The Nature and Uses of Lotteries

    Thomas Gataker
    Conall Boyle (ed. & intro.)

    300 pp., £17.95 / $34.90, 978-1845401177 (pbk.), Aug. 2008

    Series: Sortition and Public Policy

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    Thomas Gataker was a disputatious Puritan divine. His The Nature and Uses of Lotteries (1627) was the first systematic exposition of a modern view of lotteries, not just as a form of gambling, but as a fair method of division. Gataker approved of these uses, but condemned divination and sorcery using random signs or spells.

    This important treatise is often referred to, but is generally inaccessible due to its rarity and old-style of language. The text of this edition has been fully modernised, with notes on important sources used by Gataker and includes a new introduction and index.

    ‘A well-reasoned and curious book, teeming with quaint learning.’  William Lecky (1865)

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