The precise origins of the game remain uncertain. The word itself may derive from old French criquet (a kind of club, or goal post), from Flemish krick(e), “stick”, or from old English cricc, “crutch, staff”. There is no reliable evidence of the game until the mid-16th century. A record (dated 1598) of the Borough of Guildford, Surrey, refers to a game of “creckett” played by pupils of the Royal Grammar School, Guildford in about 1550. In the 17th century there is an increasing number of references and in 1676 there is the first of a game played outside England. The logbook of HMS Assistance (part of a British fleet on the Levantine coast) records that some of her crew played cricket at Antioch on May 6, 1676. Early forms of competitive cricket took place in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex towards the end of the 17th century. By about 1700 games were being advertised in the local press. There is plentiful evidence that aristocrats and gentlemen, as well as those lower down the social scale, were playing the game about this time and mostly in south-east England—the traditional, original home of the game. It may well be that the first wickets were the gates of sheepfolds and the first bats shepherds’ crooks, which might help to explain the curved shape of the earliest bats (the oldest existing bat dates from 1729).