Chess.- Greco (Gioachino) The royall game of chesse-play· Sometimes the recreation of the late King, with many of the nobility. Illustrated vvith almost an hundred gambetts. Being the study of Biochimo the famous Italian, translated by Francis Beale, first edition in English, engraved portrait frontispiece of Charles I by P. Stent, title with woodcut typographic border, woodcut illustration of a chess board, woodcut head-pieces and decorative initials, errata to verso of final f., a1&2 bound after title, lacking initial blank, portrait frayed at foot affecting caption, trimmed to within border and laid down, trimmed at head affecting headlines, a1 short tear to inner gutter affecting 2 or 3 letters, some staining, 19th century green mottled calf, gilt, rubbed, [LN 395; Whyld & Ravilious 1656:2; Wing G1810], small 8vo, Printed for Henry Herringman, and are to be sold at his shop at the sign of the Anchor, in the lower walk of the New Exchange, 1656.

⁂ The first work on chess in English to note that the rook was sometimes depicted as a castle. This is a translation of Gioachino's Trattato del nobilissimo giuoco degli scacchi. Greco was a native of Calabria, the same province of Naples that had produced the chess masters Giovanni Leonard and Michele di Mauro. A5r has a poem by Richard Lovelace.

Provenance: William Forbes Morgan (engraved bookplate).