Willshire Quarter Sessions. 331 



made complaint to the King that notwithstanding " divers good 

 and lawful statutes " made against unlawful games, yet that " many 

 subtil inventive and crafty persons intending to defraud the same 

 estatute, sithens the making thereof have found and daily find many 

 and sundry new and crafty games and plays as Lngetting-in-the 

 Fields, Slide-thrift, otherwise called Shove-groat .... by 

 reason whereof Archery is sore decayed." Paying a tribute to the 

 past prowess o£ the English archers, these " daily orators " proceed 

 to deplore that " yet nevertheless archery and shooting in Long 

 Bows was little used but daily did minish decay and abate more and 

 more .... and also by means and occasions of custumable 

 usage of Tennis play. Bowls, Cloysh, and other unlawful games . . 

 . great impoverishment hath ensued [i.e., folk could not find 

 money to pay for long bows of yew^] and many heinous Murders 

 Robberies and Felonies were committed and done." 



Whatever may have been the wisdom or folly of the reasoning 

 thus put forward by the " bow-and-arrow interest," the Act did its 

 best to encourage archery, and to stamp out idle gambling. It 

 obliged every man to " have in his house for every man-child being 

 of the age of seven years and above, till he shall come to the age of 

 seventeen years, a bow and two shafts." ^ This clause is followed 

 by a variety of others, all favorable to bowyers, fletchers, and arrow- 

 head men, which clauses are in their turn succeeded by stringent 

 prohibitions of the reprehensible amusements specified above. No 

 artificer or craftsman, &c. (ten synonyms are added), was permitted 

 to play at the tables, tennis, dice, cards, bowls, clash, coyting, le- 

 gating, or other unlawful game, out of Christmas, under pain of 

 XX5. to be forfeit for every time ; and even at Christmas, indulgence 



' Such an obligation must have formed a doubtful contribution to the comfoi-t 

 of the man-child's household. It recals the lament (from the pathetic pen of 

 Mr. Slimmer of the New Castle Morning Argus) for Willie done to death by 

 his purple monkey climbing on a yellow stick : — 



" Oh ! no more he'll shoot his sister with his little wooden gnn." 



With his little bow and two shafts the Willie of the sixteenth century made 

 himself felt, no doubt, as an appreciable nuisance ; the more so if (as possibly 

 happened) he now and then laid precocious hands on the four arrows statutorily 

 kept in store for his elder brethi'en's practice at the butts. 



