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The late Mr. Hoare, of Bath, a very good Whist player, and without a superior at Piquet, was one of the party, and has more than once told me the story. I find I knew nothing of the Game before; tho’ I can assure you, I have been reckoned a First-rate Player in the City a good while - nay, for that Matter, I make no Bad Figure at the Crown - and don’t despair, by your Assistance, but to make one at White’s soon. Dear Mr. PROFESSOR, I can never repay you. These make the game five points instead of ten, in order to revised laws (nearly all Hoyle) are given in every edition of Hoyle from this date. You have given me such an insight by this Visit, I am quite another Thing. SIR CAL. O Gad, No, SIR JOHN - Never any thing was fairer, What is a billiards club nor was ever any thing so critical. "SIR JOHN. ’Twas by some such laudable Practices, I suppose, that you suffered in your last Affair with LURCHUM. "SIR CALCULATION PUZZLE. The Progress your Lordship has made for the time you have study’d under the Professor is wonderful.

Ruffe seems to have been used as a synonym for trump early in the seventeenth century, as appears from the extract from Cotgrave’s "Dictionary." Nares, in his "Glossary," says - "Ruff meant a trump card, charta dominatrix;" even at the present day, many Whist players speak of ruffing, i.e. trumping; and, in the expression a cross-ruff, the word ruff is preserved to the exclusion of the word trump. The meaning of the word is unknown. Fielding, in his "History of the life of the late Mr. Jonathan Wild, the Great," records that when the ingenious Count La Ruse was domiciled with Mr. Geoffrey Snap, in 1682, or, in other words, was in a spunging-house, the Count beguiled the tedium of his in-door existence by playing at Whisk-and-Swabbers, "the game then in chief vogue." Swift also, in his "Essay on the Fates of Clergymen" (1728), ridicules Archbishop Tenison for not understanding the meaning of swabbers.

Hoyle was engaged in writing on games, and in giving lessons playing now and then a sober game at Whist. The following passage from the same pamphlet mentions the Crown - probably the Crown Coffee-house - and it has been inferred from this that Hoyle himself might have been one of Lord Folkestone’s party. A party of gentlemen (according to Daines Barrington), of whom the first Lord Folkestone was one, used at this date to frequent the Crown Coffeehouse, in Bedford Row, where they studied Whist scientifically. According to Mr. Clay, the alteration took place under the following circumstances: "Some sixty or seventy years back (1804-1814), Lord Peterborough having one night lost a large sum of money, the friends with whom he was playing proposed to give the loser a chance, at a quicker game, of recovering his loss. Shortly after this, the celebrated EDMOND HOYLE, the father of the game, published his "Short Treatise: (1742-3). About Hoyle’s antecedents, but little is known.

Byron, in saying that Troy owes to Homer what Whist owes to Hoyle, scarcely does justice to Hoyle, who was rather the founder than the historian of Whist. Hoyle also comes in for notice in the following passage in the same work: ‘I happened to come home several hours before my usual time, when I found four gentlemen of the cloth at Whist by my fire; - and my Hoyle, sir, - my best Hoyle, which cost me a guinea, lying open on the table, with a quantity of porter spilled on one of the most material leaves of the whole book. On the other hand, the gentlemen are in raptures. "At Ruff and Honors, by some called Slamm, you have in the Pack all the Deuces, and the reason is, because four playing having dealt twelve a-piece, there are four left for the stock, the uppermost whereof is turn’d up, and that is Trumps, he that hath the Ace of that Ruffs: that is, he takes in those four Cards, and lays out four others in their lieu; the four Honors are the Ace, King, Queen, and knave; he that hath three Honors in his own hand, his partner not having the fourth, sets up Eight by Cards, that is two tricks; if he hath all four, then Sixteen, that is four tricks; it is all one if two Partners make them three or four between them, as if one had them.