Cross-Hatch

Cross-hatching was widely used in the Tudor Court Rules; in Tudor times, the colours used in a game of Mornington Crescent followed the heraldic system, and were represented using a system of hatching, wherein a particular line pattern represented a particular colour. However the hatching systems used varied slightly over the years, and this made it possible to exploit the same rules used nowadays to perform a temporal strile to produce a primitive chromatic shunt. Such a move was known as a cross-hatch.

As an example, in 1600, Zangrius used horizontal lines for Azure (Blue), but in 1623 Franquart adopted the same pattern for Or (Chartreuse). In 1624, Petra Sancta re-adopted horizontal lines for Azure, but then from 1626 onwards, Butkens, Caramuel and others used it for Gules (Red). Many of the other colours also saw similar degrees of confusion, but as other aspects of the game were much simpler at this time, players viewed the tactical possibilities of the cross-hatch with much greater relish than would likely be the case today.

[SM]

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