Sports, BOOK OF

Sports, BOOK OF, the name popularly given to James I.'s Declaration in 1618, that on Sundays, after divine service, 'no lawful recreation should be barred to his good people, which should not tend to the breach of the laws of his kingdom and the canons of his church.' The sports specified were dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, May-games, Whitsun-ales, morris-dances, and the setting up of May-poles. The occasion of this proclamation was the conduct of some Puritan authorities in Lancashire, who, by illegally suppressing instead of regulating the customary recreations of the common people, had excited much discontent, and increased the influence of the Roman Catholics by giving a repulsive aspect to the Reformed religion. Although the Declaration was ordered to be read in the parish churches of the diocese of Chester, this order was not enforced, and the king's design was allowed to drop. Among the excepted unlawful sports were bear-baiting, bull-baiting, bowling, and interludes. Nonconformists and others not attending divine service at church were prohibited from joining in the sports, nor was any one allowed to go out of his own parish for that purpose, or to carry offensive weapons. By republishing this Declaration in 1633, and enforcing with great severity the reading of it by the clergy in their churches, Charles I. and Laud excited among the Puritans a degree of indignation which contributed not a little to the downfall of the monarchy and the church. In 1644 the Long Parliament ordered all copies of it to be called in and publicly burned. See L. A. Govett, The King's Book of Sports (1890).