Like her sister Anne, Mary II. was in her early life a constant card-player, and, not satisfied with devoting her week-day evenings to this diversion, she played on the Sabbath. In after years she maintained her love for cards, and we find her playing at basset, a game much in request throughout the Courts of Europe, and at which vast sums were won and lost. After the peace of Mimeguen, the Marquis d’Avaux, the ambassador from Louis XIV., sent word on the morning of December 3, 1680, to Monsieur Odyke--an official in the household of the princess--that he would wait on her that evening. But he forgot to give the notice, so that when the French Ambassador arrived he found the princess had commenced her gambling. She rose and asked him if he would play; he made no answer, and she resumed her game, the ambassador sitting down and looking on. After a while he joined in the game, and the Prince of Orange, who arrived shortly afterwards, did the same. According to strict etiquette, however, as the visit of the ambassador had been previously announced, the basset tables should not have been set till his arrival. William III., too, was much given to gambling. He passed whole days on the race-ground, and in the evenings he gambled, losing at one sitting, it is said, four thousand guineas at basset. The following morning, in a state of exasperated temper, he gave a gentleman a stroke with his horsewhip for riding in front of him on the race-ground. The proceeding was the subject of much comment, and was satirised by a _bon-mot_, declaring “that it was the only blow he had struck for supremacy in his kingdoms.” William appears to have lost enormous sums at the basset-table, and his inveterate habit of gambling, added to the passion of his princess for cards, caused, as might be expected, the scandalmongers of the period to scatter broadcast the most derogatory stories respecting their Sunday gambling parties, a practice which brought down the most unsparing remonstrances of the Church of England clergymen, and caused Mary’s old tutor, Dr. Lake, the greatest concern. It would seem that the game of basset occupied a considerable portion of Queen Anne’s time, “breaking into her hours by day as well as by night.” At the basset-table the players so closely crowded her Majesty that she could scarcely “put her hand in her pocket,” an obligation, it is said, not infrequent, since she was usually unfortunate at play. Allusions to the game occur in her correspondence, as, for instance, in a letter to the Duchess of Marlborough, written in 1703, dated “Monday night,” and which runs thus: “Just as I came from basset I received my dear Mrs. Freeman’s letter, and though it is very late, I cannot be content with myself without thanking you for it.” It is not surprising that there was a great and constant drain on the privy-purse when so much was drawn out of it to meet the demands for play-money.