An adapted version of this post was published as Pancakes and football: a brief history of Shrove Tuesday in the UK for The Conversation.

For nearly a millennium, Brits have celebrated Shrove Tuesday with food and sport. Today, pancakes have become the chief focus of what was once a more elaborate pre-Lent festival called Shrovetide. But during the medieval and early modern periods, a spirit of communal play and competition pervaded almost every aspect of Britain’s Carnival. Shrovetide games ranged from cruel animal blood-sports like cock-fighting, to tug-o-wars and skipping. Yet no Shrovetide sport was more widespread and long standing than football.

According to players from the Scottish Borders town of Duns in 1686, it was ‘an ancient custom throughout all this kingdom to play at football upon Fastens Eve [i.e. Shrove Tuesday]’. And indeed, Shrovetide ball games are documented from the 12^th century onwards, in scores of communities throughout Britain and northern France, with several surviving today in England and Scotland. Despite legal bans on football in pre-modern Britain, many Shrove Tuesday matches benefited from the support of those in charge, like the bailiff and elders of Duns. Why did some civic institutions and leaders embrace this game in the face of prohibition, and what can this tell us about the social value of football, sport and festivity in the past?   

‘Football’ in this pre-modern sense refers to a loose family of games where players contested a ball with hand and/or foot, usually towards a goal. As ancestors to our modern football codes (association, rugby, American, etc.), ‘folk football’ matches varied considerably in manner of play. Shrovetide games were often the marquee match-ups of the day, mass games with scores or even hundreds of participants. Whether town versus country, or married against bachelors, teams battled to move the ball through streets and countryside, towards goals like mills, streams, or even the kirk.  

Due to its destructive potential, football oft fell afoul of authority. Medieval royal prohibitions called it ‘vain, unthrifty and idle’, while Puritans deemed it ‘a bloody and murdering practise’. But others in power obviously saw its appeal, to judge from its festive sponsorship in many cities and towns. Tudor Chester provides a detailed and prototypical example. Every Shrove Tuesday in the early 16^th century, the Merchant Drapers’ Company received a football from the Shoemakers’ Company, a wooden ball from the Saddlers’ Company, and a small silk ball from each city freeman married within the last year. Under the mayor’s supervision, the Drapers tossed up the balls (which doubled as prizes) for the craftsmen and crowd to play from the common field to the city’s Common Hall.

The particulars of Chester’s Shrovetide sponsorship were mirrored throughout the British Isles. Craftsmen and guilds played key roles as participants and providers of the ball. On Shrove Tuesday 1373, skinners and tailors played in the streets of London, while butchers did the same in Jedburgh 1704. The Skinners’ and Shoemakers’ companies paraded the ball to the match between married and bachelor freemen in late 18^th-century Alnwick. Indeed, leather-workers like shoemakers were especially important, crafting Shrovetide footballs in 15^th-century London, 16^th-century Glasgow and 17^th-century Carlisle.  

Newlyweds also fronted the ball in many communities. As in Chester, recently married freemen of Dublin had to present a ball to city magistrates every Shrove Tuesday during the 15^th and 16^th centuries. Newlywed members of trade guilds in Perth and Corfe Castle (Dorset) also paid a Shrovetide ‘football due’, while a similar custom seems to have existed in medieval London. These were part of a broader folk tradition, where new married couples owed a ‘bride ball’ or ‘ball money’ to their community. Since weddings were customary during Shrovetide (and prohibited in Lent), it was an ideal time to collect.

Behind all this, civic governments might collect the ‘wedding ball’ dues, hire drummers and pipers to pump up the crowds, or pay for equipment. Gradually, authorities in most major cities did withdraw their support from Shrovetide football. Some cities like St Andrews simply banned it; in 1537 the burgh provost and university dean cancelled the annual match because of its ‘many ills’ and ‘disorder’. Others ‘reformed’ the games into less dangerous entertainments, like foot and horse races in 1540 Chester, or a public display of the city fire-engine’s capabilities in 1725 Carlisle. By the middle of the 18^th century, officially sanctioned Shrovetide ball games were mostly confined to smaller market towns and villages. But why did official support for an ‘unlawful game’ linger as long as it did?

Partially, sponsorship let officials (somewhat) contain a rowdy game that might happen with or without their consent. Certainly, outright bans were rarely effective, to judge from repeated mayoral ordinances ‘against football play at Shrovetide’ in the streets of Elizabethan London. Yet, the appeal of patronage went beyond social control. The often exclusive participation of guild or burgh members (known as ‘freemen’) in Shrovetide ball games reaffirmed corporate status, with its privileges and obligations. These obligations could include football itself. In January 1590, the shoemaker John Neil was made a ‘burgess’ or freeman of Glasgow in exchange for supplying ‘six good and sufficient footballs’ every Shrove Tuesday during his lifetime.

Failure to participate in or furnish football, via payments of the ‘wedding ball’ for example, could result in imprisonment, heavy fines, or the forced closing of a craftsman’s shop. The goods of maltman Robert Dykes of Rutherglen were distrained in 1626 because he failed to join the rest the burgesses on the town green for the annual Shrovetide match. These harsh consequences reflect the worth of Shrove Tuesday football to these pre-modern communities. To them it was not a ‘vain and idle’ game, but an ‘ancient and laudable custom’ of ‘goodly feats and exercise’. Rather than ‘unthrifty’, its value equated to the ‘benefit of the Company’, and the ‘common wealth of the city’, ideals which civic officials deemed well worth preserving.