Devonshire is the earliest name mentioned in old
Chronicles connected with English chess, Olgar or Orgar, Earl of
Devonshire is recorded to have been playing chess with his
daughter Elstreth or Elpida when King Edgar's messenger
Athelwold arrived to ascertain the truth of the reports of her
extraordinary beauty. Northumberland is mentioned two
centuries later as a house in which chess was played. Caxton's
"Booke of Chesse," Bruges 1474, said by some to be the first book
printed in London, was dedicated to the Duke of Clarence,
Rowbotham's, 1561, to the Earl of Leicester, Lucy, Countess of
Bedford accepted dedication of A. Saul's quaint work, 1597 and
and Barbiere's edition of the same, 1640. The early love poem
of Lydgate, emblematical of chess was dedicated to the admirers
of the game, and the Duke of Rutland in the last century took
sufficient interest in it to devise an extension of chess.
NOTE. The names of the subscribers on Philidor's Analysis of
Chess, 1777, include Lord Sandwich and the Duke of Cumberland
for 10 and 50 copies respectively.
The Duchess of Argyle, the Duchess of Bedford, the Duchess of
Buccleuch, R.
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