Shakespeare, in Anthony and Cleopatra (Act II, Scene 5), makes the latter say, “Let us to billiards.”
Cotton’s “Compleat Gamster” published in 1674, refers to billiards as “This most gentle, cleanly and ingenious game.” He states that it was first played in France, but later gives Spain as its birthplace.
That the game was well known in England, and in fact in all Europe, is revealed when Cotton says, “For the excellency of the recreation, it is much approved of and played by most nations of Europe, especially England, there being few towns of note therein which hath not a public billiard table; neither are they wanting in many noble and private families in the country.”
Billiards was brought to America by the Spaniards who settled St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565. While we have no direct evidence, it is very safe to assume that the English gentlemen, so familiar with the game in the home land, who colonized Virginia in 1609, were not long in introducing it in Jamestown.
There is also every reason to believe that the French colonists in Maryland and Canada let no great time elapse before importing tables and equipment into those colonies.
In the days of Cromwell, billiards had been tabooed by the Puritan, not on moral grounds, but rather political. Billiards was the game of the aristocracy and the Puritan hated not only the aristocrat, but the style and color of his clothes, the cut of his hair, as well as the games he played.
Doubtless this attitude was carried to America by the New England colonists, and only when those colonies had been diluted by the injection of other social groups did Puritan prejudice die and billiards enter into their recreational life.
However, there is no doubt that by the latter part of the seventeenth century the game was universally played in the United States.
From that time to the present the tide of popularity for billiards as the premier indoor game has been steadily rising.
Unlike most things in the affairs of men, billiards has not developed at either end of society, thus working toward the opposite extreme; but it began at both ends and worked towards the middle.