Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/507

 afid Sentiments. 487 gambling had taken poffeflion of all clalTes of fociety, and levelled all ranks, ages, and fexes ; that the noble gambled with the commoner, and the clergy with the laity. Some of the clerical reformers declared that card-playing as well as dice was a deadly fin, and others complained No. 312. Cards early in the Sixteenth Century. that this love of gambling had caufed people to forget all honourable purfuits. A fimilar outcry was raifed in our own country ; and a few years later it arofe equally loud. A Ihort anonymous poem on the ruin of the realm, belonging apparently to the earlier part of the reign of Henry VIII. (MS. Harl. No. 2252, fol. 25, v°), complains of the nobles and gentry: — Before thys tyme they lo-uydfor to jujie. And in fhotynge chefely they fett ther mynde. And ther landys and pojfcjfycns noiv fett they mofte. And at cardes and dyce ye may them ffynde. " Cardes and dyce" are from this time forward fpoken of as the great blot on contemporary manners ; and they feem for a long time to have driven moft other games out of ufe. Roy, in his remarkable fatire againft cardinal Wolfey, complains that the billiops themfelves were addided to gambling : —