rbidden. Francis I ordered a
lieutenant with twenty archers to visit taverns and gaming houses and
arrest all players of cards, dice and other unlawful games. This did
not prevent the establishment of a public lottery, [Sidenote: 1539] a
practice justified by alleging the examples of Italian cities in
raising revenue by this means. Henry III forbade all games of chance
"to minors and other debauched persons," [Sidenote: 1577] and this was
followed six years later by a crushing impost on cards and dice,
interesting as one of the first attempts to suppress the instruments of
vice through the taxing power. Merry England also had many laws
forbidding "tennis, bowles, dicing and cards," the object being to
encourage the practice of archery.

Tippling was the subject of occasional animadversion by the various
governments, though there seemed to be little sentiment against it
until the opening of the following century. The regulation of the
number of taverns and of the amount of wine that might be kept in a
gentleman's cellar, as prescribed in an English law, [Sidenote: 1553]
mentions not the moral but the economic aspect of drinking. The
purchase of French wines was said to drain England of money.

Though the theater also did not suffer much until the time of Cromwell,
plays were forbidden in the precincts of the city of London. The Book
of Discipline in Scotland forbade attendance at theaters. [Sidenote:
1574] Calvin thoroughly disapproved of them, and even Luther
considered them "fools' work" and at times dangerous.

Commendable efforts to suppress the practice of duelling were led by
the Catholic church. Clement {486} VII forbade it in a bull,
[Sidenote: 1524] confirmed by a decree of Council of Trent. [Sidenote:
1563] An extraordinarily worded French proclamation of 1566 forbade
"all gentlemen and others to give each other the lie and, if they do
give each other the lie, to fight a duel about it." Other governments
took the matter up very sluggishly. Scotland forbade "the great
liberty that sundry persons take in provoking each other to singular
combats upon sudden and frivol occasions," without license from his
majesty.

Two matters on which the Puritans felt very keenly, [Sidenote: 1551]
blasphemy and Sabbath-breaking, were but scantily looked after in the
century of the Reformation. Scotland forbade "grievous and abominable
oaths, swearing, execrations and blasphemation," and somewhat similar
laws ca