No. 310. A Party at Dice.
A very curious piece of painted glass, now in the possession of Mr. Fairholt, of German manufacture, and forming part, apparently, of a series illustrative of the history of the Prodigal Son, represents a party of gamblers, of the earlier part of the sixteenth century, in which they are playing with two dice. It is copied in our cut [No. 311]. The original bears the inscription, “Jan Van Hassell Tryngen sin hausfrau,” with a merchant’s mark, and the date, 1532. Three dice, however, continued to be used long after this, and are, from time to time, alluded to during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
I have, in a former chapter, traced the history of playing-cards down to the latter half of the fifteenth century. After that time, they are frequently mentioned. They formed the common amusement in the courts of Scotland and England under the reigns of Henry VII. and James IV.; and it is recorded that when the latter monarch paid his first visit to his affianced bride, the young princess Margaret of England, “he founde the quene playing at the cardes.”
No. 311. A Gambling Party of the Sixteenth Century.
In Germany at this time card-playing was carried to an extravagant degree, and it became an object of attack and satire to the reformers among the clergy. Our cut [No. 312] represents a German card-party in a tavern, taken from an early painted coffer in the Museum of Old German Art at Nuremberg. The design of the cards is that of packs of fancifully ornamented cards made in Germany at the close of the fifteenth century. The German satirists of that age complain that the rage for gambling had taken possession of all classes of society, and levelled all ranks, ages, and sexes; that the noble gambled with the commoner, and the clergy with the laity. Some of the clerical reformers declared that card-playing as well as dice was a deadly sin, and others complained that this love of gambling had caused people to forget all honourable pursuits.
No. 312. Cards early in the Sixteenth Century.
A similar outcry was raised in our own country; and a few years later it arose equally loud. A short anonymous poem on the ruin of the realm, belonging apparently to the earlier part of the reign of Henry VIII. (MS. Harl. No. 2252, fol. 25, vo), complains of the nobles and gentry:— Before thys tyme they lovyd for to juste,
And in shotynge chefely they sett ther mynde,
And ther landys and possessyons now sett they moste,
And at cardes and dyce ye may them ffynde.
“Cardes and dyce” are from this time forward spoken of as the great blot on contemporary manners; and they seem for a long time to have driven most other games out of use. Roy, in his remarkable satire against cardinal Wolsey, complains that the bishops themselves were addicted to gambling:— To play at the cardes and dyce
Some of theym are no thynge nyce,
Both at hasard and mom-chaunce.
The rage for cards and dice prevailed equally in Scotland. Sir David Lindsay’s popish parson, in 1535, boasts of his skill in these games:— Thoch I preich nocht, I can play at the caiche;
I wot there is nocht ane amang yow all
Mair ferylie can play at the fute-ball;
And for the cartis, the tabels, and the dyse,
Above all parsouns I may beir the pryse.
The same celebrated writer, in a poem against cardinal Beaton, represents that prelate as a great gambler:—