There were doubtless schoolmasters who entered into the spirit of such sports for the demands of their calling at the time would hardly dissuade them from sadism. Generally, however, Stuart schoolmasters endured the play of their scholars, but did not encourage it and the games which the boys played were still usually those they would have followed whether they were in school or not. The school authorities' concerns were with safety and good order, much of their intervention with scholars' sports being on these grounds. It was only as games became more ordered and regulated in the later years of the eighteenth century that they began to win any positive acceptance in the schools.