"Braulers, lyers, getters, and chyders, Walkers by night, and great murderers, Overthwarte gyle, and joly carders."
In the morality of Lusty Juventus, written by R. Wever, in the reign of Edward VI, Hypocryse says to Juventus, whom he invites to breakfast:
"I have a furny carde in a place, That will bear a turne besides the ace; She purvoyes now apace For my commynge."
From a subsequent passage it appears that this "furny carde"[127] is the naughty woman, "litle Besse," the personification of "Abhominable Livyng."
In the comedy of 'Gammer Gurton's Needle,' said to have been first printed in 1551, old dame Chat thus invites two of her acquaintance to a game at cards:
"What, Diccon? Come nere, ye be no stranger: We be fast set at trump, man, hard by the fire; Thou shalt set on the king, if thou come a little nyer. Come hither, Dol; Dol, sit down and play this game, And as thou sawest me do, see thou do even the same; There is five trumps besides the queen, the hindmost thou shalt find her."
In a Satire on Cardinal Wolsey and the Romish Clergy by William Roy, without date, but most likely printed in 1527,[128] some of the bishops are charged with gaming in addition to their other vices:
"To play at the cardes and dyce, Some of theym are nothynge nyce, Both at hasard and mom-chaunce."
In the privy purse expenses, from 1536 to 1544, of the Princess Mary, daughter of Henry VIII, afterwards Queen Mary, there are numerous entries of money delivered to the princess to play at cards. In a prefatory memoir, Sir Frederick Madden remarks: "Cards she seems to have indulged in freely; and there is a sum generally allotted as pocket-money for the recreation every month."[129] As Mary is said to have been extremely devout, we may presume that, adopting the decisions of the more indulgent casuists, she availed herself of their permission to play at cards as a recreation when her mind was fatigued with the exercise of her strenuous piety. The records of the burning of men and women in her reign for the sake of _religion_, form a singular contrast with the entries in her privy purse expenses of money delivered to her to play at cards.
From the preceding incidental notices of cards in poems and plays, as well as from the direct evidence of the statute book and the privy purse expenses of the Princess Mary, it would appear that card-playing was common in England during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, both in the cottage and the palace; and there is reason to believe that about the same period the game was equally common in Scotland. William Dunbar, who wrote in the reigns of James IV and James V, in his 'General Satire,' exposing the depravity of all classes of people in the kingdom, thus alludes to the prevalence of dicing and card-playing: