Henry VIII.’s losses at cards and dice are said to have been enormous, but Anne Boleyn appears to have been a more fortunate gamester. A game much played at Court was Pope Julius’s game, or as it is sometimes called in the Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VIII., “Pope July’s game.” On the 20th of November 1532 we find this entry in the Privy Purse Expenses:--“Delivered to the King’s grace at Stone, £9, 6s. 8d., which his grace lost at ‘Pope Julius’s game’ to my lady marques [Anne Boleyn], Mr. Bryan, and Maister Weston.” On the 25th Henry lost twenty crowns to the same party at the same game, and the following day £18, 13s. 4d. On the 28th Anne wins £11, 13s. 4d. in a single-handed game of cards with her royal lover, and on the next day Henry loses £4 at Pope Julius’s game. Henry was an inveterate gamester, and Erasmus in some emphatic words addressed to him bears witness that his queen, Catherine of Aragon, did not suffer such vain pursuits to divert her mind from duties. “Your noble wife,” says he, “spends that time in reading the sacred volume which other princesses occupy in cards and dice.” Henry VIII. gambled away the famous Jesus Campanile bell at St. Paul’s with the great folk-mote bell which summoned the assemblies of the citizens with a throw of the dice at hazard to Sir Miles Patridge, who pulled it down. “But,” adds Spelman in his “History of Sacrilege,” “in the fifth year of King Edward VI. the gamester had worse fortune when he lost his life, being executed on Tower Hill.” Queen Mary in her young days was fond of betting and wagers, and many items of high play and of money lost by her have been preserved. She lost a frontlet, for instance, in a wager with her cousin, Lady Margaret Douglas, for which she paid four pounds. It is said that the Princess Mary not only pledged caps but lost breakfasts at bowls, which was then a fashionable amusement; “and to counterbalance these vanities she paid for the education of a poor child and the expense of binding him apprentice.”[85] The frontlets referred to above were the ornamented edges of coifs or caps, some of which were edged with gold lace and others with pearls and diamonds. Hence they were occasionally very expensive and cost a high price, and on this account they might easily be given in payment of wagers, or losses incurred through high play.