The sports and pastimes of the people of England including the rural and domestic recreations, May games, mummeries, shows, processions, pageants, and pompous spectacles, from the earliest period to the present time / By Joseph Strutt. Illustrated by one hundred and forty engravings.

  • Joseph Strutt
Date:
183l
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The sports and pastimes of the people of England including the rural and domestic recreations, May games, mummeries, shows, processions, pageants, and pompous spectacles, from the earliest period to the present time / By Joseph Strutt. Illustrated by one hundred and forty engravings. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    BOOK IV. abuses as were afterwards practised, and which excited the re- prehension of the moral and religious Avriters. Besides, at the time that cards were first introduced, they were drawn and painted by the hand without the assistance of a stamp or plate; it folloM's of course that much time was required to complete a set or pack of cards; and the price they bore no doubt was adequate to the labour bestowed upon them, Avhich necessarily must have enhanced their value beyond the purchase of the under classes of the people. For this reason it is, I presume, that card-playir.g, though it might have been known in England, was not much practised until such time as inferior sets of cards, ])roportionably cheap, Avere produced for the use of the com- monalty, whicli seems to have been the case when Edward IV. ascended the throne, for in 14C3, early in his reign, an act Avas established on a petition from the card-makers of the city of London, prohibiting the importation of playing-cards; ‘ and soon after that period card-playing became a very general pas- time. The increasing demand for these objects of amusement, it is said, suggested the idea of cutting the outlines appropriated to the different suits upon separate blocks of wood and stamping them upon the cards ; ^ the intermediate spaces betAveen the out- lines Avere filled up Avith various colours laid on by the hand. This expeditious method of producing cards reduced the price of them, so that they might readily be purchased by almost every class of persons; the common usage of cards Avas soon productive of serious evils, Avhich all the exertions of the legis- JatiA'e poAver have not been able to eradicate.® Another argument against the great antiquity of playing-cards is drawn from the want of paper proper for their fabrication. We certainly have no reason to believe that paper made w ith linen rags Avas produced in Europe before the middle of the * fourteenth century, and even then the art of paper-making does not appear to have been carried to any great perfection. It is also granted that paper is the most proper material we knoAv of for the manufacturing of cards; but it will not therefore folIoAv > Hftnry’s Hist. Brit. vol. v. book v. cap. vii. ® And hence oiiginated the noble and beneficial art of printing. These printing blocks are traced back to the year 1423, and probably were produced at a much earlier period. Idee g6n6rale d’une Collect, ties Estampes, ut sup. * An old Scotch poem, cited by Warton, speaks of cards and dice as fasbiouable amusements, but of evil tendency. Hist. Poet. vol. ii. p. 316.