Bowls

The bowls playing field is a bowling green, a smooth lawn where competitors roll balls for points. The rules are to roll grapefruit-size balls toward a target ball that is slightly smaller than a tennis ball. Points are gained for how close players can place their balls to the target ball without actually striking the target ball. Players are also able to use their ball to knock out an opponent’s ball if it is close to the target ball.

Bowls historians believe that the game developed from the Egyptians. One of their pastimes was to play skittles with round stones. This has been determined based on artifacts found in tombs dating circa 5,000 B.C. The sport spread across the world and took on a variety of forms, Bocce (Italian), Bolla (Saxon), Bolle (Danish), Boules (French) and Ula Maika (Polynesian). The oldest Bowls green still played on is in Southampton, England where records show that the green has been in operation since 1299 A.D. There are scattered classical references, but the game’s key developments go back to late-medieval Europe as part of rural folk festivals

Certainly the most famous story in lawn bowls is with Sir Frances Drake and the Spanish Armada. On July 18, 1588, Drake was involved in a game at Plymouth Hoe when he was notified that the Spanish Armada was approaching. His immortalized response was that "We still have time to finish the game and to thrash the Spaniards, too." He then proceeded to finish the match, which he lost before embarking on the fight with the Armada, which he won. Whether this famous story really took place has been heavily debated
King Henry VIII was also a lawn bowler. However, he banned the game for those who were not wealthy or "well to do" because "Bowyers, Fletchers, Stringers and Arrowhead makers" were spending more time at recreational events such as bowls instead of practicing their trade. Henry VIII requested that anybody who wished to keep a green pay a fee of 100 pounds. However, the green could only be used for private play and he forbade anyone to "play at any bowle or bowles in open space out of his own garden or orchard".

The earliest documented use of the word 'Jack' in Bowls is either from 1611 "Was there euer man had such lucke? when I kist the Iacke vpon an vp-cast, to be hit away?" or alternatively Shakespeare used it in Cymbeline (thought to have been written in 1609) when he caused Cloten to exclaim, "Was there ever man had such luck! When I kissed the jack, upon an up-cast to be hit away."
There are competing theories as to etymological origin of the word "Jack". John P Monro, Bowls Encyclopaedia (3rd ed), gives that the name 'jack' is derived from the Latin word jactus, meaning a cast or a throw. A sport played by young men called "casting the stone" is mentioned by William FitzStephen, a close friend of Thomas à Becket, in the preface of his biography Vita Sancti Thomae written during the twelfth century. Casting of stones translates in Latin as "jactu lapidum" and was a game in which rounded stones were thrown at or bowled towards a target object and so some are persuaded that the modern word 'Jack' derives originally from this term.