In 1656 the first town-hall was built; previous to that date the old wooden booths were used for the court-leet, etc. In these days, when football has become such a popular game as to render it one of the great national sports, it is interesting to find that in 1655 the Manchester Jury ordered all persons to be prosecuted who were found playing football in the streets. Nearly fifty years before this it had been found necessary to have "officers for yᵉ football" regularly appointed. This playing in the streets was not confined to Manchester; indeed, at Kirkham on Christmas Day, until quite a recent date, the streets were entirely given up to the followers of this popular pastime. At the Restoration Manchester was prepared to welcome the newly-crowned King, and on April 22, 1661, the train-bands, under John Byrom, and the auxiliary band of Nicholas Mosley, together some 360 men, assembled in the field "in great gallantrie and rich scarffes, expressing themselves with many great acclamations of joy." They afterwards marched to the collegiate church, preceded by forty boys, "all cloathed in white stuffe, plumes of feathers in their hats, blew scarffes, armed with little swords hanging in black bells and short pikes shouldered." In the church was a large concourse of people, who, says the chronicler,[157] "civilly and soberly demeaned themselves all the whole day, the like never seen in this nor the like place." A sermon was preached by the Warden, Richard Heyrick, and a civic procession afterwards paraded the town. On arriving at the conduit which supplied the town with water, there was a long halt, in order that the "gentlemen and officers" might drink his Majesty's health "in claret running in three streams from the conduit." This stream afterwards ran for the public use until after sunset. Lancaster celebrated the event by presenting to the King "their small mite as a token of their joy by surrender of their fee farm rents of £13 6s. 6d., which they purchased of the late powers."