“If on your man you light,
          The first draught you may play,
          If not tis mine by right,
          At first to leade the way.

Printed in London, for John Jackson, dwelling without Temple Barre, 1460.

The introduction is in the following words: 

To
The Right
Honourable, Thrice Noble, and Vertuous Lady,
Lucy Countesse of Bedford, one of the Ladies of Her
Majesties Privie Chamber.

This little book, not so much for the subject sake (though much esteemed), as for bearing in front your Honour’s honoured name having found that good acceptance with the world, as now to come to be re-imprinted.  I have been desired by the printer, my friend, little to review it, and finding it indeed a prettie thing, but with some wants specially or a good methode, I have to my best skill rectified it for him, leaving to the author (now deceased), with the good respect and commendation due to him for his honest and generous endeavour, his phrase and stile whole as farre as I might of this Madame, I now presume to offer your Honour the censure whose singular judgment, and love in and unto this noble exercise, is reported to be a chief grace to the same, that so both his labour and mine herein, may returne to the sacred Shrine of your Honour’s vertues, there still to receive protection against ignorance and malice.

For which attempt of mine, humbly craving pardon I rest,
          Noble Madame of Your Honour,
   The most submissive observant, J. Barbiere, P.

------

JOHN LYDGATE

The earliest English references to chess, are in the works of Chaucer, Gower, Occreve, Price, Denham, Sir Philip Sydney, Sir Walter Raleigh, &c.

John Lydgate the English Monk of St. Edmund’s-Bury, calls this game, the Game Royal, and he dedicates his book, written in the manner of a love poem, to the admirers of chess, which he compares to a love battle, in the following words:  M.S.

John lydgate.

To all Folky’s vertuose,
That gentil bene and amerouse,
Which love the fair play notable,
Of the Chesse most delytable,
Whith all her hoole full entente,
Where they shall fynde, and son anoone,
How that I not yere agoone,
Was of a Fers so Fortunate,
Into a corner drive and maat.

The old English names in Lydgate, are 1, Kynge, 2, Queen or Fers, 3, Awfn, or Alfin, 4, Knyght, or Horseman, 5, Roke or Rochus, 6, Paune.

Although Shakespeare makes no mention of chess in his works, some of his brother dramatists, and other writers who were contemporary with him, were fond of referring to it.  Skelton, poet laureate to Henry the Eighth, says: