Strutt, Sports and Pastimes: cudgelling and single-stick described (1801)

Joseph Strutt’s encyclopaedic survey of English sporting customs, published in 1801, contains an extended account of cudgelling, single-stick, and back-sword play as practised across England, with specific references to West Country practice. Strutt was a principal secondary authority for all subsequent sporting historians writing about these disciplines; the Badminton Library volumes and later manuals cite him extensively. His descriptions of the rules of cudgelling and single-stick establish the baseline understanding of these sports in the period immediately preceding the Cann–Polkinghorne era and the Devon wrestling records held in this archive.

Source: Strutt, J. (1801). The sports and pastimes of the people of England. T. Bensley.