10 THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 
Elm Tree, The White Hart or The Black Swan, where 
mason and innkeeper Walter Flay depicted masonic 
emblems on his inn sign. Toasts, songs, glees and 
duets enlivened the evenings. The Rector, the Rev. 
Lediard, banker Charles Tylee and grocers John 
and Stephen Neate were among the twenty-four 
members in 1815. It seems likely that the Salmons 
were also members, since their office clerk was 
Secretary of the organisation.!!! The membership of 
army officers stationed in the area had increased the 
numbers by the following year!’ and in 1819 the 
Lodge was visited by masons from Frome and the 
East Indies.''* Freemasonry symbolised the 
divergence of élite and popular culture in the 
eighteenth century. Socially exclusive, it offered a 
form of religious association and ceremony without 
the dangers of religious enthusiasm or piety, and 
was one of many associations linking the upper 
class and ‘the middling sort’. 
In sport, another élite activity was shooting, 
reflecting the iate-eighteenth century revival of 
interest in countryside pursuits, while seventeenth- 
century wills had often referred to ‘my birding 
piece’. A dozen of the leading inhabitants owning 
land of over £100 a year held game certificates, 
including banker Charles Tylee, whose drawing 
room was adorned by two stuffed ducks in a case.'" 
The increasing popularity of shooting, protected by 
33 new Game Laws between 1760 and 1816, led to 
the establishment of gunsmiths in Devizes. James 
Sutton rode to hounds, in 1790 writing to his 
brother-in-law ‘I was in full cry on Janice’.! Henry 
Addington spent part of the sporting season at New 
Park and both Sutton and Salmon employed 
gamekeepers on their estates.!'!° Hunting and 
shooting, associated with the upper ranks of society, 
became the target of middle class emulation and 
this trend was gently ridiculed in 1786 in a letter, 
purporting to come from a grocer: 
Hearing that every person that took out a licence to 
shoot was to be a gentleman,I ventured to attempt 
that character for one year, at a cost of £87 19s. 6d. 1” 
The élite, however, pursued a wide range of 
sports. Dr Robert Clare was described by Henry 
Hunt as ‘a sporting man’''’ and New Park had a 
bowling green.'!” Cricket matches were played by a 
tradesman’s eleven against the neighbouring towns 
of Calne, Marlborough and Westbury, the first 
recorded match on Wiltshire soil taking place in 
1774, though in 1783 the Westbury team was 
censured for ‘conduct unworthy of true players’.'”° 
Cricket, which had begun as a plebeian sport, was 
taken up by the gentry after 1660, providing a 
convenient opportunity for gambling. Although 
sport was as yet largely local and devoid of 
institutional structure, it was becoming spectator- 
orientated and both publicans and gentry gave their 
patronage to attract custom or to ensure social 
harmony. Social distinctions were preserved , yet at 
the same time a sport such as cricket was a means of 
breaking down class barriers. Speaking of cricket, a 
foreign visitor commented: ‘everyone plays it. . the 
common people and also men of rank’.’”'The Rev. 
John Skinner, too, noted servants playing alongside 
clergy and gentry.'” Sport also enabled skilled 
workers and artisans to acquire respectability and 
distance themselves from the cruel and violent 
amusements of the rabble. 
Richard Warner spoke of ‘balls, plays and cards 
usurping the place of ... rude athletical sports or 
gross sensual amusements’ in Bath,'” but in the 
Devizes area ‘the populace’ continued to enjoy their 
traditional pastimes. Wrestling bouts, so popular in 
the West Country, took place at Tan Hill fair, and 
backsword contests, fought with heavy sticks, 
including a match between Wiltshire and All 
England in 1780, were staged on a dais opposite The 
Bear for a purse of 5 guineas, ‘ the blood to run an 
inch to entitle a man to a head, and the man that 
breaks 2 heads to be allowed a tyer’!** Pugilism and 
the cruder animal ‘sports’ were perhaps safety 
valves for the aggressive and bloodthirsty instincts 
of the masses. Bull baiting, legal until 1833, was still 
being performed at Furzehill on the town’s 
outskirts, where in April 1774 a fourteen-year old 
boy killed himself drinking rum.'? Increasingly 
after 1750, popular recreation for the masses 
became divorced from church festivals and clerical 
patronage; the commercial exploitation of leisure 
penetrated the lower class market, with 
entrepreneurs seeking profit from popular 
spectacles. Fairs on the Green provided lively 
entertainment, with rope dancers, conjurors, nine 
pins, wild animals, raffles and wheels of fortune.'”° 
Robert Southey asserted that ‘nothing is too absurd 
to be believed by the people in this country — 
anything in England will do for a show’.'”’ In 1790, 
the credulous could see ‘The Amazing Pig of 
Knowledge’ which could tell the day of the month 
and the month of the year, guess which cards were 
drawn and recognise the value of money.!** From 
the 1760s, travelling circuses were all the rage . 
Lions, tigers and a 9-foot tall elephant were the 
attractions at Alkins’ Royal Menagerie which 
visited the town in 1820.'” All these events 
