AS England's obsession with gaming grew over the eighteenth century, all types of play came under increasingly intense attacks from moralists and reformers of various stripes. Taking full advantage of a free press and a flourishing market for published materials, these writers and artists supplied that market with messages and images warning of the perils of gaming. Some regarded reliance on the forces of chance as inimical to society and a threat to the future, moral and material, of the nation. Others stressed the idle and wicked use of time, that irreplaceable resource, on mindless games; still others grumbled at the squandering of money that could have been put to so many worthier uses. Readers and viewers, literate or otherwise, were relentlessly reminded of the criminal element that hovered close to the gaming table, and of the financial, social, and spiritual damage inflicted on innocent families of players.

These commentaries were originally aimed at the governing aristocracy, whose deep play and late hours had become notorious. More and more, however, as men and women of all ranks mingled their money and their personal space, anti-gaming attacks diffused across class boundaries. What was immoral for one group had become immoral for all. If vice had spread from the top down, then morality must follow the same path: for the lower orders to be reformed and improved, the upper and middle classes had to be above criticism themselves. As a result, those in the middling station began to feel the heat, as religious groups railed against card play among the clergy, and professional and commercial men found their integrity and trustworthiness linked to their behaviour and that of their families. Views surrounding play on Sundays and holidays were also in flux, in part because of changing work patterns. Many diarists commented, or significantly failed to comment, on several moral issues surrounding card play.