Early Chess - Raymond A Collett

Worcester City's association with the 'royal game' dates from the very earliest British source referring to the game. Alexander Neckham, who is buried at Worcester cathedral, wrote a description of the game in a chapter of his book De Naturis Rerum (On the Natures of Things) in 1180. Neckham was foster-brother of King Richard I and a tutor in Paris before becoming Abbot of Cirencester in Gloucestershire. It is possible that Neckham's knowledge of the game came directly from the royal courts and their ambassadors at Arab centres of culture and learning in Spain and Mesopotamia.

Neckham, in common with other early senior churchmen, condemned the game, wishing their monastic brethren to spend their time for the greater glory of God. There are numerous ecclesiastical prohibitions, yet almost all the early references to chess originate from monastic centres of learning and spread into universities and then into secular society by way of royal and noble households. By the early twelfth century, Petrus Alfonsi included chess as one of the knightly accomplishments along with riding, swimming, archery, boxing, hawking and writing poetry. Perhaps one of the distinguishing features of chess, that it is not a game of chance, redeemed it.

In the middle ages, chess was used allegorically. The set order of society was represented by the pieces. Everyone had a duty to defend the king. The rooks with their straight moves were compared with judges travelling throughout the realm. Bishops move obliquely, corresponding to their devious nature. At the end of the game, however, they all go back into the same bag, without distinction between rich and poor.

There were many similar works circulating in mediaeval Europe. In each, the chess pieces are imbued with symbolic meaning and there is much moralising about what is proper for different ranks of society. One of the very earliest English printed books was about chess. The Game and Playe of Chesse was a particularly popular version of this genre. It was published in London in about 1483 by Caxton, who introduced printing with moveable type into England and is one of the very first English printed books.

The game in the twelfth century was much less dynamic than today's game. The modern game was developed in Spanish courtly circles in the late fifteenth century. The changes in the rules speeded up the sedate game inherited from the Muslim world. The new moves were: to allow a pawn on its original square the 'privilege' of advancing two rather than one square; the bishop's move was extended; and the new queen's move combined the powers of the rook and the modern bishop. Castling, the simultaneous move of king and rook was also devised at about the same time. It was the increased power of the queen that so altered the game. Previously the queen or 'fers' had been a weak piece moving only one square diagonally. The new game was sometimes called the 'queen's chess' or more pointedly 'the mad queen's chess'. One of the first descriptions of modern chess can be dated to 1496-7 in E Arte de Axedrez, a book by Louis de Lucena.

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