us suppose that when Small was eighteen he threw himself into the project—in 1755, or thereabouts. A fire at Lord's, in 1825—the year in which the Hambledon Club was finally broken up unhappily destroyed all the records of these early days. Richard Nyren's name appears first in Lillywhite's Cricket Scores and Biographies in a single-wicket match in 1771, between Five of the Hambledon Club and Five (i.e., four) of Kent, with Minshull. This was the score:
| Five of Hambledon | Five of West Kent | ||||
| John Small, Senr. | 4 | 6 | J. Boorman | 0 | 2 |
| Thomas Sueer | 1 | 0 | Richard May | 1 | 7 |
| George Leer | 1 | 7 | Minshul | 26 | 11 |
| Thomas Brett | 0 | 4 | Joseph Miller | 0 | 2 |
| Richard Nyren | 5 | 29 | John Frame | 8 | 1* |
| —— 11 |
—— 46 |
* Not out. |
—— 35 |
—— 23 | |
John Nyren was born at Hambledon on December 15, 1764. His education, says his granddaughter, was desultory, largely owing to the difficulties then inseparable from his religion. We must suppose that as a boy he helped his father in various ways on his farm. He joined the Hambledon Club in 1778, when he was fourteen, as 'a farmer's pony'; he stood by it until 1791, when his father moved to London and the great days were over. Only a few reports of the matches remain, owing to the fire of which I have spoken. Lillywhite, in the Cricket Scores and Biographies, gives in the great Richard-Nyrenic period but four in which John Nyren's name appears (and in two of these the name may be that of Richard, and not John). The first of them was in June, 1787, on the Vine at Sevenoaks (where I watch good matches every summer), between the Hambledon Club (with Lumpy) and Kent. Kent won by four wickets, and Nyren (J. or R.) made 10 and 2. Noah Mann was run out, 0, in both innings—the impetuous gipsy! Tom Walker made 43 and 1 0, and H. Walker 39 and 24. In July, on Perriam Downs,
