Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/49

 ii s. vii. JAN. is, 19U] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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" The Spaniard is generally given to gaming, and that in excess ; he will say his prayers before, and if he win he will thank God for his good fortune after ; their common game at cards (for they very seldom play at dice) is Primera, at which the King never shows his game, but throws his cards with their faces down on the table." James Howell's ' Familiar Letters,' xxxi., 1 Feb., 1623.

" His words are like the cards at Primi-Vist, where six is eighteen, and seven twenty-one ; for they never signify what they sound." John Earle's ' Microcosmography ' (1628), Char. 12.

" Games at Chartes Ruffe, Trumpe, Slam'e, Gleeke, Newcut, Swig, Loadam, Putt, Primi- fisty, Post and Pair, Bone-ace, Anakin, Seven Cardes, One and Thirty, My Sewe has Pig'd." MS. Diary of 1629. W. H. Allnutt in ' N. & Q.,' 5 S. v. 129.

" When it may be some of our butterfly judg- ments expected a set of Maw or Prima- Vista from them." Peter Hausted's ' Rivall Friends ' (1632).

Historic may At Maw, or Gleek, or at Primero play.

Thomas Randolph's ' Poems ' (1634).

Were it Mount-Cent, Primero, or at chesse, It want with most, and lost still with the lesse. Sir William D'Avenant's ' Wits ' (1636).

" Will you card a rest for this ? " Thomas Heywood's ' Royal King and Loyal Subject ' (1637), II. ii.

" For Cardes, the Philologie of them is not for an essay. A man's fancy would be sum'd up in Cribbidge ; Gleeke requires a vigilant memory and a long purse ; Maw, a pregnant agility ; Pichet, a various invention ; Primero, a dextrous kinde of rashnesse." John Hall's ' Hora3 Vacivse ' (1646), 150.

" He [Straff ord] played exceedingly well at Primero and Mayo." -Sir George Radcliffe's ' Letters and Despatches of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford' (c. 1650).

" W T hite silk knotted in the fingers of a Pair of white Gloves, and so contrived without suspicion, that playing at Primero at Cards, one may with- out clogging his memory keep reckoning of all Sixes, Sevens, and Aces which he hath discarded." Edward Somerset, second Marquis of Wor- cester's ' Century of Indentions ' (1663), 87.

" The games of Gleek, Primero, In and In, and several others now exploded, employed our sharping ancestors." Oliver Goldsmith's ' Life of Richard Nash ' (1762), 56.

"Perhaps, as games are subject to revolutions, Whisk maybe as much forgot in the next century as Primero is at present." Daines Barrington's ' Observations on the Antiquity of Card-Playing in England' (1786), Arcliceologia, viii. 134.

" Would win ten times as much at gleek and primero as I used to do at put and beggar-my- ueighbour." Sir Walter Scott's ' Fortunes of Nigel ' (1822), chap. xxi.

" Near them play was going on at one table, and primero at a second." Stanley J. Weyrnan's ' A Gentleman of France ' (1893), chap. xvi.

J. S. McTEAR. G, Arthur Chambers, Belfast.

A JUSTIFICATION OF KING JOHN.

IN his Introduction to the second volume of ' The Lives of the Archbishops of Canter- bury ' Dean Hook states that

" until the reign of King John we possess in fact only ex-parfe statements, which, in the absence of public documents, we are unable to-- correct. The statements are also made by persons under the influence of the odium theo- logicum, which is of all passions the most un- scrupulous in the discoloration of facts, and the aspersion of character."

Is it not time to examine King John's own history in a more cautious manner ? In Longmans' ' Political History of England ' of the reign of King John, 1199-1216, dealing with the death of that king's nephew, Arthur, Duke of Britanny, we read

" that Arthur finally died either by his [King John's] order or by his hand. It is of some interest that in all the contemporary discussions of this case, no one ever suggested that John was personally incapable of such a violation of his oath or of such a murder with his own hand. He is of all kings the one for whose character no man, of his own age or later, has ever had a good word. .. .Fully as wicked as William Rufus, the worst of his predecessors, he makes on the reader of contemporary narratives the impres- sion of a man far less apt to be swept off his feet by passion, of a cooler and more deliberate, of a meaner and smaller, a less respectable or pardon- able lover of vice and worker of crimes. The case of Arthur exhibits one of his deepest traits, his utter falsity, the impossibility of binding him, his readiness to betray any interest or any man or woman, whenever tempted to it. The judgment of history on John has been one of terrible severity, but the unanimous opinion- of contemporaries and posterity is not likely to be wrong, and the failure of personal know- ledge and of later study to find redeeming features assures us of their absence. As to the murder of Arthur, it was a useless crime even if judged from the point of view of a Borgian policy merely, one from which John had in any case little to gain, and of which his chief enemy was sure to reap the greatest advantage."

This account is written entirely in the spirit Dean Hook deprecates. Moreover, the writer tells us nothing of the important fact that Constance, the mother of Arthur, who died before the date given for Arthur's murder, had been married to a third husband, Guy de Thouars, the brother of Aimery, Vis- count de Thouars, and by this third husband had given birth to a daughter, who was named Alix (eventually married to Peter de Dreux [Mauclerc], a cousin of the King of France, from which marriage sprang a new line of Dukes of Britanny. ending with Claude, Duchess of Britanny, who was married to Francis I., King of France).