The 11th April 2026 is National Board Game Day and to mark this day we are providing details of a board game from Francis Willughby’s Book of Games: Nine Men’s Morris. This game has been played in England since the Middle Ages, but is believed to date back much further to at least the Roman Empire. It has always been an internationally played game. It had numerous other names in English such as merels, mills and ninepenny marl. The board consisted of three squares drawn insi

The next entry in the Middleton household accounts for Sir Henry Willoughby in 1526 was dated as the 22 nd  January. It was again described as money to Sir Henry Willoughby for him to play cards. This time the amount was 4 pence, which was the equivalent of about £7.35 today.   In this post we are providing instructions for another Tudor card game that was mentioned in Francis Willughby’s Book of Games. This time it is the game Laugh and Lie Down. It is a type of “fishing” ga

The next entry in the Middleton household accounts for Sir Henry Willoughby in 1526 was dated as the 4th January. It was again described as money to Sir Henry Willoughby for him to play cards. The amount was 19 pence, which was the equivalent of about £34.93 today. In the previous post, we explained the origins of card playing and the nature of the deck in Tudor times. However, what type of games were played? It is known that popular card games played in the Tudor era include