1066 Football
The History of football in England and 1066 Country is a long and detailed one, as it is not only the national sport but England was where the game was developed and codified. The modern global game of Football was first codified in 1863 in London. The impetus for this was to unify English public school and university football games. There is evidence for refereed, team football games being played in English schools since at least 1581. An account of an exclusively kicking football game from Nottinghamshire in the 15th century bears similarity to football. England can boast the earliest ever documented use of the English word "football" (1409) and the earliest reference to the sport in French (1314). England is home to the oldest football clubs in the world (dating from at least 1857), the world's oldest competition (the FA Cup founded in 1871) and the first ever football league (1888). For these reasons England is considered the home of the game of football.
1200–1800: Medieval football
Football's roots in England has been found in Medieval football, which was played annually on Shrovetide. It is suggested that this game was derived from those played in Brittany and Normandy, and could have been brought to England in the Norman Conquest. These games were violent and largely ruleless. As a result, they were often banned.
England is the origin of nearly all first accounts of features of football:
In 1280 comes the first account of a kicking ball game. This happened at Ulgham, near Ashington in Northumberland, in which a player was killed as a result of running against an opposing player's dagger. This confirms that by the 13th century kicking ball games were being played in England.
In 1314, comes the earliest reference to a game called football when Nicholas de Farndone, Lord Mayor of the City of London issued a decree on behalf of King Edward II banning football. It was written in the French used by the English upper classes at the time. A translation reads: "[f]orasmuch as there is great noise in the city caused by hustling over large foot balls [rageries de grosses pelotes de pee] in the fields of the public from which many evils might arise which God forbid: we command and forbid on behalf of the king, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in the future."
In 1409 King Henry IV of England gives us the first documented use of the English word "football" when issued a proclamation forbidding the levying of money for "foteball".
At the end of the 15th century comes the earliest description of a football game. This account in Latin of a football game contains a number of features of modern football and comes from Cawston, Nottinghamshire, England. It is included in a manuscript collection of the miracles of King Henry VI of England. Although the precise date is uncertain it certainly comes from between 1481 and 1500. This is the first account of an exclusively "kicking game" and the first description of dribbling: "[t]he game at which they had met for common recreation is called by some the foot-ball game. It is one in which young men, in country sport, propel a huge ball not by throwing it into the air but by striking it and rolling it along the ground, and that not with their hands but with their feet ... kicking in opposite directions" The chronicler gives the earliest reference to a football field, stating that: "[t]he boundaries have been marked and the game had started.
In 1526 comes the first record of a pair of football boots occurs when Henry VIII of England ordered a pair from the Great Wardrobe in 1526. The boots are no longer in existence.
In 1581 comes the earliest account of football as an organised team sport. Richard Mulcaster, a student at Eton College in the early 16th century and later headmaster at other English schools provides the earliest references to teams ("sides" and "parties"), positions ("standings"), a referee ("judge over the parties") and a coach "(trayning maister)". Mulcaster's "footeball" had evolved from the disordered and violent forms of traditional football:
[s]ome smaller number with such overlooking, sorted into sides and standings, not meeting with their bodies so boisterously to trie their strength: nor shouldring or shuffing one an other so barbarously ... may use footeball for as much good to the body, by the chiefe use of the legges.
Mulcaster also confirms that in the 16th century England football was very popular and widespread: it had attained "greatnes. .. [and was] much used ... in all places"
Despite this violence continued to be a problem. For example, the parish archives of North Moreton, Oxfordshire for May 1595 state: "Gunter's son and ye Gregorys fell together by ye years at football. Old Gunter drew his dagger and both broke their heads, and they died both within a fortnight after."
