I am contente, for surelye I would Winne no manne's moneye here,
but even as much as woulde pay for my supper." Then speaketh the

thirde to the honeste man that thought not to play:--"What? Will
you play your twelve-pence?" If he excuse him--"Tush! man!" will

the other saye, "sticke not in honeste company for twelve-pence;
I will beare your halfe, and here is my moneye." Nowe all this

is to make him to beginne, for they knowe if he be once in, and
be a loser, that he will not sticke at his twelve-pence, but

hopeth ever to get it againe, whiles perhappes he will lose all.
Then every one of them setteth his shiftes abroache, some with

false dyse, some with settling of dyse, some with having
outlandish silver coynes guilded, to put awaye at a time for good

golde. Then, if there come a thing in controversye, must you be
judged by the table, and then farewell the honeste man's parte,

for he is borne downe on every syde.'
It is evident from this graphicdescription of the process, that

the villany of sharpers has been ever the same; for old Roger's
account of the matter in his day exactly tallies with daily

experience at the present time.
The love of card-playing was continued through the reign of

Elizabeth and James I.,[60] and in the reign of the latter it had
reached so high a pitch that the audiences used to amuse

themselves with cards at the play-house, while they were waiting
for the beginning of the play. The same practice existed at

Florence. If the thing be not done at the present day, something
analogous prevails in our railway carriages throughout the

kingdom. It is said that professed card-sharpers take
season-tickets on all the lines, and that a great DEAL of money

is made by the gentry by duping unwary travellers into a game or
by betting.

[60] King James, the British Solomon, although he could not
'abide' tobacco, and denounced it in a furious 'Counterblaste,'

could not 'utterly condemn' play, or, as he calls it, 'fitting
house-pastimes.' 'I will not,' he says, 'agree in forbidding

cards, dice, and other like games of Hazard,' and enters into an
argument for his opinion, which is scarcely worth quoting. See

Basilicon Doron--a prodigy of royal fatuity--but the perfect
'exponent' of the characteristics of the Stuart royal race in

England.
There is no reason to suppose that the fondness for this

diversion abated, except during the short 'trump or triumph of
the fanatic suit'--in the hard times of Old Oliver--when

undoubtedly cards were styled 'the devil's books.' But, indeed,
by that time they had become an engine of much fraud and

destruction; so that one of the early acts of Charles II.'s reign
inflicted large penalties on those who should use cards for

fraudulent purposes.
'Primero was the fashionable game at the court of England during

the Tudor dynasty. Shakspeare represents Henry VIII. playing at
it with the Duke of Suffolk; and Falstaff says, "I never

prospered since I forswore myself at Primero." In the Earl of
Northumberland's letters about the Gunpowder-plot, it is noticed

that Joscelin Percy was playing at this game on Sunday, when his
uncle, the conspirator, called on him at Essex House. In the

Sidney papers, there is an account of a desperate quarrel between
Lord Southampton, the patron of Shakspeare, and one Ambrose

Willoughby. Lord Southampton was then "Squire of the Body" to
Queen Elizabeth, and the quarrel was occasioned by Willoughby

persisting to play with Sir Walter Raleigh and another at
Primero, in the Presence Chamber, after the queen had retired to

rest, a course of proceeding which Southampton would not permit.
Primero, originally a Spanish game, is said to have been made

fashionable in England by Philip of Spain, after his marriage
with Queen Mary.

Maw succeeded Primero as the fashionable game at the English
court, and was the favourite game of James I., who appears to

have played at cards, just as he played with affairs of state, in
an indolent manner; requiring in both cases some one to hold his

cards, if not to prompt him what to play. Weldon, alluding to
the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury, in his Court and Character

of King James, says: 'The next that came on the stage was Sir
Thomas Monson, but the night before he was to come to his trial,

the king being at the game of Maw, said, "To-morrow comes Thomas
Monson to his trial." "Yea," said the king's card-holder,

"where, if he do not play his master's prize, your Majesty shall
never trust me." This so ran in the king's mind, that at the

next game he said he was sleepy, and would play out that set the
next night.

'It is evident that Maw differed very slightly from Five Cards,
the most popular game in Ireland at the present day. As early as

1674 this game was popular in Ireland, as we learn from Cotton's
Compleat Gamester, which says: "Five Cards is an Irish game, and

is much played in that kingdom for considerable sums of money, as
All-fours is played in Kent, and Post-and-pair in the west of

England."
'Noddy was one of the old English court games. This has been

supposed to have been a children's game, and it was certainly
nothing of the kind. Its nature is thus fully described in a

curious satirical poem, entitled Batt upon Batt, published in
1694.

"Show me a man can turn up Noddy still,
And deal himself three fives too, when he will;

Conclude with one-and-thirty, and a pair,
Never fail ten in Stock, and yet play fair,

If Batt be not that wight, I lose my aim."
'From these lines, there can be no doubt that the ancient Noddy

was the modern cribbage--the Nod of to-day, rejoicing in the name
of Noddy, and the modern Crib, being termed the Stock.

'Ombre was most probably introduced into this country by
Catherine of Portugal, the queen of Charles II.; Waller, the

court poet, has a poem on a card torn at Ombre by the queen.
This royal lady also introduced to the English court the

reprehensible practice of playing cards on Sunday. Pepys, in
1667, writes: "This evening, going to the queen's side to see

the ladies, I did find the queen, the Duchess of York, and
another at cards, with the room full of ladies and great men;

which I was amazed at to see on a Sunday, having not believed,
but contrarily flatly denied the same, a little while since, to

my cousin."[61]
[61] Hombre, or rather El Hombre, or 'The Man,' was so named as

requiring thought and reflection, which are qualities peculiar to
man; or rather, alluding to him who undertakes to play the game

against the rest of the gamesters, emphatically called The Man.
It requires very great application to play it well: and let a man

be ever so expert, he will be apt to fall into mistakes if he
thinks of anything else, or is disturbed by the conversation of

those that look on. It is a game of three, with 40 cards, that
is, rejecting the eights, nines, and tens of all the suits.

'In a passage from Evelyn's Memoirs, the writer impressively
describes another Sunday-evening scene at Whitehall, a few days

before the death of Charles II., in which a profligate assemblage
of courtiers is represented as deeply engaged in the game of

Basset. This was an Italian game, brought by Cardinal Mazarin to
France; Louis XIV. is said to have lost large sums at it; and it

was most likely brought to England by some of the French ladies
of the court. It did not stand its ground, however, in this

country; Ombre continuing the fashionable game in England, down
till after the expiration of the first quarter of the last

century.