Charles II. was a saunterer by nature, and he appears to have been quite happy in the park either chatting with Nell Gwyn, at the end of the garden of her Pall Mall house, in feeding the fowl, or in playing the game of Mall. This game was popular from the end of the sixteenth to the beginning of the eighteenth century, and then went out of fashion. At one time there were few large towns without a mall, or prepared ground where the game could be played. There is reason to believe that the game was introduced into England from Scotland on the accession of James VI. to the English throne, because the King names it in his "Basilicon Dōron" among other exercises as suited for his son Henry, who was afterwards Prince of Wales, and about the same time Sir R. Dallington, in his _Method of Travel_ (1598), expresses his surprise that the sport was not then introduced into England. The game was played in long shaded alleys, and on dry gravel walks. The mall in St. James's Park was nearly half a mile in length, and was kept with the greatest care. Pepys relates how he went to talk with the keeper of the mall, and how he learned the manner of mixing the earth for the floor, over which powdered cockle-shells were strewn. All this required such attention that a special person was employed for the purpose, who was called the cockle-strewer. In dry weather the surface was apt to turn to dust, and consequently to impede the flight of the ball, so that the cockle-strewer's office was by no means a sinecure. Richard Blome, writing in 1673, asserts that this mall was "said to be the best in Christendom," but Evelyn claims the pre-eminence for that at Tours, with its seven rows of tall elms, as "the noblest in Europe for length and shade." The game is praised by Sir R. Dallington "because it is a gentlemanlike sport, not violent, and yields good occasion and opportunity of discourse as they walke from one marke to the other," and Joseph Lauthier, who wrote a treatise on the subject, entitled _Le Jeu de Mail_, Paris, 1717 (which is now extremely scarce), uses the same form of recommendation.