ron's favourite sports, and that in spite of his lame foot: witness the lines,—
"Together joined in cricket's manly toil,
Or shared the produce of the river's spoil."
Byron mentions in his letters that he played in the eleven of Harrow against Eton in 1805. The score is given in Lillywhite's Public-School Matches.
The excellent William Wilberforce was fond of cricket, and was laid up by a severe blow on the leg at Rothley while playing with his sons: he says the doctor told him a little more would have broken the bone.
Cricket, we have shown, was originally classed among the games of the lower orders; so we find the yeomen infinitely superior to the gentlemen even before cricket had become by any means so much of a profession as it is now. Tom Walker, Beldham, John Wells, Fennex, Hammond, Robinson, Lambert, Sparkes, H. Bentley, Bennett, Freemantle, were the best professionals of the day. For it was seven or eight years later that Mr. E. H. Budd, and his unequal rival, Mr. Brand, and his sporting friend, Osbaldeston, as also that fine player, E. Parry, Esq., severally appeared; and later still, that Mr. Ward, Howard, Beagley, Thumwood, Caldecourt, Slater, Flavel, Ashby, Searle, and Saunders, successively showed every
