"Now who is so grosly blinde that seeth not that these aforesaid exercises not only withdraw us from godliness and virtue, but also haile and allure us to wickednesse and sin? For as concerning football playing I protest unto you that it may rather be called a friendlie kinde of fyghte than a play or recreation--a bloody and murthering practice than a felowly sport or pastime. For dooth not everyone lye in waight for his adversarie, seeking to overthrowe him and picke him on his nose, though it be uppon hard stones, in ditch or dale, in valley or hill, or whatever place soever it be hee careth not, so hee have him downe; and he that can serve the most of this fashion he is counted the only fellow, and who but he?... So that by this means sometimes their necks are broken, sometimes their backs, sometimes their legs, sometimes their armes, sometimes their noses gush out with blood, sometimes their eyes start out, and sometimes hurte in one place, sometimes in another. But whosoever scapeth away the best goeth not scot free, but is either forewounded, craised, or bruised, so as he dyeth of it or else scapeth very hardlie; and no mervaile, for they have the sleights to meet one betwixt two, to dash him against the hart with their elbowes, to hit him under the short ribs with their griped fists and with their knees to catch him on the hip and pick him on his neck, with a hundred such murthering devices." [Illustration: Stephen Row Bradley, 1800. _circa_] This was written three hundred years ago, and these are not the words of a modern reporter, "They have sleights to meet one betwixt two, to dash him against the heart with their elbows, to hit him under the short ribs with their griped fists, and with their knees to catch him on the hip and pick him on the neck." Stubbes may be set down by many as a sour-visaged, sour-voiced Puritan; but a very gracious courtier of his day, an intelligent and thoughtful man, Sir Thomas Elyot, was equally severe on the game. He wrote, in 1537, _The Boke named the Gouvernour_, full of sensible advice and instruction. In it he says:-- "Foot-ball wherein is nothynge but beastlye furie and exstreme violence, whereof proceedeth hurte; and consequently malice and rancour do remayne with them that be wounded; whereof it is to be putt in perpetuall silence." The "perpetuall silence" which he put on the game has not fallen even by the end of three centuries and a half. Some indirect testimony as to the character of the English game comes from travellers in the American colonies, where the American Indians were found playing a game of foot-ball like that of their white brothers. John Dunton, travelling in New England when Boston was half a century old, tells of the Indians' game:--