William Webb Ellis (November 24, 1806 - January 24, 1872) is often credited with the invention of Rugby football.

William was born in Manchester the son of James Ellis, an officer in the Dragoon Guards and Ann Webb whom he married in Exeter in 1804. After James was killed at the Battle of Albuera in 1812, Mrs Ellis decided to move to Rugby, Warwickshire so that Willaim and his older brother Thomas could receive a good 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). William attended the school from 1816 to 1825 and he was noted as a good scholar and a good cricketer. After leaving Rugby he went to Oxford University where he played cricket for Brasenose College, Oxford. He entered the Church and became chaplain of St George's, Albemarle Street, London and then rector of St Clement Danes in the Strand. In 1855 he became rector of Laver Magdalen in Essex and a picture of him (the only known portrait) appeared in the Illustrated London Post after he gave a particularly stirring sermon on the subject of the Crimean War.

He died in the south of France in 1872 and his grave at Menton was rediscovered by Ross McWhirter in 1958 and has since been renovated.

The story of how he founded the game of rugby football is apocryphal. Nevertheless his name is firmly established in the lore of Rugby football and he has become immortalised by the 'William Webb Ellis Trophy' presented to the winners of the Rugby Union World Cup.

The Legend

A plaque at Rugby School bears the inscription: THIS STONE COMMEMORATES THE EXPLOIT OF WILLIAM WEBB ELLIS WHO WITH A FINE DISREGARD FOR THE RULES OF FOOTBALL, AS PLAYED IN HIS TIME, FIRST TOOK THE BALL IN HIS ARMS AND RAN WITH IT, THUS ORIGINATING THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURE OF THE RUGBY GAME A.D. 1823 The claim that Webb Ellis "invented" the game did not surface until four years after his death and considerable doubt has been raised about the story since 1895 when it was first investigated by the Old Rugbeian Society. Among those giving evidence, Thomas Hughes (author of Tom Brown's School Days) was asked to comment on the game as played when he attended the school (1834-1842). He recalled that handling of the ball was strictly forbidden.

The sole source of the story of Webb Ellis picking up the ball originates with one Matthew Bloxam, a local antiquarian and former pupil of Rugby. In October of 1876, he wrote to The Meteor, the Rugby School magazine, that he had learnt from an unnamed source that the change from a kicking game to a handling game had "..originated with a town boy or foundationer of the name of Ellis, William Webb Ellis".

In December of 1880, in another letter to the Meteor, Bloxam elaborates on the story: "A boy of the name Ellis - William Webb Ellis - a town boy and a foundationer, .... whilst playing Bigside at football in that half-year, caught the ball in his arms. This being so, according to the then rules, he ought to have retired back as far as he pleased, without parting with the ball, for the combatants on the opposite side could only advance to the spot where he had caught the ball, and were unable to rush forward till he had either punted it or had placed it for some one else to kick, for it was by means of these placed kicks that most of the goals were in those days kicked, but the moment the ball touched the ground the opposite side might rush on. Ellis, for the first time, disregarded this rule, and on catching the ball, instead of retiring backwards, rushed forwards with the ball in his hands towards the opposite goal, with what result as to the game I know not, neither do I know how this infringement of a well-known rule was followed up, or when it became, as it is now, a standing rule."

Article courtesy of Nationmaster
 
1987 - The inaugural Rugby World Cup was played in Australia and New Zealand. It was won by New Zealand who became the first country to retain the William Web Ellis Trophy.

1991  - Second Rugby World Cup is held in the Northern Hemisphere with Australia defeating England 12-3 in the final at Twickenham.
          -  The Inaugural Women's Rugby World Cup is won by the USA.  

 

RWC Cup crafted in 1906

Either Martin Johnson or George Gregan will brandish aloft the Rugby World Cup. On its face is engraved 'The International Rugby Board' and below that arch the name of the trophy: 'The Webb Ellis Cup'. The Cup is quite a bit older than the World Cup. The Rugby World Cup was first played in 1987 but the Cup itself, the actual trophy, was fashioned in 1906 and chosen in February 1987 as a suitable trophy for the World Cup to be played in New Zealand and Australia in May and June that year.

John Kendall-Carpenter, the famous England forward and the Chairman of the Rugby World Cup and Air Commodore Bob Weighill, the secretary of the IRB and a former England forward, went round to Garrard, the crown jeweller in Regent Street, London - a fashionable place indeed.

Richard Jarvis, the Managing Director of the company, brought the Cup down from the vault and showed it to the two men. Eventually Ronnie Dawson of Ireland, Keith Rowlands of Wales, Bob Stuart and Dick Littlejohn of New Zealand and the Australians Nick Shehadie and Ross Turnbull approved of the choice. They named it 'The Webb Ellis Cup'.

The Cup was crafted on Garrard's workshop in 1906, a Victorian version of a cup fashioned in 1740 by the gold and silversmith Paul de Lamerie (1688-1751), whose parents, Huguenots, had fled to London and set up a shop in Soho.

The Cup is silver gilded in gold, 38 centimetres tall with two cast scroll handles. On one there perches the head of a satyr, on the other the head of a nymph, the nymph, beautiful spirit of nature, forever safe from the randy aspirations of the goat-man. The terminals are a bearded mask, a lion mask and a vine.

Garrard's dates back to the first half of the 18th century and had royal connections from its beginning. In 1792 Robert Garrard, originally an apprentice at the company became a partner and then took control of the business.

In 1843 Queen Victoria appointed Garrard's Crown Jewellers, as they still are. One of their stressful tasks was the recutting of the Koh-i-Noor.

Its first famous sporting trophy was the Royal Yacht Squadron's Cup presented in 1848 by the Marques of Anglesey. It is better known as the America's Cup, from the first winner of the cup in 1851, the yacht America..

The firm moved to its Regent Street premises in the Fifties after Henry Garrard died and with him the Garrard line. Garrard's amalgamated with the Goldsmiths' and Silversmiths' Company, founded in 1898, but retained the Garrard name.