as duck hunting, fishing, shooting, hand-ball and Krickett, and at 6 we returne all home in good order, but soundly tyred and werry."
What is considered as the beginning of the doublewicket game was played in Scotland in 1700 under the name of Cat and Dog. Dr. Jamieson, in his Dictionary, 1722, says:—
"This is a game for three players at least, who are furnished with clubs. They cut out two holes, each about a foot in diameter and seven inches in depth, and twenty-six feet apart; one man guards each hole with his club; these clubs are called Dogs. A piece of wood, about four inches long and one inch in diameter, called a Cat, is pitched by a third person from one hole towards the player at the other, who is to prevent the cat from getting into the hole. If it pitches in the hole the party who threw it takes his turn with the club. If the cat be struck, the club bearers change places, and each change of place counts one to the score, like Club-ball."
If we are to accept that as authentic, then small beginnings have had great developments, and something may be said in favour of English Tipcat as having made its mark on the game.
Strutt, in his Sports and Pastimes, quotes from Thomas D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy (1710):
- "Her was the prettiest fellow
- At football and at Cricket."
In 1736 all doubt of the game being firmly established is at an end, for Horace Walpole on the 6th of May of that year, two years after he had left Eton, wrote:
"An expedition against bargemen, or a match at Cricket, may be very pretty things to recollect; but, thank my stars, I can remember things that are very near as pretty." And again, in 1749, he says: "I could tell you of Lord Montford's making cricket-matches,
