Wiltshire Quarter [Sessions. 



331 



made complaint to the King that notwithstanding" " divers good 

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

 1 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 Logetting-in-the 

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

 j reason whereof Archery is sore decayed/'' Paying a tribute to the 

 j past prowess of 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 

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

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

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

 I 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 

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

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

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

 j seventeen years, a bow and two shafts.'''' 1 This clause is followed 

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

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

 ! prohibitions of the reprehensible amusements specified above. No 

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

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



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

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



! 1 Such an obligation must have formed a doubtful contribution to the comfort 

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

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

 I his purple monkey climbing on a yellow stick : — 



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



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

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

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

 kept in store for his elder brethren's practice at„the butts. 



