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(pp35) Prize-fighting was then the order of the day ; and a set-to between two professionals of celebrity would bring together men of all ranks, patricians and proletarians, from the most remote parts of England, to witness what it would have been heresy then to call a barbarous exhibition. The vale of Bicester, being […]
A personal account of a combat between Richard Peeke (Tavistock, Devon), and three Spanish rapiermen. The event happened on 15th November 1625. Peeke documented his account in July 1626. Three-to-One: Being an English-Spanish combat performed by a Western Gentleman of Tavistock in Devonshire, with an English quarterstaff, against three Spaniards [ at once ] with […]
19th February 1667: I saw a comedy acted at Court. In the afternoone I saw a wrestling-match for £1000 in St. James’s Park, before his Maty, a world of lords and other spectators, ‘twixt the Western; and Northern men, Mr. Secretary Morice and Lo. Gerard being the judges. The Western men won. Many greate sums were betted. Evelyn, […]
At Chasteubriant the French King shewed my Lord Marquess great plesure and disport, sometime in plaing at tenice, sometime in shooting, sometime in hunting the bore, somtime at the palla malla, and somtime with his great boisterlie Britons wrastling with my lorde’s yemen of Cornwall, who had much a do to gete the upper hand […]