Facts and Speculations on the Origin and History of Playing Cards

by William Andrew Chatto

"To have the power to forgive,

Is empire and prerogative."

It would appear that cards was a common game at the court of Henry the VII, even with the royal children; for, in 1503, his daughter Margaret, aged 14, was found playing at cards by James IV of Scotland, on his first interview with her, after her arrival in Scotland for the purpose of being married to him. [114] James himself is said to have been greatly addicted to card-playing; and in the accounts of his treasurer there are several entries of money disbursed on account of the game. On Christmas night, 1496, there are delivered to the king at Melrose, to spend at cards, "thirty-five unicornis, eleven French crowns, a ducat, a ridare, and a leu"—in all forty-two pounds. On the 23d August, 1504, when the king was at Lochmaben, he appears to have lost several sums at cards to Lord Dacre, the warden of the English marches; and on the 26th of the same month, there is an entry of four French crowns given "to Cuddy, the Inglis luter, to louse his cheyne of grotis, quhilk he tint at the cartis,"—to redeem his chain of groats which he lost at cards.[115]

M. Duchesne, in his 'Observations sur les Cartes à jouer,' says, somewhat inconsistently, that cards are of Italian origin, and that it was either at Venice or at Florence, that the Greek refugees from Constantinople, first made them known. M. Duchesne is as incorrect in his chronology, as he is singular in his notions with respect to the Italian origin of playing cards,—first brought to Venice or Florence, by Greeks. [116] The refugees to whom he apparently alludes were the Greeks who sought an asylum in Italy, when Constantinople was taken by the Turks, in 1453, which is sixty years after the time that we have positive evidence of cards being known in France. But though no evidence has been produced to show that cards were first brought into Europe from Constantinople, it is yet certain that they were known to the Greeks, before the end of the fifteenth century; for Ducange, in his Glossary of Middle-Age Greek, under the word "XAPTIA, Ludus chartarum, [117] quotes the following verse from a manuscript of Emanual Georgillas on the Plague at Rhodes:

"Και τα ταυλια, και τα χαρτια, και ζαρια κατακαυσουν."

"Burn the tables, cards, and dice."

"It appears from this," says Ducange, "that the game of cards, the origin of which is uncertain, was at least known in 1498, the year in which this mortality happened." In the 'Journal des Dames,' for the 10th April, 1828—a publication, which I have not had the fortune to see, but which is referred to by Brunet the younger, in his 'Notice Bibliographique sur les Cartes à jouer,'—there is a detailed account of the modern Greek cards manufactured at Frankfort. [118]

Towards the close of the fifteenth, and in the early part of the sixteenth century, before Luther had sounded the tocsin of religious reform, and given a new impulse to both the busy and the idle, the Germans appear to have been greatly addicted to gaming. Woodcuts of this period showing men and women playing at cards and dice are common. John Geiler of Kaisersberg, a famous preacher in his day, who, like Latimer, was accustomed to season his sermons with a little humour—not to say fun—rings a peal against gaming in his 'Speculum Fatuorum,' first printed at Strasburg about 1508. He says that there are some games at cards which are purely of chance, such as "der offen Rusch und Schantzen," [119] while others, such as "des Karnefflins" depend on both chance and skill. In treating of the lawfulness of playing at cards, dice, and similar games "for the sake of recreation"—a saving clause which appears to have been introduced in favour of the laboriously studious and devout,—he cites authorities both pro and con. A certain gloss says that to play at such games, whether for money, or "gratis," is a deadly sin; and Hostiensis says that to play for recreation, for money,—"to kill themselves for love, with wine"—is a deadly sin in the laity as well as the clergy. Angelus, however, says that it is lawful for both clergy and laity to play for recreation, for small stakes: "pro modico non notabili." Geiler's own conclusion is that, as doctors differ, there is danger. Gaming in his time, as in our own, appears to have levelled all distinctions: lords and ladies, and even clergymen, dignified or otherwise, eager to win money, and confiding in their luck, or their skill, cared but little for the rank or character of those with whom they played, provided they could but post the stakes; and felt no more compunction in winning a ruffling burgher's money, than a peer would in receiving the amount of a bet from a cab-man, or a wealthy citizen, a few years ago, in rendering bankrupt the wooden-legged manager of a thimble-rig table at Epsom or Ascot.—The "thimble-rig," however, is now numbered with the things that have been—"fuit." Lord Stanley brought it into political disrepute; and Sir James Graham put it down, just about the time that the railway speculation began to be the "rage" under the auspices of a knowing Yorkshireman.

Thomas Murner, a Franciscan friar, availing himself apparently of the popularity of card-playing, introduced the term "Chartiludium" as a "caption" in the title of his 'Logica Memorativa,' printed at Strasburg, in 1509. [120] The work is evidently that of a scholastic pedant, who might possibly be expert enough in ringing the changes on verbal distinctions, but who had not the least knowledge of things, nor any idea of the right use of reason. The book is adorned with numerous cuts, which represent cards, inasmuch at the top of each there is an emblem, just as there is the mark of the suit in each of our coat cards. The cuts and the text taken together, for they mutually render each other more intelligible, form such a mass of complicated nonsense as would puzzle even a fortune-teller to interpret. In his prologue, Murner asks pardon for the title of his book; and assures the studious youths, for whose instruction it was devised, that he had not been led to adopt it from any partiality to card-playing; that, in fact, he had never touched cards, and that, from his very childhood he had abhorred the perverse passion for play. In 1518 Murner, apparently stimulated by the success of his logical card-play, published an introduction to the civil law, written and pictorially illustrated in the same manner as the former. [121]