a game of Spanish origin. It is said to have been introduced into this country by Catherine of Arragon, or at all events by her followers. Shakspere makes out that King Henry VIII. played at primero. Gardiner says that he left the king “at primero with the Duke of Suffolk.” The game was certainly fashionable in the reign of Elizabeth. Lord Burleigh seems to have occasionally indulged in a hand at primero. A picture by Zuccaro, from Lord Falkland’s collection, represents the grave Lord Treasurer playing at cards with three other persons, who from their dress appear to be of distinction, each having two rings on the same finger of both hands. The cards are marked on the face as now, but they differ from our present cards in being longer and narrower; antiquaries are of opinion that the game represented in the picture is the game of primero.
A passage in an old play, Greene’s “Tu Quoque,” has been quoted by several writers as evidence that primero was a gambling game: “Primero, why I thought thou hadst not been so much gamester as play at it.” But a person who objects to cards might make such a remark with respect to any card-game, whether a gambling game or not. Judging from the partial descriptions of the game which remain to us, it would seem that primero might be played either for large or small stakes, as agreed on. In Florio’s “Second Frutes” (1591), a very scarce book, primero is played by two persons for “one shilling stake and three rest” (?pool). In Minshew’s “Spanish Dialogues” four play; the stake is two shillings and the rest, eight. The mode of play is but imperfectly known.
The earliest game of cards indigenous to England seems to have been the game of trump, the predecessor of our national game of whist. It was played at least as early as the time of Edward VI., for in the comedy of "Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” said to have been first printed in 1551, old Dame Chat invites two of her acquaintances to a game at trump.
We be fast set at trump, man, hard by the fyre;
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 Decker’s “Belman,” published about the same period, we are told that “deceipts [are] practised even in the fayrest and most civill companies, at primero, sant, maw, trump, and such like games.”
Trump is supposed to have been very like whist. There was a group of games—trump, ruff, slam, ruff and honours, and, whisk and swabbers—which were closely allied, and out of which modern whist has been born. All card-players are aware that ruff and trump are synonymous. In Cotgrave’s “French and English Dictionary” (1611), we find "Triomphe, the card game called ruffe or trump.” Ruff and trump, however, were not identical. We find them distinguished from each other by Taylor, the water poet (1630), in enumerating the games at which the prodigal squanders his money.
At novum, mumchance, mischance, choose ye which,
At one-and-thirty, or at poor-and-rich;
Ruffe, slam, trump, noddy, whisk, hole, sant, new-cut.
*****
At primifisto, post-and-payre, primero,
Maw, whip-her-ginny, he’s a liberal hero;
At my-sow-pigged;—but (reader, never doubt ye),
He’s skilled in all games, except look-about-ye.
Ruff and honours, and slam, and whist, are also kept distinct from each other by Cotton, in the “Compleat Gamester” (1680). He says: “Ruff and honours (alias slam), and whist, are games so commonly known in England in all parts thereof, that every child almost of eight years old hath a competent knowledge in that recreation; and therefore I am unwilling to speak anything more of them than this, that there may be a great deal of art used in dealing and playing at these games, which differ very little one from the other.” According to Seymour, trump is a corruption of the word triumph, “for where they [trumps] are, they are attended with conquest.”
In the reign of James I., the fashionable game was maw. James I. was himself a card-player. A pamphlet preserved in the British Museum, entitled, “Tom Tell-Troath; or, Free Discourse touching the Manners of the Time” (circa 1622), thus alludes to the taste for cards. “In the very gaming ordinaries, where men have scarce leisure to say grace, yet they take a time to censure your Majestie’s actions. They say you have lost the fairest game at maw that ever King had, for want of making the best advantage of the five-finger [five of trumps] and playing the other helpes in time. That your owne card holders play bootie, and give the signe out of your owne hande.”
The game of maw differed but little from that subsequently called five-cards; and five-cards again is substantially the same as the modern Irish game of spoil-five. It is probable that the game of five-cards was carried to Ireland by Oliver Cromwell’s army.
Gleek was reckoned a genteel game in Ben Jonson’s time. It was played by three persons. It is described at great length in a book entitled “Wit’s Interpreter,” published in 1670.
