Playing cards of the Spanish Armada, London, late seventeenth century, 51 (of 52) cards

Playing cards of the Spanish Armada

[London, c. 1700]

51 (of 52) cards, each 94 x 58mm., engraved with captions, plain backs, tax stamp on the ace of spades, lacking the two of diamonds, occasional light staining

This set of playing cards was most likely produced at the end of the seventeenth century during a time of anti-Catholic feeling, when sets of cards representing the Popish Plot and the 1688 Glorious Revolution were also produced. John Lenthall, a prolific printer of playing cards in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, produced what he called a set of "Navigation cards" detailing the events of the Armada, but this set of cards is not identical to his (see All Cards on the Table, Collection Sylvia Mann, 261).

The tax stamp indicates it was likely to have been produced after 1712.