A glance at the statutes shows that the river was almost the only form of athletics then permissible, for the prohibited sports included “every kind of game in which money is concerned, such as dibs, dice, cards, cricketing in private grounds or gardens of the townspeople ... every kind of game or exercise from which danger, injury, or inconvenience might arise to other people, such as hunting of beasts with any sort of dogs, ferrets, nets or toils, also any use or carrying of muskets, cross-bows, or falchions; neither rope-dancers nor actors, nor shows of gladiators are to be permitted without especial sanction; moreover, the scholars are not to play at football, nor with cudgels, either among themselves or with the townsfolk, a practice from which the most perilous contentions have arisen.” During the earlier half of the century, bell ringing was a form of amusement--and exercise--which was very largely indulged in. At any hour of the day it was the custom to go up into the belfry and practice, with such zest that the ringer sometimes fell from sheer exhaustion. Hearne was known to take a keen interest in the matches which were sometimes arranged between different peals of bells, while Antony Wood, some years before, had joined with his mother and brothers in subscribing towards the foundation of the Merton bells and, as Wordsworth says, “though they were not satisfactory to the ‘curious and critical hearer,’ he plucked at them often with some of his fellow-collegians for recreation sake.” Later on, however, this practice was generally voted boring and even vulgar, and the more “aristocratic door bell and knocker ringing” succeeded it. Hearne himself was pleased to countenance bell-ringing, yet when a proposal was afoot to found “an academy of exercise in the university such as riding the great horse, fencing, etc.,” he would not hear of it or entertain the idea for a moment. “I think,” said he, “’twould have utterly obstructed all true learning.”