecclesiastics and laymen who resided under his roof for instructionwhich included music as well as letters, sacred and profane-used to ride out with their master during his visitation. When they came to a good wide bit of green sward, usual consequences ensued. The horses became pleasantly excited, and the young fellows who bestrode them gathered up their reins,

Religious Horse-racing.

59

asked permission to ride a race, and were off as soon as a smile came on the episcopal face, and almost before the ready consent had passed from his lips. One of a company of such riders told his story to Bede-how he and a troop of young equestrians were out with the bishop, and how the prelate gave permission to all but the narrator, an especial favourite, to have an afternoon of racing. When they were in the very highest of the excitement, the young fellow who had been told to keep by the bishop's side and safely watch the contest in which he was not permitted to join, suddenly pressed his horse with his knees and dashed off exultingly among the competitors. "You'll be the death of me!" cried the prelate; and directly after, down came the aspiring jockey's horse, rider and all, the field galloping over him. There was a general cessation of sport, the fallen lad was taken up senseless, and the bishop, who had been clerk of the course, now performed the office of medical man. He did it with tenderness, ability, and effect. The patient had a broken head and a sprained hand, and was senseless from pain; but he recovered his consciousness, and opening his eyes, said, as he saw his pastor and master bending over him-"I know you. You are the dear old governor!"

It would be tedious to name all the archbishops and bishops who have found favourite sport and pastime in hunting or hawking. The mightiest episcopal hunter