him by Endymion Porter who was Groom to the Royal Bedchamber and who lived
nearby in Aston Subedge.ROBERT DOVER'S OLYMPICK GAMES
Dovers Hill, above Chipping Campden and overlooking the Vale of Evesham, is beautiful plateau commanding extensive views of the plains of the Avon and Severn rivers and the foothills of the Welsh mountains. Owned by the National Trust, it provides an ideal setting for the open air games.
Robert Dover (1582-1652) who gives his name to the games was a flamboyant local barrister who in 1612, during the reign of James I who 'gave leave for the games', transformed a small Whitsuntide feast into a grand festival of sport and pageantry. Robert Dover had moved to Saintbury from London, his family were originally from Norfolk. He named it the 'Cotswold Olimpicks' centuries before the current Olympic games. The games are still held every year, on the Friday evening after the Spring Bank Holiday Monday, on the hill named after Robert Dover maintaining the long tradition.
Robert Dover presided over the games
on horseback dressed in grand clothes with a hat, feather and ruff which
originally belonging to James I. These were acquired for
him by Endymion Porter who was Groom to the Royal Bedchamber and who lived
nearby in Aston Subedge.
The games were a magnificent spectacle with competitors summoned to the hillside by the sound of a hunting horn and there they took part in all sorts of sports. Horse racing and coursing were very popular and there were other events to test skill and strength such as jumping, wrestling, shin-kicking, sword play and throwing the sledge hammer and bar. Music and dancing, also had their place and there were contests for pipe playing, singing and country dancing. Chess was also played in tents.
The prizes for these activities included not only silver trophies but also yellow favours which as many as 500 'gallants' gained. a distictive feature of the hillside was Dover's Castle, a 'famous and admirable portable fabricke', mounted with cannon used to begin the event.
In May 1999 the Observer newspaper printed an article about the Games. The article stated that these Olympicks had carried on with permission of the royals through 14 monarchs. The events of the Games are used, it is said, as part of both of Shakespeare's plays 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' and 'As you like it', the wrestling scene.
The Games were so popular that people, drawn from all walks of society, came from sixty miles around, a huge distance in the age when most people only means of transport was on foot. It is said that William Shakespeare may well have been a spectator before his death in 1616.
A picture of Robert Dover and his castle formed the frontpiece to the Annalia Dubrensia, published in 1636, a collection of poems in praise of Robert Dover and his achievements. The contributors included Ben Jonson who saw the games as revitalising English social life, saying 'The Cotswold with the Olympic vies/In manly games and exercise' stressing the benefits of the event in opposition to the puritan view that it was 'sinful'. These tensions in society were to lead in the next decade to the Civil War and the end to the original Games. The area became the scene of clashes between Royalist and Parliamentary Forces. After the Restoration and the Games were revived. Robert Dover died in July 1652 at Barton-on-the-Heath, near Moreton-in-Marsh, aged seventy.
The popularity of the games continued for the next 250 years but the games stopped after the Whitsun Meeting of 1852. They had started to attract people from the newly industrialised Midlands and with the crowds came rowdiness which the locals did not want.
The games were revived in 1951 as part of the 'Festival of Britain' celebrations and then in 1963 they began again in earnest with the Robert Dover's Games Society being founded in in 1965. The Games have continued now for forty years and are going from strength to strength.