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Reverend William Webb Ellis (24 November 1806 – 24 February 1872) was an Anglican clergyman and the alleged inventor of rugby football whilst a pupil at Rugby School. According to legend, Webb Ellis picked up and ran with the ball during a school football match in 1823, thus creating the rugby-style of play. Although the story has become firmly entrenched in the sport's folklore, it is not supported by substantive evidence, and is discounted by most rugby historians as an origin myth. The William Webb Ellis Cup is presented to the winners of the Rugby World Cup.〔〔 ==Biography== Webb Ellis was born in Salford, Lancashire, the younger of two sons of James Ellis, an officer in the Dragoon Guards, and Ann Webb, whom James married in Exeter in 1804. His paternal grandfather was from Pontyclun in South Wales and his maternal grandmother was the first child born to a European Settler in Australia. After his father was killed at the Battle of Albuera in 1811,〔According to military records, no man by the name of James Ellis (or any other Ellis) was killed or died of his wounds at the battle of Albuera in 1811. Having checked the records for all the 3rd & 4th Dragoon Guards, 13th Light Dragoons and all the infantry battalions, only the Royal Artillery records have not been checked. It appears unlikely that James Ellis was killed at Albuera.〕 Mrs Ellis decided to move to Rugby, Warwickshire so that William and his older brother Thomas could receive an education at Rugby School with no cost as a local foundationer (i.e. a pupil living within a radius of 10 miles of the Rugby Clock Tower). He attended the school from 1816 to 1825 and was recorded as being a good scholar and cricketer, although it was noted that he was "rather inclined to take unfair advantage at cricket". The incident in which Webb Ellis supposedly caught the ball in his arms during a football match (which was allowed) and ran with it (which was not) is supposed to have happened in the latter half of 1823. After leaving Rugby in 1826, he went to Brasenose College, Oxford, aged 20. He played cricket for his college, and for Oxford University against Cambridge University in a first-class match in 1827.〔(CricketArchive – William Webb Ellis ). Retrieved 10 April 2013.〕 He graduated with a BA in 1829 and received his MA in 1831. He entered the Church and became chaplain of St George's Chapel, Albemarle Street, London (closed c.1909),〔St George’s, (1740? -1909?) was a proprietary chapel in Albemarle Street, and located opposite the Royal Institution. It was a fashionable chapel, where the Reverend W W Ellis preached sermons. The chapel backed onto St George’s hotel, which was purchased in 1889 by Brown’s hotel (founded in 1837 by James Brown, onetime valet to Lord Byron). The two hotels were incorporated into the enlarged Brown’s hotel. St. George's is remembered -becoming the name for the hotel's bar and the historic merger is recorded at the entrance to the hotel.〕 and then rector of St. Clement Danes in The Strand. He became well known as a low church evangelical clergyman. In 1855, he became rector of Magdalen Laver in Essex. A picture of him (the only known portrait) appeared in the ''Illustrated London News'' in 1854, after he gave a particularly stirring sermon on the subject of the Crimean War. He never married and died in the south of France in 1872, leaving an estate of £9,000, mostly to various charities. His grave in "le cimetière du vieux château" at Menton in Alpes Maritimes was rediscovered by Ross McWhirter in 1958 and has since been renovated by the French Rugby Federation. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「William Webb Ellis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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