The ball is used
by noblemen and gentlemen in tennis-courts, and by people of meaner sort
in the open fields and streets.
The marching forth of citizens' sons, and other young men on horseback,
with disarmed lances and shields, there to practise feats of war, man
against man, hath long since been left off, but in their stead they have
used, on horseback, to run at a dead mark, called a quintain; for note
whereof I read, that in the year of Christ 1253, the 38th of Henry III.,
the youthful citizens, for an exercise of their activity, set forth a
game to run at the quintain; and whoever did best should have a peacock,
which they had prepared as a prize. Certain of the king's servants,
because the court lay then at Westminster, came, as it were, in spite of
the citizens, to that game, and, giving reproachful names to the
Londoners, which for the dignity of the city, and ancient privilege
which they ought to have enjoyed, were called barons, the said
Londoners, not able to bear so to be misused, fell upon the king's
servants, and beat them shrewdly, so that, upon complaint to the king,
he fined the citizens to pay a thousand marks. This exercise of running
at the quintain was practised by the youthful citizens as well in summer
as in winter, namely, in the feast of Christmas, I have seen a quintain
set upon Cornhill, by the Leadenhall, where the attendants on the lords
of merry disports have run, and made great pastime; for he that hit not
the broad end of the quintain was of all men laughed to scorn, and he
that hit it full, if he rid not the faster, had a sound blow in his neck
with a bag full of sand hung on the other end.
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