A history of… the original modern Olympics
Paris 2024 would be much improved by the inclusion of the sport of 'shin-kicking'
I should start with a brief apology. I had always intended this series to be about the history of tangible, physical things. As you can probably tell from the title, however, this piece is about an event, rather than a thing. I hope you will allow this diversion – I find its history to be fascinating, and now seemed like the most appropriate time to be writing about it!
If you were to ask someone about the history of the Olympics most would tell you that it was an event that took place in ancient Greece, but then ceased for a couple of thousand years before it was revived in 1896 by Baron Pierre de Coubertin. A few might know that in revolutionary France L'Olympiade de la République was held annually between 1796 and 1798. Some could mention the Olympic games held in Sweden in 1834 and 1836 in front of crowds numbering in the tens of thousands. Others still might claim that the true ancestor of the modern games was the Annual Olympic Festival held in Liverpool between 1862 and 1867 (and whose programme was copied almost exactly for the ‘first’ modern games in 1896).
Something all of these ‘Olympic’ events have in common is the brevity of their existence. What few people know is that a form of the Olympics ran for more than 200 years, not far from where I live today, the Cotswold Olimpick Games.
In probably 1612 a lawyer named Robert Dover arranged a set of games in a natural amphitheatre above the town of Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds - a place now called “Dover’s Hill”.
It is unclear whether the games were a wholly novel event or if he co-opted an existing church ale – a parish celebration, often a fundraiser, where there was dancing and festivities and, err, the drinking of large quantities of ale. It is possible that he was inspired by the Gog Magog Games he would have encountered as a student at Cambridge University. As to exactly why he started the games, Dover himself expressed bewilderment (this being the 17th century he of course did so in verse):
I cannot tell what planet ruled, when I
First undertook this mirth, this jollity,
Nor can I give account to you at all,
How this conceit into my brain did fall.
Or how I durst assemble, call together
Such multitudes of people as come hither.
From the outset the games had the support of James I who had written in support for such activities in Basilikon Doron, a treatise on government sent as a letter to his eldest son, Henry, the following:
…certain days in the year would be appointed, for delighting the people with public spectacles of all honest games, and exercise of arms…
The “certain days” chosen by Dover were the Thursday and Friday of Whitsun week, which generally fall sometime between mid-May and mid-June. Some of the sports in these games would not be out of place in the modern Olympics – running, jumping, lifting weights, throwing sledgehammers, wrestling and so on. Some more akin to modern country pursuits – greyhound and horse racing and hare-coursing. Others, such as dancing we probably wouldn’t really consider as sports today and there are two events that most people will be wholly unfamiliar with.
The first of these is the ancient and nobel sport of shin-kicking (also known as shin-digging or purring) which has been described as the only truly English martial art (but, um, one that you shall see is not very practical). The rules of the sport are simple. Two people face each other and grab their opponent’s shoulders (or collar). They then kick each other’s shins with their toes (and sometimes the inside of their foot) until one of them can bear the pain no more and cries out “Sufficient!”. The event was overseen, as were all at the Cotswold Olimpicks, by a ‘stickler’ (so named because they would carry a stick which could be used to separate two swordsmen) – this is where the expression ‘a stickler for the rules’ comes from. As you can imagine it was a fairly brutal sport – some players were said to wear steel-toed boots while others would train by hitting their shins with hammers to build up their tolerance to pain. You may be relieved to learn that in the modern incarnation of the sport (it does still take place) players have to wear soft-soled shoes and pad their trousers with straw.
The second, I think it fair to say, was less of a sport, more of a lewd spectacle, the smock race. The principle was very simple: women would have a foot race with the winner receiving an item of clothing, usually a smock, which was then a very expensive item indeed, particularly for the rural poor. The women concerned would generally run wearing nothing but a simple cotton shift. Nominally this was to allow the freedom of movement to run as quickly as possible; however, as the race proceeded, and the shift became soaked with sweat it would cling tightly to the body and sometimes become translucent. Yes, this was essentially the 17th-century equivalent of a wet t-shirt competition. The writer Richard Graves describes the scene at the start of a smock race at Dover’s games in his 1773 novel The Spiritual Quixote:
…and proclamation was made, that a holland shift, which was adorned with ribbands, and displayed upon a pole, was going to be run for; and six young women began to exhibit themselves before the whole assembly, in a dress hardly reconcileable to the rules of decency.
