English law first interfered with ‘fute-ball’ in 1365 to stop it tempting men to neglect their archery practice

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, football was regarded as an inducement to the young men of the day to neglect the practice of archery, and the law first interfered with the game in 1365 on that account. Other laws were passed against it, and in Scotland King James I decreed as follows:- “It is statute, and the King forbiddis, that na man play at fute-ball, under the paine of fiftie schillings to be raised to the Lord of the land, als oft as he be tainted, or to the Schireffe of the land or his ministers, gif the Lords will not punish sik trespessoures .”

James I of England, taking the cue from his ancestors, and perhaps deeming the game wholly unfit for Baby Charles, writes in his Basilikon:- “From this Court I debarre all rough and violent exercises, as the football, meeter for lameing than making able the users thereof.” This was made the ground of an indictment preferred at the Middlesex Sessions in the eighteenth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, which charged sixteen persons – husbandmen, yeomen, artificers, and the like – for that they did, “with unknown malefactors to the number of a hundred, assemble themselves and unlawfully play a certain unlawful game, called football, by reason of which unlawful game there arose among them a great affray likely to result in homicides and fatal accidents.”

These last words seem to be a somewhat accurate description of what is now known as a scrimmage; and, indeed, these ancient pleaders give the sporting reporter of the nineteenth century many beautiful and graphic phrases as yet unknown to his vocabulary.

What could be more satisfactory from a literary point of view than the indictment preferred in the days of Cromwell which charges “John Briston, of Maidstone, apothecary, for that he, with force of arms, did wilfully and in a violent manner run to and fro, and kicked up and down, in the common highway and the High-street, a certain ball of leather commonly called a football”? The style is periphrastic perhaps, but it is quite as intelligible as much that appears in latter-day descriptions of the game.

These later indictments seem to have been preferred against those who followed the custom of playing football on Shrove Tuesday, which was at one time a great football festival. As late as 1797 there was an indictment preferred at Kingston-on-Thames to suppress this ancient custom, in which divers evil-disposed persons were charged for that they “did then and there unlawfully, riotously, and routously kick, cast, and throw a certain football in and about the said town”. What a complete and effective picture is this of a game played according to Rugby rules – from the point of view, of course, of one who does not understand these rules!

These archive extracts, compiled by the Guardian’s research and information department, appear online daily at gu.com/fromthearchive

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