Quadrille is a

card game A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific. Countless card games exist, including families of related games (such as poker). A small number of card ...

that was highly popular in the 17th and 18th centuries at the French court and among the British nobility, especially women. A variant of the three-player, Spanish card game

Ombre Ombre (, pronounced "omber") or l'Hombre is a fast-moving seventeenth-century trick-taking card game for three players and "the most successful card game ever invented." Its history began in Spain around the end of the 16th century as a four-pe ...

, it is played by four players, both in varying alliances and solo games, using a pack of 40 cards (the 8's, 9's and 10's being removed). By the mid-19th century, Quadrille had fallen out of fashion, superseded by

Whist Whist is a classic English trick-taking card game which was widely played in the 18th and 19th centuries. Although the rules are simple, there is scope for strategic play. History Whist is a descendant of the 16th-century game of ''trump'' ...

and

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

History and Culture

The novel ''

Pride and Prejudice ''Pride and Prejudice'' is an 1813 novel of manners by Jane Austen. The novel follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the dynamic protagonist of the book who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreci ...

'' includes four references to Quadrille being played by an

upper class Upper class in modern societies is the social class composed of people who hold the highest social status, usually are the wealthiest members of class society, and wield the greatest political power. According to this view, the upper class is gen ...

character, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and her guests. In the ''Diary of Thomas Vernon'', which was written by a loyalist from

Newport, Rhode Island Newport is an American seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island. It is located in Narragansett Bay, approximately southeast of Providence, Rhode Island, Providence, south of Fall River, Massachusetts, south of Boston, ...

, during the

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...

in 1776, the author mentions playing quadrille frequently during the war while exiled in

Glocester, Rhode Island Glocester is a town in Providence County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 9,974 as of the 2020 census. The villages of Chepachet and Harmony are in Glocester. Putnam Pike ( U.S. Route 44) runs west through the town center of Gl ...

. It is also frequently mentioned in ''The Diary of a Country Parson 1758-1802'' kept by

James Woodforde James Woodforde (1740–1803) was an English clergyman, mainly in Somerset and Norfolk, remembered as the author of ''The Diary of a Country Parson''. This vivid account of parish life remained unpublished until the 20th century. Early life Ja ...

, edited by John Beresford. In Ireland it was extremely popular in the 1730s. A pamphlet written in Dublin in 1736, supposedly proposing new rules for the game, caused uproar when it became clear that it was simply a pretext for a vicious attack by the author, Archbishop

Josiah Hort Josiah Hort (c. 1674 – 14 December 1751), was an English clergyman of the Church of Ireland who ended his career as archbishop of Tuam. Born in Marshfield, Gloucestershire, son of John Hort, and brought up as a Nonconformist, Hort went to scho ...

, on his enemy Richard Bettesworth MP.

References

{{Historical card games 18th-century card games Ombre group Four-player card games