The powerful Abbaside Dynasty lasted from 749 to 1258, and
there were 37 Khalifs of that race, the chess sayings and doings
of whom alone, it is said, would fill a good-size volume, chess
has had to contend against the consideration that the greatest
historians and biographers, with the exception of Cunningham and
Forbes, and perhaps Gibbon were not players, hence what we do
possess is gathered from scattered allusion, incidental and
accidental rather than sustained or connected narrative or
biographical notice. Canute the Dane, 1016-1035, William the First,
and other English Kings, not so well attested, are absent from
Philidor's list. Henry I, John, two of the Edwards, I and IV,
and Charles I are identified with the chess incidents. Accounts
of Henry VII and Henry VIII, contain items of expense connected
with the game. The bluff king it is said played chess, as Wolsey
and Cranmer did, and as Pitt, and Wilberforce, and Sunderland,
Bolingbroke and Sydney Smyth have in our generations. The vain and
tyrant king, like the Ras of Abyssinia, who we hear of through
Salt and Buckle much preferred winning, and was probably readily
accommodated.
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