Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/228

 20J Hijiory of T>07neflic Maniters on chefs which it ilkiftrates was compofed, gives all the conventional forms of chefs-men ufed at that time. The piece at the left-hand extremity of the lower row is evidently a king. The other king is feen in the centre of the upper row. Immediately to the left of the latter is the queen, and the two figures below the king and queen are knights, while thofe to the left of the queen and white knight are rooks. Thofe in the right-hand corner, at top and bottom, are aufins, or bifliops. The pawns on this chelT-board bear a ftriking refemblance to thofe found in ]S:o. 144. An Early Chcjj-board and Cluf- the Ille of Lewis. The fame forms, with very llight variations, prefent themfelves in the fcenes of chelT-playing as depi6led in the illuminated manufcripts. Thus, in a manufcript of the French profe romance of "Mehadus," in the Britifli Mufeum (MS. Addit. No. 12,228, fol. 23, v°), written between the years 1330 and 1350, we have an interefting Iketch (given in our cut No. 145) of two kings engaged in this game. The rooks and the bifliops are diftiniSlly reprefented, but the others are lefs eafily recognifed, in confequence of the imperfeft drawing. Our next cut (No. 146) is taken from the well-known manufcript of the poetry of the German Minnefmgers, made for Rudigcr von ManelTe, early in the fourteenth century, and now prefer'ed in the National Library in Paris, and