With respect to the manufacture of cards, it would appear to have been a regular business, both in Germany and Italy, about 1420; but, though it has generally been asserted that the earliest cards for common use were engraved on wood, there is yet reason to believe that they were at first executed by means of a stencil; and that the method of engraving the outlines on wood was of subsequent introduction. However this may be, it is certain that the art of wood-engraving was at an early period applied to the manufacture of cards, and that in Germany, in the latter quarter of the fifteenth century, the term _Briefdrucker_, or _Briefmaler_,--card-printer, or card-painter--was commonly used to signify a wood-engraver. From the importation of playing cards into England being prohibited by an act of parliament in 1463, as injurious to the interests of native tradesmen and manufacturers, it might be concluded that at that time the manufacture of cards was established in this country. No cards, however, of undoubted English manufacture of so early a date have yet been discovered. In the sixteenth century, there is reason to believe that most of the cards used in England were imported either from France, or the Netherlands. In the reign of Elizabeth the importation of cards was a monopoly;[312] but from the time of her successor James I, it would appear that most of the cards used in this country were of home manufacture. From the reign of Charles II to the present time, cards have, either directly or indirectly, been subject to a duty.