Hurlbatt Family History

From Middle English hurlen ‘to hurl throw with force thrust’ + Middle English bat ‘a stout wooden stick staff club cudgel or flail’ also ‘a war mace’. It may have been used of a warrior on horse or on foot who was skilled in using a mace or a military flail (a spiked ball on a chain) but the social rank of the earliest known bearers of the surname is unknown. Alternatively its original bearers may have been players or referees in the sport of hurlebat.

A text of about 1450 mentions ‘Pleying ... at þe hurlebatte’ along with ‘Pleying at þe two hande swerd at swerd and bokelere and at two pyked staf’. In common with these other fighting games it was perhaps a two-man combat using cudgels or maces but a later English writer (1565–73) states that the sport was played with aclides (Latin aclides ‘small javelins’) defined as ‘short battes of a cubit long and a halfe with pykes of yron ... [which] were tied to a line that when they were throwne one might plucke them again’ (see OED at hurlbat).

The playing of hurlebat in either of these forms in earlier centuries is conjectural but compare Ricardus Hurlesticke (‘hurl stick hurl cudgel’) 1379 in Poll Tax (Bodenham Wilts).