This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: …for three or four hundred years till we gets it like this. That’s all we does! A quaint entry appears in the Parish Book of St. Mary’s Church, Shrewsbury, under the date 1584, relating to this game. It is a complaint that the inhabitants of Astley, an ecclesiastical district of the parish, played bowls on Sundays. It was therefore ordered by the mother church, says the record, that the Astley people should adorn and repair their chapel, at their own expense, as a commutation. And yet into all this we read that Calvin and Knox both played Bowls on Sunday afternoons. There are few who have not heard of the historic game of Bowls played on Plymouth Hoe, and which has formed the subject of a well-known modern picture. From the elevated ridge of the Hoe there is naturally an extensive view seaward, and the story is told that the captains of the English Navy in 1588 were playing a game of Bowls there when the Spanish Armada hove in sight. When the others would have hurriedly left the game unfinished, their imperturbable leader, Sir Francis Drake, deprecated all hurry and fuss, calmly observing that there would be plenty of time to
finish the game, and beat the dons afterwards. At the State Trial of Titus Oates in 1685 Sir Edward Southcoat deposed to having been on the bowling-green of Tixall, the seat of Lord Aston in Staffordshire, at a time named in the evidence, when there was present a particular company. In the history of London we are informed that bowling-greens were once numerous in the vicinity of Bowling Green Lane, Clerkenwell. About 1675 these were both open and covered, and were laid with turf or gravel. The bowls were either flat, or some were round, but the simple object was always…