Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/221

 and Sentiments. 201 Au Jil au due Graner comen^a a juer ,• C/iafcuns mift c. frans de deniers moniez ; Mais il les a trejto'z, et -vancus et mate%, Slue il ni ot i.fol qui ran poiift plater. — Parise la Duchesse, p. 105. Hugues, in kindnefs, offered to teach them better how to play, without allowing them to rilk their money, but they drew their knives upon him, and infulted him in the moft outrageous terms. He killed the foremoft of them with a blow of his M, and feizing upon the cheff-board for a weapon, for he was unarmed, he " brained" the other three with it. We learn from this anecdote that it was the cuftom in the middle ages to play at chefs for money. As I have already remarked, thefe romances pi£ture to us the manners of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and not thofe of the Carlovingian era. The period when the game of chefs was firft introduced into weftern Europe can only be conjectured, for writers of all defcriptions were fo much in the habit of employing the notions belonging to their own time in relating the events of the part, that we can place no depend- ence on anything which is not abfolute contemporary evidence. The chelf-board and men fo long preferved in the treafury of St. Denis, and faid to have belonged to Charlemagne, were, I think, probably, not older than the eleventh century, and appear to have had a Byzantine origin. If the game of chefs had been known at the court of Charlemagne, I cannot but think that we iTiould have found fome diftinft allufion to it. The earlieft mention of this game that we know is found in a letter from Damianus, cardinal bilhop of Oftia, to Alexander II. , who was elefted to the papacy in 1061, and enjoyed it till 1073. Damianus tells the pope how he was travelUng with a bilhop of Florence, when, " having arrived in the evening at a hoftel, I withdrew," he fays, " into the cell of a priell, while he remained with the crowd of travellers in the fpacious houfe. In the morning, I was informed by my fervant that the aforefaid bilhop had been playing at the game of chefs ; which information, like an arrow, pierced my heart very acutely. At a convenient hour, I fent for him, and faid in a tone of fevere reproof, 'The hand is ftretched out, the rod is ready for the back of the offender.' ' Let the fault be proved,' D D faid