Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/238

 2l8 Hijiory of Domejiic Manners calculations. In this way, no doubt, originated the different games enumerated by John of Salilbury, the moll popular of which was that of tables (tcdula or talidce). This game was in ufe among the Romans, and was in all probability borrowed from them by the Anglo- Saxons, among whom it was in great favour, and who called the game tc^fel (evidently a mere adoption of the Latin name), and the dice teofelas and tcefel-ftanas. The former evidently reprefents the Latin teJJellcE, little cubes ; and the latter feems to fliow that the Anglo-Saxon dice were ufually made of ftones. At a later period, the game of tables, ufed nearly always in the plural, is continually mentioned along with chefs, as the two moft falhionable and arillocratic games in uie. An early and richly iUuminated manufcript in the Eritilli Mufeum — perhaps of the beginning of the fourteenth century (MS. Harl. No. 1257) — furnifhes us with the figures of players at tables repre- fented in our cut No. 153. The table, or board, with bars or points, is here clearly delineated, and we fee that the players ufe both dice and men, or pieces — the latter round difcs, like our modern draughtfmen. In another manu- fcript, belonging to a rather later period of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 13 A. xviii. fol. 157, v°), we have a diagram which fliows the board as compofed of two tables, reprefented in our cut No. 154. It was probably this conflruftion which cauled the name to be ufed in the plural; and as the Anglo-Saxons always ufed the name in the lingular, as is the cafe alio with John of Salilbury in the twelfth century, while the plural is always ufed by the writers of a later date, we feem juftified in concluding that the board ufed by the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo- Normans confifted of one table, like that reprefented in our cut No. 153, and that this was afterwards fuperfeded by the double board. It is hardly neceflary to point out to our readers that thefe two pi£tures of the boards fhow us clearly that the mediceval game of tables was identical with our modern 53.^ Party at Tables.