away to stool-ball."

[818] Quoted by Strutt, "Sports and Pastimes," p. 166.

Strutt informs us that this game, as played in the north, "consists in
simply setting a stool upon the ground, and one of the players takes his
place before it, while his antagonist, standing at a distance, tosses a
ball with the intention of striking the stool; and this is the business
of the former to prevent by beating it away with the hand, reckoning one
to the game for every stroke of the ball; if, on the contrary, it should
be missed by the hand and touch the stool, the players change places.
The conqueror is he who strikes the ball most times before it touches
the stool."

_Tennis._ According to a story told by the old annalists, one of the
most interesting historical events in connection with this game happened
when Henry V. was meditating war against France. "The Dolphin," says
Hall in his "Chronicle," "thynkyng King Henry to be given still to such
plaies and lyght folies as he exercised and used before the tyme that he
was exalted to the Croune, sent to hym a tunne of tennis balles to plaie
with, as who saied that he had better skill of tennis than of warre." On
the foundation of this incident, as told by Holinshed, Shakespeare has
constructed his fine scene of the French Ambassadors' audience in "Henry
V." (i. 2). As soon as the first Ambassador has given the Dauphin's
message and insulting gift, the English king speaks thus:

"We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us;
His present and your pains we thank you for:
When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,
We will, in France, by God's grace, play a set
Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.
Tell him, he hath made a match with such a wrangler
That all the courts of France will be disturb'd
With chases."

In "Hamlet" (ii. 1), Polonius speaks of this pastime, and alludes to
"falling out at tennis." In the sixteenth century tennis-courts were
common in England, and the establishment of such places was countenanced
by the example of royalty. It is evident that Henry VII. was a
tennis-player. In a MS. register of his expenditures, made in the
thirteenth year of his reign, this entry occurs: "Item, for the king's
loss at tennis, twelvepence; for the loss of balls, threepence." Stow,
in his "Survey of London," tells us that among the additions that King
Henry VIII. made to Whitehall, were "divers fair tennis-courts,
bowling-al