Declaration of Sports
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The Declaration of Sports (also known as the Book of Sports) was a declaration of
Issue under James I
It was originally issued in consultation with
The declaration listed
On the one hand, the declaration rebuked Puritans and other "precise persons", and was issued to counteract the growing Puritan calls for strict abstinence on the
Re-issue under Charles I
The declaration was reissued by Charles I on 18 October 1633, as The King's Majesty's declaration to his subjects concerning lawful sports to be used. It was claimed by William Prynne that the new declaration was written by Charles' new Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, but Laud denied this and there is only evidence that he supported and facilitated the reissue.[2] Moreover, the 1633 declaration has the same main text as the 1617 and 1618 declarations of King James, with the primary differences an additional introduction and conclusion adding wakes and ales (countryside festivals[3]) to the list of sanctioned recreations. Charles ordered that any minister who refused to read it would be deprived of position. As the Puritans gained power in Parliament in the lead-up to the English Civil War, hostility to the Book of Sports grew. Attempts to enforce the declaration came to an end with the fall of Archbishop Laud in 1640, and Parliament ordered the book publicly burned in 1643, two years before Laud was executed.
Footnotes
- ^ a b c Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 735.
- ^ Craigie, Minor Prose Works of James VI and James I, pp. 227–28.
- ^ "What does ale mean?". Dictionary.net. Archived from the original on 13 March 2013. Retrieved 19 April 2012.
Bibliography and further reading
- Craigie, James, ed. Minor Prose Works of James VI and James I. Scottish Text Society, 1982: 217–241.
- George, David, ed. Records of Early English Drama: Lancashire. University of Toronto Press, 1991.
- Govett, L. A. The King's Book of Sports: A History of the Declarations of King James I. and King Charles I. as to the Use of Lawful Sports on Sundays. London, 1890.
- Parker, Kenneth. The English Sabbath: A Study of Doctrine and Discipline from the Reformation to the Civil War. Cambridge University Press, 1988.
- Semenza, Gregory M. Colón. Sport, Politics, and Literature in the English Renaissance. University of Delaware Press/AUP, 2003.
- Tait, James. "The Declaration of Sports for Lancashire". English Historical Review 32 (1917): 561–568.
External links
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