Of course we knew quite well that our forefathers betted large stakes between themselves, often on single-wicket matches. This was a favourite style of match with Mr. Osbaldestone—the Squire,—because his bowling was so fast that no one, practically, could hit it in front of the wicket, and hits did not count for runs, in single-wicket, behind the wicket. In double-wicket matches he often “beat his side,” we are told—beat his own side—“by byes,” no long-stop being able to stop his bowling effectively. The chief check to the Squire’s career seems to have been the discovery of the famous Browne of Brighton, who bowled, some said, even faster. Beldham, however, made a lot of runs off the latter on one special occasion. This is a digression, into which the consideration of single-wicket matches for money—and is it a wonder we do not have more of them now?—beguiled me. But perhaps it is a good thing that we do not have them, for they may well have been the root and source of all the subsequent “leg-work.” The Coronation match is the first occasion on which Mr. Pycroft notices the “Legs,” in his order of writing, but lower down on the very same page he quotes some words of Mr. Budd, who shared, with Lord Frederick Beauclerk, the credit of being the best amateur cricketer of the day, relative to a match at Nottingham—M.C.C. _v._ Twenty-two of Notts—in which the same evil influence is apparent. “In that match,” he says, “Clarke played”—the future captain of the All England travelling team. “In common with others, I lost my money, and was greatly disappointed at the termination. _One paid player was accused of selling_, and _never employed after_.” Mr. Budd must have done his level best to avert defeat, too, for Bentley records that he caught out no less than nine of the Notts men; but _one paid player was accused of selling_, and Clarke was on the other side! However it happened, Notts won. Mr. Pycroft also says that in old Nyren’s day the big matches were always made for £500 a side, apart, as we may presume, from outside betting. Nowadays a sovereign or a fiver on the ‘Varsity match is about the extent of the gambling that cricket invites. The James Bland referred to above had a brother, Joe—_Arcades ambo_, bookmakers both. These, with “Dick Whittom of Covent Garden—profession unnamed,—Simpson, a gaming-house keeper, and Toll of Esher, as regularly attended at a match as Crockford and Gully at Epsom and Ascot.” Mr. Pycroft scouts the idea that a simple-minded rustic of Surrey or Hampshire would long hold out against the inducements that these gentry would offer them, “at the Green Man and Still,” to sell a match, and indeed some of the naïve revelations that were made to him by rustic senility when he went to gossip with it, over brandy and water, might confirm him in a poor opinion of the local virtue.