Bayton (Hambledon cricketer)

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Bayton was an English cricketer in the 18th century who played for the famous Hambledon Club as a batsman. Unfortunately, his career was virtually over by the time detailed records began to be kept in the 1772 English cricket season and so little is known about his personal history. His first name may have been John, George or James.

He was variously called Bayton, Boyton or Boynton by different sources but he seems to have been a very good batsman indeed in both the 1768 season and the 1769 season, after which he becomes an occasional name and seems to have left the club. It is possible that he was a Sussex man as indeed he was due to play for Sussex against Hampshire in a cancelled match of the 1773 season.

Two verses from the Hambledon Club Song, written by Reverend Reynell Cotton (1717 – 1779) in about the 1771 season, indicate a certain bravado about the loss of Bayton but there seems little doubt from the known records that Bayton was a fine batsman and not the sort any club would wish to lose. The song goes:

Then why should we fear either Sackville or Mann,

Or repine at the loss of Bayton and Land?

John Goulstone (see HMM) has found family records in Sussex of a John and Elizabeth Bayton who had three sons: John, born 1744; George, born 1746; and James, born 1751. He also found a John Bayton living in Hambledon as a baker from the 1770s to the 1790s, but it is curious that a local man would play against Hambledon as Bayton the cricketer did after 1769.

As James Bayton would have been a little too young, Mr Goulstone is left with the tentative possibility that it was George Bayton whose loss should have been repined.