You may (or may not) be reassured to know that such displays were not limited to women. Here is the description of an even more scandalous event that took place in nearby Woodstock on 20th September 1720 by the Oxford diarist Thomas Hearne:
Yesterday was a great foot-race at Woodstock for 1400lbs between a running footman of the Duke of Wharton’s and a running footman of Mr. Diston’s of Woodstock, running the four-mile course. Mr Diston’s man being about 25 years of age (and the duke’s about 45) got it with ease, out distancing the duke’s man by near half a mile. They both ran naked, there being not the least scrap of any thing to cover them, not so much as shoes and pumps, which was looked upon deservedly as the height of impudence, and the greatest affront to the ladies, of which there was a very great number1.
One could be forgiven for thinking, having read this far, that the games were little more than a glorified village fete, and as such scarcely deserving of such attention. If so, the failing is mine. The games were a huge deal: thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people would attend. A wooden fort, called ‘Dover’s Castle’ would be built atop the hill from which cannons would be fired and fireworks launched. The games were the biggest, and most famous, sporting events in England (and probably the world) during the 17th century. So significant were they that in 1636 a book of 30 laudatory poems about the games was published – the poets included such greats as Michael Drayton, Thomas Heywood, Sir William Davenant, and, the greatest of them all, Ben Jonson:
If Jonson writing about the games isn’t good enough for you, then let me go one better – they are even mentioned in Shakespeare!2 In The Merry Wives of Windsor there is the following exchange:
SLENDER
How does your fallow greyhound, sir? I heard say he was outrun on Cotsall.PAGE
It could not be judged, sir.SLENDER
You’ll not confess, you’ll not confess.SHALLOW
That he will not. ’Tis your fault, ’tis your fault. ’Tis a good dog.
As the word ‘Cotsall’ is a 17th-century term for ‘Cotswolds’, a number of scholars believe that this can only be referring to the greyhound racing that took place at Dover’s Olympics. Interestingly this passage doesn’t appear in the early 1602 quarto version of the play, which makes sense, because the games hadn’t started then, but it does however appear in the 1623 first folio. Given that games ran for at least four years before Shakespeare’s death in 1616 and that he spent those years living in Stratford-upon-Avon, a mere 12 miles from where they took place, he absolutely would have known about them! Whoever added this line to the play, be it Shakespeare or not, its inclusion demonstrates that audiences in London – and far beyond – would have been familiar with the games.
It wasn’t all plain sailing for Dover and his games though. Puritanism was on the rise in England in the early decades of the 17th century and they considered such things as games, drinking and festivals as hell-inducingly sinful – indeed it seems likely that James I’s support of the games was in part an attempt to mitigate some of the political challenges presented by the Puritans. After his death in 1625 Charles I ascended to the throne and, succumbing to puritanical pressures, passed an act of Parliament restricting people’s activities on the Sabbath. He reversed his position in 1633, but the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642 put an end to the Olimpicks until the Restoration of 1660.
In the 18th and 19th centuries the games flourished, attracting crowds of up to 30,000 people attracted by such delights as are described in this advertising flyer of 1812:
On Thursday in Whit-week, On that Highly-renowned and universally admired spot called Dover’s Hill, Near Chipping Campden. Glos. The sports will commence with a grand match of Backswords for a purse of guineas, To be played by 9 or 7 men on a side. Each side must appear in the ring by 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Or 15s. each pair will be given for as many as will play. Wrestling for belts and others prizes. Also Jumping in bags and dancing. And a Jingling Match for 10s. 6d. As well as divers others of celebrated Cotswold and Olympic games, for which this annual meeting, has been famed for centuries.
Not everyone was a fan of the games though. The Reverend Geoffrey Drinkwater Bourne, the rector of the parish in which the games took place, wrote:
From 1846 onwards, the games, instead of being as they originally were intended to be decorously conducted, became the trysting place of all the lowest scum of the population which lived in the districts lying between Birmingham and Oxford.
What finally did for the games was the enclosure, the appropriation of common land and its allocation to private individuals, of the common land upon which they took place in 1852. Purely by chance the Reverend Bourne acquired 63 acres (25 hectares) of this land!
This did not mark the end of English Olympics though. In 1850 the Wenlock Olympian Games were started in the village of Much Wenlock, Shropshire, by Dr William Penny Brookes, who was in part inspired by Dover’s games. The Wenlock event was visited by the founder of the modern olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, in 1890 and this inspired him to form the International Olympic Committee. One of the mascots of the 2012 London Olympics was called ‘Wenlock’ in recognition of this, though I think it would have been fairer if they had called it ‘Dover’. After all, had it not been for the efforts of Robert Dover in 1612 there could well be no games taking place in Paris at the moment!
It proved impossible to keep the Cotswold Olimpick Games down however – they were restarted in 1951 and continue, on Dover’s hill, to this day. I really hope to make it there next year, and had better end this now, as I need to practise my shin-kicking…
I fear that it might be the “height of impudence” on my part to wonder if the very great number of ladies were present precisely because they knew that two fit men would be running naked…
Probably.