In meadow or pasture (to grow the more fine),
let campers be camping in any of thine;
Which if you do suffer when low is the spring,
you gain to yourself a commodious thing.
Because most games wear out a field in patches, the encouragement of 'camping' is of interest. It was an early ball game (the Napoleonic Wars may have changed the name to 'Prisoners' Base'). The two 'camps' were of unlimited number but even strength and set at opposite ends of the field. From one end a 'token' (later a hand ball) was flung with a shout of challenge into the opposing camp, whose object was to field it as swiftly as possible and hurl it back; as, while the 'token' remained in the enemy camp, the opposing side might rush across and drag back as many 'prisoners' as they could lay hands upon before the ball was thrown back to reverse the challenge. The game continued until one side was depleted and the other had secured all of them as prisoners. Traditionally the game used a gauntlet, rather than a ball.A tough old glove, or a soft shoe, makes for a swifter game than does a ball, which takes too long to follow and retrieve. (Where a playground is near a roadway it is safer for children to use such a 'token' rather than a ball.)
It will be realized that this game did not wear out any special portion of the field, but stampeded evenly from end to end to over it, and, as originally played by bare-foot or soft-shod peasants, the firming and leveling of the land was commendable. Later, when it was played in hard shoes with a larger ball, local political feeling ran high and the intercounty contests became serious. Dutt, in his notes on East Anglia, states that in the eighteenth century three hundred men took to the field on Diss Common, between Norfolk and Suffolk, and nine deaths ensued!Hartley, Dorothy. Lost Country Life New York : Pantheon Books, c1979.