Lord Frederick Beauclerk's Decade — The Cleric Who Ran Cricket, 1810s

Beauclerk had been playing senior cricket since 1791, when he was eighteen. By 1810 he was already established as the leading amateur, having scored a record 170 for Homerton against Montpelier at Lord's in 1807 — a record that stood until 1820. The Napoleonic War, by reducing the senior fixture list to almost nothing, gave Beauclerk near-monopoly control of MCC's senior cricket.

The 1810 single-wicket match in which William Lambert deliberately bowled wides to upset him, and Lambert won, gave Beauclerk a personal grudge that would shape his administrative actions for the next decade.

Beauclerk (1773-1850) was the fourth son of Aubrey Beauclerk, fifth Duke of St Albans, and a direct descendant of Charles II and Nell Gwyn. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, took holy orders, and held the living of St Michael's, Bromley-by-Bow, and later the rectory of Kimpton in Hertfordshire. His parishioners scarcely saw him; the cricket fields of Lord's saw him almost every day from late spring to early autumn. By 1810 he was already the leading amateur batsman in England — a right-hander with a careful, professional technique by the standards of the day — and a slow underarm bowler of unusual accuracy who could lift the ball off a length to threaten the gloves of the wicketkeeper. He was also an unrepentant gambler. William Denison estimated his cricket winnings at 600 guineas a year through the 1810s, a sum equivalent to perhaps £50,000 today. Through the war years he kept senior cricket alive almost single-handedly, captaining one of the elevens in each of the three recorded matches of 1811-13 and resuming senior fixtures from 1814. He played in the inaugural Gentlemen v Players matches of 1806, in the Eton-Harrow series, and in the resumed Gentlemen v Players match of 1819. He was also the most powerful figure on the MCC committee from about 1815 onwards, using his influence to ban William Lambert in 1817 and George Osbaldeston in 1818, both following private quarrels. His temper was famous: contemporaries reported him swearing audibly at fielders and umpires, in language unbecoming of any clergyman and especially of one whose family motto was 'God protect us'. He played his last senior match in 1825 and continued as an MCC committeeman until his death.

“His underarm bowling was very slow but extremely accurate, and he could get the ball to rise abruptly off a length.”

“If there is a more godly man at Lord's, he is well concealed.”

Beauclerk's grip on MCC continued through the 1820s. He played his last senior match in 1825, by which point his temper and his enemies had multiplied. He continued as an MCC committeeman through the 1830s and 1840s, helping to oversee the legalisation of roundarm in 1835 (a change he had personally opposed) and dying in 1850 at the age of 76.