Controversy
In the 17th century many Puritans believed that the slightest action might lead to sin, and even to Hell if it was not repented. The Puritans frowned on such festivities as the Games as being of pagan origin, promoting immorality and drunkenness, and disapproved of any celebration on a church holiday such as Whitsun. A Puritan revolt over a 1627 "Bringing in the May" festival at Mount Wollaston in present-day Massachusetts resulted in the expulsion of its organiser from the colony. King James, on the other hand, viewed Puritanism as a challenge to the authority of the monarch.
The fine clothes donated by the King, which Dover wore when he presided over the Games, were not just a fashion statement, but also a political one. The feather in Dover's hat was a "flag of defiance to virtue" in Puritan eyes, and even the starch probably used in the washing of his ruff was evil, according to the Puritan writer Philip Stubbes. He described starch as " certain kind of liquid matter ... wherein the Devil hath learned them to wash and die their ruffs".
James was succeeded by King Charles I in 1625. The new King reluctantly consented to an Act of Parliament "for punishing divers abuses on the Lord's Day, called Sunday". The Act restricted the activities that were allowed to take place on a Sunday, and prohibited any meetings of people outside their own parishes on Sunday. Many Puritan landowners went even further, forbidding their workers to attend any church ales, culminating in two Somerset circuit judges ruling in 1632 that "all public ales be henceforth utterly suppressed".
The following year Charles reversed the judges' ruling of 1632. He produced a new version of James's Book of Sports, which he ordered to be read in every church. In it he wrote:
We find that under pretence of taking away abuses, there hath been a general forbidding, not only of ordinary meetings, but of the feast of the dedication of the churches, commonly called wakes ... Now our express will and pleasure is that these feasts, with others, shall be observed, and that our Justices of the Peace ... shall look to it, both that all disorders there may be prevented or punished, and that all neighbourhood and freedom, with man-like and lawful exercises be used.The outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642 brought the Games to an end.
Read more about this topic: Cotswold Olimpick Games
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