Dover's Olympics
17th Century England's Festival of Sport
Festive games were a fixture of seventeenth century Cotswold life. A public holiday of sports and dancing (and drinking) was held every Whitsuntide on the Gloucestershire hills above Chipping Campden. The tradition of these ‘Whit-ales’ stretched back to the middle ages and beyond, but 1612 a local lawyer named Robert Dover took it upon himself to expand these holiday sports into an annual festival.
‘Dover’s Games’, as the holiday came to be known, was a two-day event held on the Thursday and Friday following Whit Sunday. Activities were based on traditional country sports and customs: horse races, hare coursing, wrestling, bouts of 'shin-kicking', hammer-throwing, as well as acrobatics and country dances.
Dover obtained royal assent for these games from King James through the influence of his neighbour, Endymion Porter, a royal courtier and later groom to the bedchamber to Charles I. The venue for the event was the natural amphitheatre called Kingcome Plain above Chipping Campden (soon re-Christened 'Dover's Hill'). At Whitsun, a temporary wooden castle (‘Dover’ castle) was erected, from which miniature cannon would fire to announce the start of contests. Dover acted as master of ceremonies, presiding over the games on horseback and dressed in suitably impressive regalia – his hat, feather and ruff allegedly being gifts from King James himself.
By the mid-1630s Dover's Games were famous across the country, reputedly drawing people from a distance of sixty miles to watch and partake in the entertainments. A literary commemoration of the games, Annalia Dubrensia (The Chronicles of Dover) appeared in 1636, possibly to coincide with Dover’s sixtieth birthday. The thirty-five page volume was filled with celebratory poems, praising Dover for his achievement, his charity, and describing the annual event as ‘Mr. Robert Dover’s Olimpick games upon the Cotswold Hills’. Several of the contributors (including Ben Jonson and Thomas Heywood) were authors closely associated with the royal court who had defended their literary work against Puritan attack. Was Dover’s ‘Olimpick Games’, then, a rebuttal to the increasing 'puritanical' criticism of religious festivals and their associated entertainments?
Dover obtained royal assent for these games from King James through the influence of his neighbour, Endymion Porter, a royal courtier and later groom to the bedchamber to Charles I. The venue for the event was the natural amphitheatre called Kingcome Plain above Chipping Campden (soon re-Christened 'Dover's Hill'). At Whitsun, a temporary wooden castle (‘Dover’ castle) was erected, from which miniature cannon would fire to announce the start of contests. Dover acted as master of ceremonies, presiding over the games on horseback and dressed in suitably impressive regalia – his hat, feather and ruff allegedly being gifts from King James himself.
By the mid-1630s Dover's Games were famous across the country, reputedly drawing people from a distance of sixty miles to watch and partake in the entertainments. A literary commemoration of the games, Annalia Dubrensia (The Chronicles of Dover) appeared in 1636, possibly to coincide with Dover’s sixtieth birthday. The thirty-five page volume was filled with celebratory poems, praising Dover for his achievement, his charity, and describing the annual event as ‘Mr. Robert Dover’s Olimpick games upon the Cotswold Hills’. Several of the contributors (including Ben Jonson and Thomas Heywood) were authors closely associated with the royal court who had defended their literary work against Puritan attack. Was Dover’s ‘Olimpick Games’, then, a rebuttal to the increasing 'puritanical' criticism of religious festivals and their associated entertainments?
Dover and Royalism
By the early part of King James's reign Dover, a lawyer by profession, had acquired a reputation for settling disputes out of court. His preferred method of amicable reconciliation, coupled with his belief that people should be encouraged to be peaceable and to harmonise, may have given him the idea of expanding the local Whitsun frolics into a national event. Importantly, Dover’s patronage of the Cotswold games came just five years before James I’s Declaration of Sports (1618), which encouraged certain games to be played on holy days.
In 1617, James I had been appalled to discover that some Lancashire ministers had forbidden their congregations from participating in any sports on the Sabbath, or other days of religious observance. The King subsequently published a list of sports he believed were permissible on such occasions Lord's Day, seeking to curb the clergy’s puritanical zeal by royal direction. Blood sports, theatrical 'interludes' and bowling were prohibited on Sundays; archery, Morris dancing and other traditional customs were permissible. The encouragement of Dover’s games by the royal court seems to have been similarly motivated.
James I firmly believed that sport promoted well-being, declaring: ‘certain days in the year . . . appointed for delighting the people with public spectacles of all honest games and exercise of arms, as also for convening of neighbours’ (quoted in Fischlin and Fortier, 1996). The need for 'excise of arms' prompted Dover to include sword fighting and pike exercises in his games. It is significant that Dover’s Olimpicks was at its most popular in the 1630s, during the person rule of King Charles I: King Charles reissued his father’s Declaration of Sports in 1633.
Understanding Dover’s own motivation for the Olimpicks becomes easier when we learn a little more about the man himself. In his youth he had been employed as a servant to a Catholic priest imprisoned for Recusancy. Dover chose to leave Cambridge without a degree rather than swear the Oath of Supremacy, which acknowledged the monarch as the head of the church. If Dover were a Catholic, as this anecdotal evidence suggests, this would explain his resistance to the puritanical campaign against the traditional festivals observed in the pre-Reformation church. Dover's associate, Endymion Porter, also had Catholic sympathies.
In 1617, James I had been appalled to discover that some Lancashire ministers had forbidden their congregations from participating in any sports on the Sabbath, or other days of religious observance. The King subsequently published a list of sports he believed were permissible on such occasions Lord's Day, seeking to curb the clergy’s puritanical zeal by royal direction. Blood sports, theatrical 'interludes' and bowling were prohibited on Sundays; archery, Morris dancing and other traditional customs were permissible. The encouragement of Dover’s games by the royal court seems to have been similarly motivated.
