Beauclerk and Howard, two of the best players of the day, for £100 a-side. On the morning of the match the Squire was too ill to play, and after scoring one run, retired from the game, when Lambert alone, and unassisted, defeated the two English crack players. I append the full score of this famous victory:—
Lambert, on giving up first-class cricket, became the lessee of the Nutfield Fuller's Earth Works. He was also a noted bellringer. Lambert was about five feet ten inches in height, and had remarkably large hands. He was strongly built, but had a most quarrelsome disposition. He died April 19, 1851, aged seventy-two, and was buried at Burstow.
A few years after 1800 Surrey appears to have suffered a total eclipse, for there was no organised cricket of a representative character in the confines of the shire between 1810 and 1844. Truly there was an encounter with Sussex at Godalming in 1830, and a couple of contests with the Marylebone Club in 1839 and 1844, but these were of no import. The pastime was kept alive and practised on the village greens and in clubs on the outskirts of the metropolis. We read of the Montpelier Club, formed in 1796, which played at Hall's, Camberwell, and the Beehive, at Walworth, while they held their meetings at the Horns Inn, Kennington. There were, too, clubs at Richmond, Godalming, Farnham, Mitcham, Epsom, and Dorking, as well as the East Surrey, Camberwell, South London, West Surrey, and others which could be easily catalogued. But of all these bodies the Montpelier must be given the most honoured niche in history, for from this club Surrey emerged as an organised county.
The acquisition by the builder of the old Beehive ground at Walworth necessitated in 1844 the removal of the Montpelier Club; but mainly owing to the personal influence of Mr W. Baker, an oval-shaped market-garden belonging to the Duchy of Cornwall was secured, and a lease was granted to him for a term of twenty-one years. The autumn of 1844 saw the foundation of the Surrey Club, and the first function of real cricket interest
