Course:History 344 Nasty Families/Pastimes/Gambling

Gambling

Gambling was practiced not only by the lower classes but also the higher gentry’ class as well. Both men and females participated in it, “even more so than the country squires.”(1) In Bath, London and Tunbridge, the gaming-table became a “central point of interest”.(2) These expenses in gambling and sport were often just as draining on the finances as was the “zeal for building and for laying out gardens and planting avenues.”(3) Amongst the English gentry there was no doubt a vast quantity of money changing hands over both card and dice.(4) Gambling remained an entertaining and sometimes lucrative past-time for the English elite sitting around a table and having a dignified time together. It was an entirely different experience from those choosing to gamble in the bowling alleys and back alleys around town, which was viewed with certain disdain by certain groups.

Amongst certain English groups there was also the thought that gambling and the foulness associated with it should be stamped out. On June 26th 1657 it was decreed that all the “wandering, idle, loose, dissolute and disorderly persons were to be flogged as rogues and sent to a house of correction.”(6) Anyone who was caught winning money at either money or dice was also liable to forfeit double the amount that was won.(7) This was mostly an empty threat that was very hard to enforce but it is important because amongst the common people gambling was seen as despicable and dirty by many groups, but the same views were not held by the elite that gambled their houses and livelihood away. This highlights the fact that the more enlightened and sophisticated gambling of the gentry was not so scrutinized as it was not associated with other vile acts such as drunken brawling or bear baiting that the lower classes so often enjoyed.

Hazard

One of the most popular games during this time was the game of Hazard which dated back to the 13th century.(5) It was one of the an immensely popular dice game sand featured two dice and was a popular gambling game and related to our modern day game of craps.(8) The stakes grew and many were apt to bet their house or entire state in some of the high stake gambling rooms in England.(9) Hazard became a very profitable game for those who understood the game. Tom Patton, was a son of a squire and commissioned as a Captain when he found he couldn’t live comfortably on his commission, he began playing Hazard competitively. Soon after he began playing, Patton began to win a large amount of money and was able to buy his ways up the ranks to that of a Colonel and was also able to buy an estate with an income of 1500 pounds per year. (10)

1. George M. Trevelyan Illustrated English Social History (London: Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co.Ltd, 1969), 20-21

2. Ibid., 21.

3. Ibid., 21.

4. Ibid., 21.

5. Encoyclopedia Brittanica Online, s. v. "hazard," accessed February 06, 2012, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/257915/hazard.

6. Davies Godfrey, The Early Stuarts:1603-1660. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 304.

7. Godfrey, The Early Stuarts, 304.

8. Encoyclopedia Brittanica Online, s. v. "hazard," accessed February 06, 2012, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/257915/hazard.

9. ibid.

10. Elizabeth Burton, The Pageant of Stuart England (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962), 288.