‘Bodily refreshment’ and Leisure. Political and Economic Dimensions of Early Modern Sports Culture
The beginnings of a commercialised leisure and sports industry are generally dated to the Industrial Revolution. However, the first concepts of leisure and the origins of a commercialised leisure and sports industry can be traced back to as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century in England.
In 1618 James I issued ‘The King’s Declaration to His Subjects, Concerning Lawfull Sports to be used’ in which he condemned the prohibition of sport on Sundays and Holy Days enforced in some Puritan counties. Provoking resistance from Puritan magistrates and theologians all over England, the declaration fuelled a controversy among the elite on the meaning of recreation and leisure that questioned appropriate forms of leisure for Christians and the worth of recreational physical activities. These questions concerned not only well-educated clerics, but also ordinary people, as discussions of the declaration in diaries and correspondence show. Particular leisure activities and the first forms of commercialised leisure had been established since the sixteenth century in London and were becoming popular in the countryside. Sport and leisure facilities such as tennis courts and bowling alleys at court and in parks created for the purpose offered those with enough money the chance of physical recreation and sociability. But taverns and inns also provided opportunities for leisure by providing, among other things, balls for playing football, cudgels for cudgel fighting and bowling alleys to attract their mainly middle- and lower-class customers.
My project aims to examine the social importance and meaning of leisure, especially recreational physical activities, by considering the different political and religious positions in the debate about the ‘Declaration of Sport’ and what impact if any this discussion had in practice. It will ask what importance sport or recreational physical activities had for different social and religious groups in early modern society; how these concepts influenced the development of leisure and sport facilities in seventeenth-century England; and what impact the Civil War and Puritan rule had. Another path of inquiry will focus on the social relevance of these facilities, and ask how they were used for the purposes of socialising and emphasizing social distinctions.