The European origin of chess, or rather the supposed time of its first introduction through the Arabs into Spain 713, 715, though resting on a general consensus of agreement may yet prove to be ill matured, for though it is clear that Spain did get knowledge of it at the conquest and occupancy during Al Walid's reign by the armies under Musa Ibn Nosseyr and Tarik Ibn Yeyzad it is not so certain, if the Romans were acquainted with it at the time of the edict, 830 years earlier, that it may not have been known in some parts of Europe before the time supposed, besides which we have the Asiatic Society's statement, through its Persian M.S., and from the Shahnama applicable to Alexander the Great's time, and the Indian Kings in treaty with him. The commonly accepted theory, that England first got chess through William of Normandy at the Conquest or on the return of the first Crusaders (in the latter case about 1100 A.D.), though concurred in with tolerable unanimity by all writers until Sir Frederic Madden raised his doubts in 1828 also appears scarcely consistent with previous incidents found on record. Canute's partiality for chess (he reigned 1017 to 1035) events mentioned in the reigns of Athelstan and Edgar and the chess pieces and boards we read of including those dug up at the Isle of Lewis, and of Pepin, Charlemagne, Harfagia, King of Norway, and in Iceland seem to be unnoticed or too slightly regarded by those who wrote on assumed Saxon or English chess, first knowledge. The period assigned for chess in England is 500 years 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.