In the manuscript last quoted (MS. Reg. 13 A. xviii.) the figure of the board is given to illustrate a very curious treatise on the game of tables, written in Latin, in the fourteenth, or even perhaps in the thirteenth, century. The writer begins by informing us, that “there are many games at tables with dice, of which the first is the long game, and is the game of the English, and it is common, and played as follows” (_multi sunt ludi ad tabulas cum taxillis, quorum primus est longus ludus, et est ludus Anglicorum, et est communis, et est talis naturæ_), meaning, I presume, that it was the game usually played in England. From the directions given for playing it, this game seems to have had a close general resemblance to backgammon. The writer of the treatise says that it was played with three dice, or with two dice, in which latter case they counted six at each throw for the third dice. In some of the other games described here, two dice only were used. We learn from this treatise the English terms for two modes of winning at the “long game” of tables--the one being called “lympoldyng,” the other “lurchyng;” and a person losing by the former was said to be “lympolded.” The writer of this tract gives directions for playing at several other games of tables, and names some of them--such as “paume carie,” the Lombard’s game (_ludus Lombardorum_), the “imperial,” the “provincial,” “baralie,” and “faylys.” This game continued long to exist in England under its old name of _tables_. Thus Shakespeare:-- _This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice,_ _That, when he plays at_ tables, _chides the dice_. --Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act v. Sc. 2. The game appears at this time to have been a favourite one in the taverns and ordinaries. Thus, in a satirical tract in verse, printed in 1600, we are told of-- _An honest vicker, and a kind consort,_ _That to the alehouse friendly would resort,_ _To have a game at_ tables _now and than,_ _Or drinke his pot as soone as any man_. --Letting of Humours Blood, 1600. And one of the most popular of the satirical writers of that period, Dekker, in his “Lanthorne and Candle-Light,” printed in 1620, says, punningly,--“And knowing that your most selected gallants are the onelye _table-men_ that are plaid withal at ordinaries, into an ordinarye did he most gentleman-like convay himselfe in state.” We learn from another tract of the same author, the “Gul’s Hornbooke,” that the table-men at this time were usually painted.