In 1602 the earliest reference to a game involving passing the ball comes from cornish hurling. In particular Carew tells us that: "Then must he cast the ball (named Dealing) to some one of his fellowes". In this case, however, the pass is by hand, as in rugby football. Although there are other allusions to ball passing in the 17th century literature, this is the only one which categorically states that the ball was passed to another member of the same team. There are no other explicit references to passing the ball between members of the same team until the 1860s, however, in 1650 English puritan Richard Baxter alludes to player to player passing of the ball during a football game in his book Everlasting Rest: "like a Football in the midst of a crowd of Boys, tost about in contention from one to another".
The first references to goals come from England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In 1584 and 1602 respectively, John Norden and Richard Carew referred to "goals" in Cornish hurling. Carew described how goals were made: "they pitch two bushes in the ground, some eight or ten foote asunder; and directly against them, ten or twelue [twelve] score off, other twayne in like distance, which they terme their Goales". He is also the first to refer to goalkeeping.
The first direct references to scoring a goal come from England in the 17th century. For example, in John Day's play The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (performed circa 1600; published 1659): "I'll play a gole at camp-ball" (an extremely violent variety of football, which was popular in East Anglia). Similarly in a poem in 1613, Michael Drayton refers to "when the Ball to throw, And drive it to the Gole, in squadrons forth they goe". The concept of football teams is mentioned by English Poet Edmund Waller in c1624: He mentions "a sort [i.e. company] of lusty shepherds try their force at football, care of victory ... They ply their feet, and still the restless ball, Toss'd to and fro, is urged by them all[8] ". The last line suggests that playing as a team emerged much earlier in English football than previously thought.
Football continued to be outlawed in English cities, for example the Manchester Lete Roll contains a resolution, dated 12 October 1608: "That whereas there hath been heretofore great disorder in our towne of Manchester, and the inhabitants thereof greatly wronged and charged with makinge and amendinge of their glasse windows broken yearlye and spoyled by a companye of lewd and disordered psons vsing that unlawfull exercise of playinge with the ffote-ball in ye streets of ye sd toune breakinge many men's windowes and glasse at their plesures and other great enormyties. Therefore, wee of this jurye doe order that no manner of psons hereafter shall play or use the footeball in any street within the said toune of Manchester, subpœnd to evye one that shall so use the same for evye time xiid".
Although football was frequently outlawed in England, it remained popular even with the ruling classes. For example, during the reign of King James I of England James Howellmentions how Lord Willoughby and Lord Sunderland enjoyed playing football, for example:"Lord Willoughby, and he, with so many of their servants ... play'd a match at foot-ball against such a number of countrymen, where my Lord of Sunderland being busy about the ball, got a bruise in the breast.
Football continued to be popular throughout 17th century England. For example in 1634 Davenant is quoted (in Hones Table-Book) as remarking, "I would now make a safe retreat, but methinks Jam stopped by one of your heroic gamea called football; which I conceive (under your favor) not very conveniently civil in the streets, especially in such irregular and narrow roads as Crooked Lane. Yet it argues your courage, much like your military pastime of throwing at cocks, since you have long allowed these two valiant exercises in the streets". Similarly in 1638 Thomas Randolph suggests this in the following lines from one of his plays: "Madam, you may in time bring down his legs To the just size, now overgrown with playing Too much at foot-ball".
In 1660 comes the first objective study of football, given in Francis Willughby's Book of Sports, written in about 1660. This account is particularly noteworthy as he refers to football by its correct name and is the first to describe the following: goals and a pitch ("a close that has a gate at either end. The gates are called Goals"), tactics ("leaving some of their best players to guard the goal"), scoring ("they that can strike the ball through their opponents' goal first win") and the way teams were selected ("the players being equally divided according to their strength and nimbleness"). He is the first to describe a law of football: "They often break one another's shins when two meet and strike both together against the ball, and therefore there is a law that they must not strike higher than the ball". His book includes the first (basic) diagram illustrating a modern football pitch.
Football continued to be played in the later 17th century, even in cities such as London. The great diarist Samuel Pepys, for example, states in 1665 that in a London street "the streete being full of footballs".