The History of Gambling in England

By John Ashton

Gaming is derived from the Saxon word Gamen, meaning joy, pleasure, sports, or gaming—and is so interpreted by Bailey, in his Dictionary of 1736; whilst Johnson gives Gamble—to play extravagantly for money, and this distinction is to be borne in mind in the perusal of this book; although the older term was in use until the invention of the later—as we see in Cotton’s Compleat Gamester (1674), in which he gives the following excellent definition of the word :— “ Gaming is an enchanting witchery, gotten between Idleness and Avarice-, an itching disease, that makes some scratch the head, whilst others, as if they were bitten by a Tarantula, are laughing themselves to death ; or, lastly, it is a paralytical distemper, which, seizing the arm, the man cannot chuse but shake his elbow. It hath this ill property above all other Vices, that it renders a man incapable of prosecuting any serious action, and makes him always unsatisfied with his own condition ; he is either lifted up to the top of mad joy with success, or plung’d to the bottom of despair by misfortune, always in extreams, always in a storm

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