James I firmly believed that sport promoted well-being, declaring: ‘certain days in the year . . . appointed for delighting the people with public spectacles of all honest games and exercise of arms, as also for convening of neighbours’ (quoted in Fischlin and Fortier, 1996). The need for 'excise of arms' prompted Dover to include sword fighting and pike exercises in his games. It is significant that Dover’s Olimpicks was at its most popular in the 1630s, during the person rule of King Charles I: King Charles reissued his father’s Declaration of Sports in 1633.
Understanding Dover’s own motivation for the Olimpicks becomes easier when we learn a little more about the man himself. In his youth he had been employed as a servant to a Catholic priest imprisoned for Recusancy. Dover chose to leave Cambridge without a degree rather than swear the Oath of Supremacy, which acknowledged the monarch as the head of the church. If Dover were a Catholic, as this anecdotal evidence suggests, this would explain his resistance to the puritanical campaign against the traditional festivals observed in the pre-Reformation church. Dover's associate, Endymion Porter, also had Catholic sympathies.
The Olympicks and the Civil War
It is clear, then, that Dover’s Olimpicks and royal policy were mutually supportive: the games promoted the kind of permissible merry-making that was close to Dover's heart and sanctioned by the Book of Sports, and Dover gained the approval of the royal court. Dover himself appended a few lines to the Annalia Dubrensia, defending in which ‘his “innocent pastime” against the puritan charge of being “a wicked, horrid sin”’ (Westby-Gibson, 1888). The year of the Annalia’s publication saw a tacit royal patronage of the games when they were attended by the 17 year-old Prince Rupert. There are links too between Dover's games and Civil War Royalism: William D'Avenant, a courtier poet who contributed verses to the Annalia, later served as lieutenant general of the Royalist ordnance and was knighted for his military service by Charles I in the trenches before the siege of Gloucester in 1643. Dover’s son also served in the Royalist army under Prince Rupert during the 1640s.
Dover's Olimpicks continued to be celebrated in the first years of the Civil War, but in 1644 they were cancelled by order of William Bartholomew, the local vicar in Chipping Campden. Bartholomew was no Parliamentarian - he complained of being ‘miserably harassed by the rebels’ (Holdsworth, 2000) - but he was no 'high-church' advocate of Whitsun revels either, and took steps to have the games closed down.
Dover himself lived to see King Charles's defeat in the Civil War, dying in 1652, but his games were revived in the royalist resurgence of 1660s. ‘Dover’s Meeting’ continued to be an annual fixture until the mid-19th century, when they were finally brought to an end after pressure by a local Justice of the Peace who objected to the rowdy behaviour that the games provoked. Dover’s Hill was bought by the National Trust in 1928. Revived as a novelty for the Festival of Britain in 1951, the games have been an annual occurrence since 1966 and continue to be held on Dover's Hill on the Friday following the spring bank holiday - shin-kicking remains as popular now as it was nearly 400 years ago.
Robert Hodkinson
August 2016 (updated 2020)
Dover's Olimpicks continued to be celebrated in the first years of the Civil War, but in 1644 they were cancelled by order of William Bartholomew, the local vicar in Chipping Campden. Bartholomew was no Parliamentarian - he complained of being ‘miserably harassed by the rebels’ (Holdsworth, 2000) - but he was no 'high-church' advocate of Whitsun revels either, and took steps to have the games closed down.
Dover himself lived to see King Charles's defeat in the Civil War, dying in 1652, but his games were revived in the royalist resurgence of 1660s. ‘Dover’s Meeting’ continued to be an annual fixture until the mid-19th century, when they were finally brought to an end after pressure by a local Justice of the Peace who objected to the rowdy behaviour that the games provoked. Dover’s Hill was bought by the National Trust in 1928. Revived as a novelty for the Festival of Britain in 1951, the games have been an annual occurrence since 1966 and continue to be held on Dover's Hill on the Friday following the spring bank holiday - shin-kicking remains as popular now as it was nearly 400 years ago.
Robert Hodkinson
August 2016 (updated 2020)
Sources:
Burns, F. D. A. ‘Dover, Robert (1581/2–1652)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: University Press, 2004.
Fischlin, D. and Fortier, M. (eds.) James I: The True Law of Free Monarchy and Basilikon Doron - a Modernised Edition. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Rennaissance Studies, 1996.
Gardiner, S. R. (ed.) Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution 1625-1660. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.
Holdsworth, D. ‘Two 17th Century Vicars of Campden’, Notes & Queries, III, 3. Campden and District Historical and Archaeological Society, 2000.
Westby-Gibson, J. ‘Dover, Captain Robert (1575?–1641)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: University Press, 1888.
Images:
John Rylands Library, Special collections blog [online] http://rylandscollections.wordpress.com/
'The Olympick Games', CustomGB [online] http://www.customgb.co.uk/the-olimpick-games/
Burns, F. D. A. ‘Dover, Robert (1581/2–1652)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: University Press, 2004.
Fischlin, D. and Fortier, M. (eds.) James I: The True Law of Free Monarchy and Basilikon Doron - a Modernised Edition. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Rennaissance Studies, 1996.
Gardiner, S. R. (ed.) Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution 1625-1660. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.
Holdsworth, D. ‘Two 17th Century Vicars of Campden’, Notes & Queries, III, 3. Campden and District Historical and Archaeological Society, 2000.
Westby-Gibson, J. ‘Dover, Captain Robert (1575?–1641)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: University Press, 1888.
Images:
John Rylands Library, Special collections blog [online] http://rylandscollections.wordpress.com/
'The Olympick Games', CustomGB [online] http://www.customgb.co.uk/the-olimpick-games/