"having arrived at a hotel, I withdrew into the cell of a priest, while he remained with a crowd of travellers in the spacious house. In the morning I was informed by my servant that the bishop had been playing chess; which information like an arrow pierced my heart. At a convenient hour I sent for him, and said, in a tone of reproof, 'The hand is stretched out, the rod is ready for the offender.' 'Let the fault be proved,' said he, 'and penance shall not be refused.' 'Was it well,' I rejoined, 'was it worthy of the character you bear, to spend the evening in the vanity of chess-play, and defile the hands and tongue which ought to be the mediator between man and the Deity? Are you aware that, by the canonical law, bishops who are dice-players are ordered to be deposed?' He, however, making himself a shield of defence from the difference of names, said that dice was one thing, and chess another; consequently, that the canon only forbade dice, but tacitly allowed chess. To which I replied, 'Chess is not named in the text, but the general term of dice comprehends both games; wherefore, since dice is forbidden and chess is not named, it follows without doubt that both are equally condemned.'"
It is safe to conclude from this that the cardinal himself was not familiar with the game.
Females are represented on many illuminated manuscripts, as well as in early romances, as playing chess together or with knights. In one called Blonde of Oxford, Jean, a young French nobleman, comes to England and enters the household service of the Earl of Oxford. It was a part of Jean's duty to attend on the Lady Blonde, daughter of the earl, and serve her at table; after dinner, he goes hawking and hunting with them, and also teaches the ladies French. "Then he entertains the Ladye Blonde, and teaches her chess, and he often says check and mate to her."
Similar scenes are in Ipomydon, as in the following quoted by Strutt:
"When theye had dyned, as you saye,
Lords and ladys yede to playe,
Some to tables, some to chesse,
And other gamys more or less."
"The writers immediately after the conquest," says a distinguished antiquarian, "speak of the Saxons as playing at chess; and pretend that they learned the game of the Danes. Gaimar, who gives an interesting story of the deceit practised on King Edgar (A.D. 973) by Ethelwold, when sent to visit the beautiful Elfthrida, daughter of Orgar of Devonshire, describes the young lady and her noble father passing the day at chess." (Wright.)
Such examples might be multiplied to tediousness; but one more notice of it among the Northmen is worth giving, because it is found in one of the grandest of modern epics, by the Swedish poet, Tegner, founded on events in the life of one of their most renowned heroes—The Legend of Frithiof.
The fortunes of the valiant Frithiof, who was the son of a thane, seem to have been ruled by his love for the fair Ingeborn, daughter of a king, and the scorn with which her two brothers spurned his proposal for her hand. A day of retaliation, however, soon came. Helgé and Halfdan, the brothers, were threatened by a neighboring foe, and sent to Frithiof—certainly with a sublime forgetfulness of what had passed—to ask his aid. When the messenger arrived, he was playing chess with his friend, Bjorn, the Bear. Frithiof refuses very decidedly. His heart still pines for Ingeborn; and, like a true Viking, he betakes himself for consolation to the sea, which he vows shall be "his home in life and his grave in death." The chess-board beside which Frithiof doubtless forgot his griefs for a brief space is described as magnificent—
"Beside a chess-board's checkered frame
Frithiof and Bjorn pursued their game;
Silver was each alternate plane,
And each alternate plane of gold."[168]