achievements in promoting and managing the games, was published in 1636. The contributors included well-known poets such as Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, Thomas Randolph, and Thomas Heywood. They saw the games as revitalising traditional English social life, and they countered opposition from the critics of such events, who complained of "drunken behaviour and sexual licence", by stressing the "peaceful and well-behaved" nature of the occasion, and even praising the games as "a gesture of loyalty to the king". The games had acquired their title of "Olimpicks" by the time the Annalia Dubrensia was published, a name approved of by Dover. It secularised the proceedings, while adding an air of gentrification to the sports by linking them with the Olympics of ancient Greece. Having been brought up in a Catholic family, Dover might well have been keen not to draw attention to religion, particularly if the games had taken over from an earlier church ale. Proceedings The games took place in a natural amphitheatre on what is known today as Dover's Hill, then called Kingcombe Plain, above the town of Chipping Campden, in Gloucestershire. They were held on the Thursday and Friday of Whit-Week, or the week of Whitsun, which normally fell between mid-May and mid-June. Dover presided over the games on horseback, dressed ceremonially in a coat, hat, feather and ruff, donated by King James. Horses and men were decorated with Dover's favours, yellow ribbons pinned to a hat or worn around the arm, leg, or neck. Tents were erected for the gentry, who came from the surrounding counties of Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Worcestershire, and food was supplied in abundance. The poet Nicholas Wallington wrote that: A temporary wooden building was constructed each year, called Dover Castle, from which gunfire salutes were sounded during the competitions. Competitors were summoned to the hillside by the sound of a hunting horn, to take part in various sports. Mounted cannons were fired to begin the events, which included horse-racing, coursing with hounds, running, jumping, dancing, sledgehammer throwing, fighting with swords and cudgels, quarterstaff, and wrestling. Prizes included silver trophies for the mounted sports, and perhaps also money for the other events. The contests were refereed by officials called sticklers, from which the phrase "a stickler for the rules" is derived. Sticklers were so-named because they carried sticks, with which to safely separate two fighting swordsmen. No scores or times are recorded for any