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I don't have all the details nearby, but Sir Edmund Hoyle published the first version of his rules of many of the popular Card games of the day (early to mid 1700's) in London.
Because everyone of every class of society in 18th-century England played cards all the time (there wasn't a lot else to do by candlelight), the book became an instant success and was widely translated wherever card games were played.
I don't have exact information about Hoyle, but if I recall correctly from reading about him many years ago, he was a contemporary of Sir Isaac Newton (later 1600's to mid-1700's) and a man of some financial means or property who had the time to go around and watch how these games were played (I think he himself often participated in the games). He observed that many card games had no set written rules of play, which often led to arguments and the breakup of friendships, especially when large sums of money were being bet (which was often the case). The thought came to him to consolidate them and write them down in book form, as an aid to the play.
The original title was somewhat mundane, such as [my words] "An Explanation of the Rules and Regulations of Current Popular Games of Chance as Played with Cards" etc etc; the expression "According to Hoyle" came into being as people sitting at the card tables watched how fellow players were (or were not) following the rules as outlined in the new book, then exclaimed that it was or was not being done "according to Hoyle". Just as happens today, as soon as the rules were written down, they became "official rules" and were much more authoritative than if they were simply agreed to verbally.
One interesting result of writing down the rules of many popular games of the time, was that a number of them were preserved for posterity when they might otherwise have gone out of fashion and totally disappeared over time. Another effect was that many card games which were in their relatively early stages of development with very simple rules, started to develop more complex regulations, and sometimes changed quite radically up to our time. An example of this might be the game of simple Whist which was then simply a matter of following the opening play with a card of the same suit if you could, but without any concept of bidding or naming a "trump" suit. This evolved into bid Whist, then the idea bidding No Trump was thrown in somewhere along the way, next the number of players (which might have varied between 2 to 6) became set usually as 4, with partners sitting opposite each other, then the "dummy" was revealed for everyone to see, and by the start of the 20th century the game was poised to become its more complicated cousin, Bridge. The same kind of thing happened to simple Rum or Rummy (it had many names) which by the late 1940's had bloomed into Canasta, using two decks of cards and involving 1000's of points. The concept of counting to high numbers like 1000's was unknown to the middle and lower classes in the 1700's; 12 pennies made a shilling, 20 shillings one pound, and 21 shillings were one guinea - almost no one acquired more than a few pounds in a year).
The negative form "it's not according to Hoyle" very quickly became the way to describe any action, manners, behaviour or activity, rule, form of speech, even some new laws, etc. which were deemed NOT to be socially acceptable, appropriate or correct. And we still use it today.
Anyone who has more to add about Sir Edmund or the development of his book of rules is welcome to post details here.
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