William Goldwin

William Goldwin (c.1682 – 1747 at Bristol) was an English schoolteacher and vicar who left his mark on cricket by creating the sport's earliest known work of literature.^[1] Goldwin, whose name is sometimes spelt "Goldwyn", wrote a poem of 95 competent and sometimes graceful lines of Latin hexameters on a rural cricket match.^[2] It was called In Certamen Pilae (On a Ball Game) and it was published in his Musae Juveniles in March 1706.^[3][4]

Little is known of Goldwin himself. He attended Eton and then graduated to King's College, Cambridge in 1700. He subsequently became a Master of Bristol Grammar School and was Vicar of St Nicholas' Church in Bristol until his death in 1747.