was no little pride and honour in the parishes that sent them up, and many a flagon of ale depending in the farms or the hop-grounds they severally represented, as to whether they should, as the spirit-stirring saying was, "prove themselves the better men". I remember in one match,' said Beldham, 'in Kent, Ring was playing against David Harris. The game was much against him. Sir Horace Mann was cutting about with his stick among the daisies, and cheering every run,—you would have thought his whole fortune (and he would often bet some hundreds) was staked upon the game; and, as a new man was going in, he went across to Ring, and said, "Ring, carry your bat through and make up all the runs, and I'll give you ₤10 a-year for life." Well, Ring was out for sixty runs, and only three to tie, and four to beat, and the last man made them. It was Sir Horace who took Aylward away with him out of Hampshire, but the best bat made but a poor bailiff, we heard.
'Cricket was played in Sussex very early, before my day at least; but, that there was no good play I know by this, that Richard Newland, of Slindon in Sussex, as you say, sir, taught old Richard Nyren, and that no Sussex man could be found to play him. Now, a secondrate player of our parish beat Newland easily; so you may judge what the rest of Sussex then were. But before 1780 there were some good players about Hambledon and the Surrey side of Hampshire. Crawte, the best of the Kent men, was stolen away from us; so you will not be wrong, sir, in writing down that Farnham, and thirty miles round, reared all the best players up to my day, about 1780.
'There were some who were then called "the old players",'—and here Fennex's account quite agreed with Beldham's,'—including Frame and old Small. And as to old Small, it is worthy of observation, that Bennett declared it was part of the creed of last century, that Small was the man who "found out cricket", or brought play to any degree of perfection. Of the same school was Sueter, the wicket-keeper, who in those days had
