later than its arrival in Persia, and subsequent receipt in Arabia, and probably in Greece, and nearly 400 years after its practice among the Spaniards, the Aquitaines and the Franks.  The Saxon monarchs who first became most given to the search after knowledge of all kinds and who were acquainted with and contemporary with Pepin and Charlemagne and Harun and the great Al Mamun may well have heard of and acquired some knowledge of a game so popular as chess had become at the Carlovingian and Greek Courts, and in the Eastern dominions and Mohammedan Spain.

The reigns of Offa and Egbert seem not improbable ones in which chess might have become known among us, the scholar Alcuin from his long sojourn and domestication with Charlemagne and his family, by all of whom he was revered and beloved, was familiar with that monarch’s tastes and amusements.  He was in fact his preceptor in the sciences.  By arrangement with Charlemagne he paid a visit to his native country, England, during the years 790 to 793 A.D., he probably knew chess and was familiar with the celebrated chess men which the Emperor valued so much, and have been reported on in our own times, and he seems the least unlikely person to have noticed and assisted in encouraging a judicious practice of it in England.  Offa also corresponded with Charlemagne.  Egbert took refuge at his Court before he began to reign and was well received, and for a time served in the Emperor’s army, and that those kings may have known of the royal game, through Alcuin, or even direct is not impossible or even improbable.

H. T. Buckle, the author and historian, (born 1822, died at Damascus in 1862) foremost in skill among chess amateurs, satisfied with the evidence of Canute’s partiality for the game thought it very probable that it might have been known before the commencement of that monarch’s reign (1016), and suggested perhaps a century earlier.  Sir Frederick Madden (1828 to 1832) at the outset of some highly interesting communications to the “Asiatic Researches,” at first inclined to the Crusaders’ theory, but upon later consideration in his articles he arrived at the conclusion that chess must have been known among us as early as the reign of Athelstan (925 to 940), and Professor Duncan Forbes (1854 to 1860) concurred in that view, both writers regard the incident related of the Earl of Devonshire and his beautiful daughter being found playing chess together, when Earl Athelwold, King Edgar’s messenger arrived to test the report of her great beauty as not unworthy of credit.  Edgar reigned from 958 to 975.  English history referring to this incident among the amours of Edgar makes no mention of the Earl of Devonshire and his daughter being found playing chess together.  Hume says Elfrida was daughter and heir of Olgar (Orgar), Earl of Devonshire, and though she had been educated in the country and had never appeared in Court she had filled all England with the reputation of her beauty.  The mission of Earl Athelwold, his deception of the King and his own marriage with Elfrida follows, next the King’s discovery, the murder of Athelwold by the King, and his espousal of Elfrida.