Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/505

 and Sentiments. 485 group of female gamefters, reprefented in our cut No. 308. It will be feen that the ladies are playing with cards and dice, and that the ale jug is introduced as an accompaniment. In faft we muft look upon it as a tavern party, and the round table, as far as we can judge, appears to be fixed in the ground. The fame book furnilhes us with an illuftration (cut No. 309), in which two gamblers are quarrelling over a game at backgammon. A child is here the jug-bearer or guardian of the liquor. No. 310. A Party at Dice. Our cut No. 310 reprefents a gambling fcene of a rather later period, taken from Whitney's " Emblems," printed in 1586 j dice are here the implements of play. A very curious piece of painted glafs, now in the poffeffion of Mr. Fairholt, of German manufafture, and forming part, apparently, of a feries illuftrative of the hiftory of the Prodigal Son, reprefents a party of gamblers, of the earlier part of the fixteenth century, in which they are playing with two dice. It is copied in our cut No. 311. The original bears the infcription, " Jan Fan Ha (J ell Try u gen fin hausfrau," with a merchant's mark, and the date, i 532. Three dice, however, continued to be ufed long after this, and are, from time to time, alluded to during the fixteenth and feventeenth centuries. I have, in a former chapter, traced the hifiory of playing-cards down to the latter half of the fifteenth century. After that time, they are frequently