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626 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
proclamation of 1365 was made statutory, and tennis and dice
are added to the list of prohibited games. This statute with
slight variations was re-enacted from time to time till the sixy
teenth
century.
University legislators also discouraged games and sport of
any kind. In the fifteenth century the chancellor ofOxford forx
bade scholars to play at dice, tables, handball, or any other
dishonest game. The statutes ofseveral colleges contain similar
prohibitions; they must not go hunting or hawking, play at
chess, dice, or ball. The austerity oflife imposed by the statutes
of Queen's College, Oxford, drawn up in 1340, was almost
unrelieved: all they may do causa recreationis is occasionally to
play (jocarf) among themselves, honestly and peaceably.
Notwithstanding these stern it prohibitions, is evident that
all sorts and conditions of men, not
excepting ecclesiastics,
played these games. Thus in 1 321 Pope John XXII granted a
dispensation to William of Spalding, a canon of Shouldham
ofthe order of Sempringham, who accidentally killed another
player in a game offootball. 1 At a conference held near Calais
in July 1439 to discuss peace terms, the
archbishop ofRheims, the French Chancellor and one of the commissioners, was
injured while playing football and was unable to attend one of
2
the
meetings. Even kings played the game. In 1497 a sum is
charged on the accounts ofthe Lord High Treasurer of Scot'
land 'to buy fut ballis* for the king. In Elizabeth's reign strong
measures were taken to
suppress football at Oxford:
If anie Master of Artes, Bachelor of Law, Bachelor of Artes, or Scholler
being above the age of eighteene yeares shall use anie plaieing at Footeball
in New parke or elsewhere within the
precinctes of the universitie ... for
the first offence he shall paie 20$. and suffer imprisonment.
The punishments were increased if the offence was repeated;
for the second it was 40*., for the third banishment out ofthe
university. Those who were under the age of eighteen suffered
1
Cal ofPapal Letters, ed. Bliss, ii, p. 214; for another early example ofa football
casualty (1280) see Cal of Inquisitions, Misc. i, no. 2241.
2
Thomas Beckington's Journal, printed by Sir Harris Nicolas in Proc. and Ord.
of the Privy Council, v, p. 363.