William Fitzstephen, writing in the 12th century, described the use of bone skates in London:

The earliest recorded Shrovetide ball game comes during the High Middle Ages ( 1066 – 1272 ) from the cleric William Fitzstephen in his description of London Descriptio Nobilissimi Civitatis Londoniae c. 1174-1183.

The first written evidence of a football match came in about 1170, when William Fitzstephen wrote of his visit to London, " After dinner all the youths of the city goes out into the fields for the very popular game of ball.

William Fitzstephen ( also William fitz Stephen ), ( died c. 1191 ) was a cleric and administrator in the service of Thomas Becket, becoming a Subdeacon in his chapel, with responsibility for perusing letters and petitions.

# REDIRECT William Fitzstephen

* 1849 – John William Waterhouse, British painter ( d. 1917 )

* 1864 – William Bate Hardy, British biochemist ( d. 1934 )

* 1909 – William M. Branham, American evangelist ( d. 1965 )

* 1705 – William Cookworthy, English chemist ( d. 1780 )

* 1856 – William Martin Conway, English art critic and mountaineer ( d. 1937 )

* 1874 – William B. Bankhead, American politician ( d. 1940 )

* 1766 – William Hyde Wollaston, English chemist ( d. 1828 )

* 1891 – William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim, English general, 13th Governor-General of Australia ( d. 1970 )

* 1722 – Prince Augustus William of Prussia ( d. 1758 )

* 1911 – William Alfred Fowler, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate ( d. 1996 )

* 1666 – William Wotton, English scholar ( d. 1727 )

* 1790 – William Wentworth, Australian explorer and politician ( d. 1872 )

* 1877 – William Brennaugh, Canadian lacrosse player ( d. 1934 )

* 1911 – William Bernbach, American advertiser, co-founder of DDB Worldwide ( d. 1982 )

* 1770 – William Clark, American soldier, explorer, and politician ( d. 1838 )

* 1809 – William B. Travis, American lawyer and soldier ( d. 1836 )

* 1770 – Frederick William III of Prussia ( d. 1840 )

* 1860 – William Kennedy Dickson, France-Scottish actor, director, and inventor ( d. 1935 )

* 1934 – William Calhoun, American wrestler ( d. 1989 )

* 1921 – William Asher, American director, screenwriter, and producer ( d. 2012 )

* 1586 – William Hutchinson, English-American judge ( d. 1642 )

* 1688 – Frederick William I of Prussia ( d. 1740 )

* 1908 – William Keepers Maxwell, Jr., American novelist ( d. 2000 )

* 1754 – William Murdoch, Scottish engineer and inventor, created gas lighting ( d. 1839 )

* 1765 – William IV of the United Kingdom ( d. 1837 )

The exception was an Iron Mountain settler named William Lewis.

William Lewis made the rounds of all who lived near him again, that August morning after a bullet landed at his feet, and once more he accused and threatened everyone.

A bullet smashed directly into the center of William Lewis' chest.

A good many beef-hungry settlers were accepting the death of William Lewis as proof that the warning notes were not idle threats.

The key man almost certainly would be Col. William W. Wisman, SAC's senior controller.

The music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, William Steinberg, has molded his group into a prominent musical organization, which is his life.

Such writers as William Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren have led the field of somewhat less important writers in a sort of post-bellum renaissance.

Undoubtedly even the old Southern stalwart Richmond has felt the new wind: William Styron mentions in his latest novel an avenue named for Bankhead McGruder, a Civil War general, now renamed, in typical California fashion, `` Buena Vista Terrace ''.

William Styron, while facing the changing economy with a certain uneasy reluctance, insists he is not to be classified as a Southern writer and yet includes traditional Southern concepts in everything he publishes.

He is too deeply steeped in William Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren.

I saw a piece the other day assailing William Buckley, author of Man And God at Yale and publisher of The National Review, as no conservative at all, but an old liberal.

They give strict interpretation to William James' statement that `` Every idea that enters the mind tends to express itself ''.

Among them are Frederick J. Hoffman, William Van O'Connor, and Mrs. Olga Vickery.

The young William Faulkner in New Orleans in the 1920's impressed the novelist Hamilton Basso as obviously conscious of being a Southerner, and there is no evidence that since then he has ever considered himself any less so.

They have an ancestry extending back, however, at least to 1728, when William Byrd described the Lubberlanders he encountered in the back country of Virginia and North Carolina.

William Gilmore Simms, sturdy realist that he was, pleaded for a natural robustness such as he found in his favorites the great Elizabethans, to vivify the pale writings being produced around him.

Miriam was stopped at the Taliesin gate, and William Weston, now the estate foreman, came out to parley.

she also went to Washington and appealed to Senator George William Norris of Nebraska, the Fighting Liberal, from whose office a sympathetic but cautious harrumphing was heard.

he collaborated on a song with William Hartman Woodin, who was Secretary of the Treasury, 1932-33.

William Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks, it seems to me, have a penetrating insight into the way in which this control is effected: `` For if we say poetry is to talk of beauty and love ( and yet not aim at exciting erotic emotion or even an emotion of Platonic esteem ) and if it is to talk of anger and murder ( and yet not aim at arousing anger and indignation ) -- then it may be that the poetic way of dealing with these emotions will not be any kind of intensification, compounding, or magnification, or any direct assault upon the affections at all.

In much the same way, we recognize the importance of Shakespeare's familarity with Plutarch and Montaigne, of Shelley's study of Plato's dialogues, and of Coleridge's enthusiastic plundering of the writings of many philosophers and theologians from Plato to Schelling and William Godwin, through which so many abstract ideas were brought to the attention of English men of letters.

A lone pro-Hearst voice from New York City was that of William Devery, who had been expelled as a Tammany leader but still claimed strong influence in his own district.

Shortly after the `` Vale '' incident, a rift began to develop between William Woodruff and Governor Pope.

On January 28, 1835, Andrew Jackson removed Pope from office and elevated Territorial Secretary William S. Fulton to the position.

William Coddington, who was running the colony, felt constrained to move seven miles south where, with others -- as mentioned above -- he founded Newport.