Gibson’s History of England

I have long been intrigued by this game, copies of which are regularly found on auction sites, but have never been sure how best to write about it. I have tried every way I know to find out more about its origins and timing, but with little success. It seems likely that all of the company’s records for the early years were destroyed when their premises and manufacturing equipment were destroyed during the blitz in December 1940. Most auction houses selling copies usually date the sets as from the 1920s, but with no supporting evidence.

So what do we know? Harry Percy Gibson had originally purchased the International Card Company which he sold to De La Rue in 1919. In that year he established H. P. Gibson & Sons Ltd which produced The History of England Games in three series, each playable as a separate game. The Third series “ends” with “The Great War 1914-1919”. So the 1920s was the earliest these games could have been developed and marketed. But when and for how long?

The earliest evidence I can find for this game is hidden away in an advertising sheet at the foot of an article on the card game “Countries of the World” by the late Rex Pitts¹. Sadly, undated, it shows “The History of England” to be not just one game, but three, each covering a distinct period of “English” history. (It seems, given that events in Scotland and Wales are included in the games that the term English history was regarded as including the rest of the UK. These were obviously far less sensitive times!)

It claims to be “Amusing and of Interest to Young and Old” but there is little evidence of enthusiastic promotion and it retails at 1/6 which is cheaper than most other games sold at this time.

However, by the next time I have found it advertised the presentation has been given a considerable boost! The graphic is unchanged but it is now offered as “History without Tears!!!, a New and Attractive card game”, and the price has been boosted from 1/6 to 2/- a set. I would love to know how long it took Gibson’s to realise that they had a potential good seller on their hands which warranted both the heavier plug and the higher price.

This second Gibson’s advert includes the game “L’attaque” which was itself a big seller for for the company and it appears to have survived for several decades. I remember playing it myself in the mid-1960s! Here it is described as “The famous game of Military Tactics” which implies that it has been around for a while, unlike “The History of England” and “Auto-Go” which are both described as “new”. In fact, L’attaque was patented in France on 26th November 1908 but Gibson’s only obtained the publishing rights to sell L'Attaque in English-speaking countries in 1925, keeping the original French name. So, we can conclude that if The History of England games were first produced in the 1920s it was towards the end of that decade.

When first issued the Game was presented in this form which is similar (but not identical) to the box design illustrated in both of the adverts and can reasonably be assumed to have been produced in the last years of the 1920s.

However, the pictorial design shown below is likely to be far more familiar to modern games collectors and a great many sets are currently available on the usual auction sites. It is possible that Gibsons went quickly from style one to style two in the late 1920s. It is equally possible that the rather more attractive pictorial editions were delayed until the early 1930s. The packaging may have been different, but the contents were unchanged and, as we shall see, somewhat basic in their design and production materials.

The Games

As we have seen, the History of England was divided into three separate series – “each series a complete game in itself”. Series 1 covered the period from William I (1066) to Edward IV (1483); Series 2 ran from Edward V (1483) to James II ((1688), and Series 3 covered the period from William III (1688) to George V (1914).

The basic design and game structure is the same in all three series, so I will just pick just one, Series 1, by way of illustration. This pack comprises 64 cards divided into sets. Each set has a “crown card” with details of a monarch’s reign and a list of significant indiduals, places or events associated with that period of history. In this series the number of additional cards making up a set varies from one to four.

The object of the game is for players to collect as many sets as possible (i.e. the Crown card plus all of the cards listed for that reign). Sets vary in size and therefore some sets are easier to collect than others. In Series 1 the number of additional cards in a set range from one (Richard I plus the Third Crusade) to four (Edward III plus the Battles of Sluys, Crecy, Poictiers and Geoffrey Chaucer). In other series the number of additional cards required to make up a set vary from two to seven. The winner is the player who has accumulated the most complete sets by the end of play.

Here is just one example of a set – a Crown card plus four containing short descriptions of the items listed.

In other sets throughout the various series, there is prominent attention to key individuals, places, events and in particular battles where a precise date can be presented. This is history represented as a succession of monarchs and some of what happened during their reign. This is chronological, “top-down” history with an emphasis on dates as it was largely taught in schools at this time. And this series of games would certainly offer players a fun way to remember the evolution of the monarchy from William the Conqueror to George V and the Great War. History by dates and “key facts”.

This is not the place to describe the complex rules by which each player in turn requests cards from another player which will enable them to accumulate complete sets and thus win the game. But it is clearly a playable game in the style of Happy Families substituting “Have you got Mrs Bun the baker’s wife” with “Have you perchance got the Doomsday Book or Simon de Montfort?”

Over the years I have acquired several copies of the various series of this game, and it is clear from these that they were produced at different times by different printers, although none provide the details.

As you can see, cards from Series 1 and 3 from the front look the most similar to each other although there is a slight difference in size and the border designs are different. The backs however are entirely different. Cards from Series 2 are significantly bigger than I and 3, a different shape, colour and very different design. Only battle cards from Series 2 sport the additional colour and crossed axes design. Taken altogether this suggests that although the game was first produced in the late 1920s, various additions and printings followed well into the 1930s and possibly even later.

And then there was one more..

Having been aware for some years of the three very familiar original series, I was surprised recently to discover that Gibsons later decided that the three series were so successful that they needed a fourth. Given that not much had yet happened since George V the only way forward was to go backwards to the eras before 1066. And thus Series 0 was devised covering the period from “About 600 B.C. to 1066 A.D.”

The new series warranted a new cover design, albeit in the style of the others but sporting a new HPG logo. We must surely be well into the 1930s by now.

However, Series 0 inevitably struggled with breaking England’s pre-Battle of Hastings history into sets equivalent to the reigns of series 1 to 3. In consequence there are only 11 somewhat idiosyncratic sets and the components of each range from three to seven.

Some of the cards are quaint, to say the least. In the Roman Occupation set the best part of 400 years of British history is characterised by two early resistance fighters, “straight roads from one end of Britain to the other”, Roman baths based on hot springs “that reminded them of Italy”, Hadrian’s Wall and “towns with strong walls around them” which enabled the Romans to “introduce markets into Britain”! The Python’s list of “What did the Romans ever do for us?” was longer but in similar vein.

Even so, whatever the shortcoming in the selection of key events, I suspect that a few history teachers, even in the 1930s, would have raised the odd eyebrow at the largely mythical “Reign of King Arthur” being ranked as history alongside the Roman and Norman invasions!

Reference

1. Pitts, Rex: Countries of the World, 28 June 2016 updated 20 September 2024