Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/244

 224 Hijiory of Domejlic Manners clergy were expreffly forbidden to play at cards. Thefe had now made their way into Germany, and had become fo popular there, that early in the fifteenth century card-making had become a regular trade. In England, in the third year of the reign of Edward IV. (1463), the importation of playing-cards, probably from Germany, was forbidden, among other things, by aft of parliament ; and as that aft is underftood to have been called for by the Englifli manufatturers, who fuffered by the foreign trade, it can hardly be doubted that cards were then manufaftured in England on a rather extenfive fcale. Cards had then, indeed, evidently become very popular in England ; and only twenty years afterwards they are fpoken of as the common Chriftmas game, for Margery Pafton wrote as follows to her hulband, John Pafton, on the 24th of December in 1483 : — " Pleafe it you to weet (know) that I fent your eldeft fon John to my lady Morley, to have knowledge of what fports were ufed in her houfe in the Chriftmas next following after the deceafe of my lord her hulband 3 and Ihe laid that there were none difguifings, nor harpings, nor luting, nor finging, nor none loud difports, but playing at the tables, and the chefs, and cards — fuch difports llie gave her folks leave to play, and none other I fent your younger fon to the lady Stapleton, and ftie laid according to my lady Morley's faying in that, and as flie had feen ufed in places of worflaip {gentlemen s houfes) there as Ihe had been." From this time the mention of cards becomes frequent. They formed the common amufement in the courts of England and Scotland under the reigns of Henry VII. and James IV. ; and it is recorded that when the latter monarch paid his firft vifit to his affianced bride, the young princefs Margaret of England, " he founde the queue playing at the cardes." It muft not be forgotten that it is partly to the ufe of playing cards that we owe the invention which has been juftly regarded as one of the greateft benefits granted to mankind. The firft cards, as we have feen, were painted with the hand. They were fubfequently made more rapidly by a procefs called ftencilling — that is, by cutting the rude forms through a piece of pafteboard, parchment, or thin metal, which, placed