Football in Francis Willughby’s Book of Games

Football is one of the games included in Francis Willughby’s Book of Games. However, the version he described has some notable differences to the modern game. Hence, this post will aim to place his description in its historical context, which was in the era when the game transitioned from an unstructured “mob” version to a more defined, albeit still violent, version with rules.

One of the earliest known references to football was by William FitzStephen in 1174 who described it as a well-known ball game played by Londoners on Shrove Tuesday. In modern times, football tends to be considered as a winter sport but, historically, it was well documented to have been played as a custom at Shrovetide.

The challenge with historical references of football is determining whether they were referencing football when the ball was handled or when it was not. The earliest known reference to the no-handling version is from the time of King Henry VI, where it was described that, in the game, young men propelled a ball by striking and rolling it along the ground with their feet. By Willughby’s time, in England, football implicitly referred only to the non-handling version.

It was also considered, before and in Willughby’s time, as a game of the common man and not an aristocratic sport. This was possibly due to the energy and, more specifically, the violence involved in the version at that time.

Willughby described that football was played in a long street or close with a gate or similar feature at either end, which formed the goal. The players were divided into two equal teams, one for each goal, and they were divided on a basis of their strength and nimbleness. Their aim was to get the ball through their enemy’s goal and whichever team did, won.

At the beginning of the game, all players stood at their goal and the ball was placed at the mid-point between them. Whoever ran quickest and reached it first got first kick. Willughby commented that normally some of the best players were left to guard the goal whilst the rest followed the ball wherever it went.

Willughby described that the ball was made from a strong pig’s bladder, blown up and the neck tied tight, and then placed into the skin of a bull’s cod (scrotum) and sown in tight. He commented that the harder the ball was blown up the better it flew and that quicksilver (mercury) used to be put into it in order to keep it from lying still.

Ashbourne Shrovetide football. Photograph taken by Derby Museums, 2011, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The ball that Willughby described is another aspect that distinguished football in that era from other ball games. This is because it was filled with air. There is mention of balls filled with peas but such balls would have been difficult to kick.

From a modern perspective, one surprising aspect of football in Willughby’s time and before was that aggressive physical interactions between players were viewed as an integral part of the game. The game played in his era was vigorous, chaotic and in some cases extraordinarily violent. Many authors of the time wrote with disapproval of the level of violence, considering it little more than a fight.

Nevertheless, Willughby’s inclusion of four paragraphs on the art of tripping illustrates the integral nature of the physical interactions in the game played in his time. He commented that players often broke shins when two players struck at the ball at the same time and met in collision. Hence, he noted that the game had a law that prohibited striking above the height of the ball. Willughby explained that the “Tripping Up of Heels” was when a player followed one of the other team and, to prevent that player from striking the ball, he struck the foot about to kick the ball whilst it was in the air and made him fall. Willughby, who used games to study probability, commented that the skill was to time it so that the foot had just left the ground, which meant that the briefest of touches would cause the player to fall.

Further Reading: David Cram, Jeffrey L. Forgeng & Dorothy Johnston, Francis Willughby’s Book of Games, 2003. pp.168, 261-262. 

Author - Debbie Jordan, Middleton Hall Volunteer.

Please consider supporting Middleton Hall Trust by sending us a donation.