The next passage, supposed to relate to Playing Cards, which demands attention, is that which occurs in the Wardrobe accounts of Edward I, anno 1278, and which has been already quoted in the first chapter. It appears necessary to give it here again, together with the Hon. Daines Barrington's remarks on it, in the chronological order of evidences adduced in favour of the antiquity of Card Playing in Europe. "The earliest mention of cards that I have yet stumbled upon, is in Mr. Anstis's 'History of the Garter' (vol. ii, p. 307), where he cites the following passage from the Wardrobe rolls, in the sixth year of Edward the First: 'Waltero Sturton ad opus regis ad ludendum ad _quatuor Reges_, viii._s._ v._d._'; from which entry Mr. Anstis, with some probability conjectures, that Playing Cards were not unknown at the latter end of the thirteenth century; and perhaps what I shall add, may carry with it some small confirmation of what he supposes." The simple fact that the game of cards was known, both in France and England, by the name of the Four Kings, long before we had any special dissertations respecting its origin, is of more weight, in corroboration of Anstis's supposition, than Mr. Barrington's supplemental conjectures. The first question to be determined, is the identity of the game of cards, and that of the Quatuor Reges; but, without adducing the slightest evidence, he assumes the fact, and then proceeds to speculate where Edward might have learnt the game. But even admitting that cards were meant by the term _Quatuor Reges_, it is just as likely that Edward learned the game from his Queen, Eleanor of Castile, as that he learned it from the Saracens in the Holy Land; for, admitting it to be of Eastern origin, and that Europeans first obtained a knowledge of it from the Saracens, or a people of Arab race, it may be fairly supposed that Spain would be one of the countries in which cards would be earliest introduced. In the cards now in use in England, there are certain peculiarities in the names of two of the suits, as compared with the marks, which seem to intimate that we obtained our first knowledge of the game from Spain, although subsequently we might import our cards from France.