Real tennis 1599. The game thrived among the 17th-century nobility in France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and the Habsburg Empire, but suffered under English Puritanism, as it was heavily associated with gambling. By the Age of Napoleon, the royal families of Europe were besieged and real tennis, a court game, was largely abandoned. Real tennis played a role in the history of the French Revolution, through the Tennis Court Oath, a pledge signed by French deputies in a real tennis court, which formed a decisive early step in starting the revolution. During the 18th century and early 19th century, as real tennis
Lisle's Tennis Court gay and Gay rich"). The theatre was finally abandoned in December 1732, when the company moved to the new Covent Garden Theatre, built by Rich using the capital generated by "The Beggar's Opera". The old building was used as a barracks, an auction room, a warehouse for china, and was finally demolished in 1848 to make room for an extension to the neighbouring premises of the Royal College of Surgeons. Lisle's Tennis Court Lisle's Tennis Court was a building off Portugal Street in Lincoln's Inn Fields in London. Originally built as a real tennis court, it was used as a