The Cotswold Olimpick Games began in 1612 and ran until 1852. They were started by a local lawyer, Robert Dover, with the approval of King James I. Events included horse-racing, coursing with hounds, running, jumping, dancing, sledgehammer throwing, fighting with swords and cudgels, and wrestling. Games were attended by all classes of society, including royalty on one occasion.
About Cotswold Olimpick Games in brief
The Cotswold Olimpick Games began in 1612 and ran until 1852. They were started by a local lawyer, Robert Dover, with the approval of King James I. Events included horse-racing, coursing with hounds, running, jumping, dancing, sledgehammer throwing, fighting with swords and cudgels, and wrestling. The Games were attended by all classes of society, including royalty on one occasion. Since 1966 the Games have been held each year on the Friday after Spring Bank Holiday. The British Olympic Association has recognised the Games as ‘the first stirrings of Britain’s Olympic beginnings’ The Games are now set to continue as of 2020, and will be held every year until the end of the 20th century, unless they are cancelled by the British Olympic Committee. They have been revived in 1963 and still continue to be held in the Cots wolds as of 2016. The games are now held on the Thursday and Friday of the week of Whitsun, normally between mid-May and mid-June. Many 17th-century Puritans disapproved of such festivities, believing them to be of pagan origin, and they particularly disapproves of any celebration on a Sunday or a church holiday such asWhitsun. The increasing tensions between the supporters of the king and the Puritans resulted in the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642, bringing the Games to an end. Revived after the Restoration, the Games gradually degenerated into a drunk and disorderly country festival according to their critics. They ended again in 1852, when the common land on which they had been staged was partitioned between local landowners and farmers and subsequently enclosed.
It is unclear whether Dover began the Games from scratch, or took over from an existing event, perhaps a church ale. Dover’s motivation in organising the Games may have been his belief that physical exercise was necessary for the defence of the realm. He may also believed that the Games would bring rich and poor together, increasing social harmony, an ideal that might explain why the public event captured the imagination of the period. He was admitted to Gray’s Inn on 27 February 1636, and was probably called to the bar in 1611, the same year he likely moved to Saintbury, near Chipping Campden, with his wife and children. His biographer, Christopher Whitfield, claimed that Dover combined ancient countryside practices withclassical mythology and Renaissance culture, whilst linking them with the throne and the King’s Protestant Church. Dover may also have been granted a coat of arms with the motto ‘Do Ever Good’, a claim that was rejected by the heraldic authorities in 1682 by his grandson, Ann Dubalia. He is believed to have been born between 1575 and 1582 in Norfolk, one of four children born to John Dover, and may have left Queens’ College at Cambridge in 1583, leaving early to avoid swearing the Oath of Supremacy. Dover acted as Porter’s legal agent between 1622 and 1640, and sent some of his own clothes to Dover, to grace him with the grace of James.
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