Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/234

 2 14 Hijiory of 'Dome flic Manners cal elephantes, cariyng towres upon their backes, and men within the towres. The paunes feme cal fote men, as they are fouldiours on fote, cariyng fome of them pykes, other feme harquebulhes, other fome halbards, and other fome the javelyn and target. Other makers of cheaftmen make them of other failiionsj but the ufe thereof wyll caufe perfe6t knowledge." "Our Englilhe cheaflmen," he adds, "are com- monly made nothing like unto thefe forefayde fafliions : to wit, the kynge is made the higheft or longefl ; the queene is longefi: nexte unto him ; the billioppe is made with a lliarpe toppe, and cloven in the middeft not muche unlyke to a bilhop's myter j the knight hath his top cut alloope, as thoughe beynge dubbed knight ; the rooke is made lykeft to the kynge and the queene, but that he is not fo long ; the paunes be made the fmalefl and leaft of all, and thereby they may bell: be knowen." At an early period the German tribes, as known to the Romans, were notorioufly addifted to gambling. We are informed by Tacitus that a German in his time would rilk not only his property, but his own perfonal liberty, on a throw of the dice ; and if he loft, he fubmitted patiently, as a point of honour, to be bound by his opponent, and carried to the market to be fold into llavery. The Anglo-Saxons appear to have ihared largely in this paflion, and their habits of gambling are alluded to in dilFerent writers. A well-known writer of the firft half of the twelfth century, Ordericus Vitalis, tells us that in his time even the prelates of the church were in the habit of playing at dice. A fl:ill more celebrated writer, John of Salilbury, who lived a little later in the fame century, fpeaks of dice-playing as being then extremely prevalent, and enumerates no lefs than ten difterent games, which he names in Latin, as follows : — tefl'era, calculus, talula (tables), urio vet Dardana pugna (Troy fight), tricolus, fenio (fice), monarchus, orbicuU, taliorchus, and vulpes (the game of fox). — "De Nugis Curialium," lib. i. c. 5. The fort of eftimation in which the game was then held is curioully illuftrated by an anecdote in the Carlovingian romance of " Parife la Ducheffe," where the king of the Hungarians wiflies to contrive fome means of tefting the real charader (arillocratic or plebeian) of his foundling, young Hugues, not then known to