Chapter 9

Your best sacks are of Xeres in Spain; your smaller, of Gallicia and Portugall; your strong sacks are of the islands of the Canaries and of Malligo, and your Muskadine and Malmseys are of many parts, of Italy, Greece, and some special islands;[132]

and renders intelligible the following:—

Two kinsmen near allied to sherry sack,Sweet Malligo and delicate Canary.[133]

It is extolled in Beaumont and Fletcher:—

Give me a cup of sackAn ocean of sweet sack.

Canary was in great esteem. John Howell praises it as ‘accounted the richest, the most firm, the best bodied, and lastingest wine: while French wine pickles meat in the stomach, this is the wine that digests, and doth not only breed good bloud, but it nutrifieth also, being a glutinous substantial liquor. Of this wine, if of any other, may be verified that merry induction, that good wine makes good blood, good blood causeth good humours, good humours causeth good thoughts, good thoughts bring forth good works, good works carry a man to heaven; ergo good wine carrieth a man to heaven. If this be true, surely more English go to heaven this way than any other, for I think there is more Canary brought to England than to all the world besides.’[134]

But probably no kind of drink came amiss.

The Russ drinks quass; Dutch, Lubeck beer,And that is strong and mighty;The Briton, he metheglin quaffs,The Irishaqua vitæ;The French affects the Orleans grape,The Spaniard tastes his sherry;The English none of these can ‘scape,But he with all makes merry.[135]

(2) The prevailing habit oftoastingmay be set down as a second cause, and a powerful factor it must have been in national corruption, if the case is not overstated by William Prynne,[136]who wrote his startling book to prove ‘the Drinking and Pledging of Healthes to be Sinfull and utterly Unlawful unto Christians.’ In his Epistle Dedicatorie to King Charles I. he urges that his Majesty’shealthis an occasion, apologie, pretence, and justification of excesse.

Alas! how many thousand persons have been drawne on to drunkennesse, drinking their wit out of their heads, their health out of their bodies, and God out of their soules, whiles they have beene too busy and officious in carrying healthes unto your sacred Majestie.

Following upon this is an appeal ‘To the Christian Reader,’ in which he offers six reasons ‘why men are so much infatuated with the odious sinne of drunkennesse. (a) The inbred corruption and practice of humane nature. (b) The power of the Prince of the ayre, who hath lately gotten such high predominance in the souls of vitious men, that they doe not only glory in their drunkennesse, proclaiming it unto the world, but set themselves against the God of Heaven, violating the very lawes of nature and the very rules of reason. (c) The third reason is, the popular titles given to abettors of intemperance,e.g., good fellow, sociable, joviall booncompanion, good natured, &c.; whilst mottoes of ignominy are applied to the temperate,e.g., Puritanisme, discourtesie, coynesse, singularitie, stoicisme, &c. (d) The fourth reason is the negligence and coldnesse of justices, magistrates, &c., in the faithful execution of those pious statutes enacted by the State against this sinne. “If justices were as diligent to suppresse drunkennesse andale-housesas they are industrious to patronise them, the wings of drunkenness would soon be clipt, whereas now they spread and grow, because the sword of execution clipse them not.” (e) The fifth cause why this gangrene doth so dilate is the ill example of gentlemen, great men, magistrates, and ministers, who either approve excesse, or tolerate it in their misgoverned families, “which are oftentimes made the very theatres of Bacchus, and the seminaries, sinkes, and puddles of ryot and intemperance, under pretence of hospitality.” (f) The sixth cause assigned is, “Those common ceremonies, wiles, and stratagems which the deuill and his drunken rowt have invented, of purpose to alure, force, and draw men on to excesse of wine.” ... There is no such common bayte to entice men to intemperance as this idle, heathenish, and hellish ceremonie ofbeginning,seconding, andpledginghealthes.’

Prynne then proceeds in the book proper to give fifteen arguments against health-drinking, drawn out in syllogistic form. Perhaps the most useful part of the book is the array of quotations from ‘the Fathers’ against occasions of intemperance; SS. Augustine, Basil, and Ambrose being most frequently quoted. He vindicates Luther from a charge laid against him by the Papists, which cannot be omitted. They put it about ‘that Luther once made a great feast at his house, to which he invited the chiefest Professours of the Universitie, and among the rest one Islebius. Dinner being ended, and all of them somewhat merry, Luther, after the Germane custome, commanded a great glasse divided with three kindes of circles to be brought unto him; and out of it he drunke an health in order to all his guesse. When all of them had drunke, the health came at last to Islebius. Luther then, in the presence of all the rest, takes this glasse, being filled up, into his hand, and, shewing it to Islebius, saith: “Islebius, I drinke this glasse full of wine unto thee, which containes the tenne commandements to the first circle; the Apostles’ Creed to the second, the Lord’s Prayer to the third, and the Catechisme to the bottom.” When he had spoken, he drinkes off the whole glasse at a draught; which being replenished with wine, he delivers it to Islebius, that he might pledge him all at a breath, who takes the glasse and drunke it off onely to the first circle, which did containe the Decalogue—it being impossible for him to drink any deeper—and then sets downe the glasse on the table, which hee could not behold againe without horrour: then said Luther, “I knew full well before, that Islebius could drinke the Decalogue, but not the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Catechisme.”’

He further cites some canons from ancient Councils; the most important being Canon xv. of the Council of Lateran, 1215:—‘Let all clergymen diligently abstain from surfeitings and drunkenness. For which let them moderate wine from themselves, and themselves from wine. Neither let any one be urged to drink, since drunkenness doth banish wit and provoke lust. For which purpose we decree that that abuse shall be utterly abolished, whereby, in divers quarters, drinkers bind one another to drink healths or equal cups, and he is most applauded who quaffs off most carouzes. If any shall offend henceforth in this, let him be suspended from his benefice and office.’ Again, in the Provincial Council of Colin, 1536, is the order—‘All parish priests or ministers are chiefly prohibited, not only surfeiting, riot, drunkenness, and luxurious feasts, but likewise the drinking of healths, which they are commanded to banish from their houses by a General Council.’

Thus much for the habit of toasting; but—

(3) We may assign as the third reason for the prevalent excess—Convivial Literature. The name that first suggests itself is that of Herrick. It is not only in poems avowedly of this description, such as ‘The Wassail’ and ‘The Wassail Bowl’ but it is a vein running through the entire seam of his songs. With him, at Christmas-time,—

My good dame, sheBids ye all be free,And drink to your heart’s desiring.

In hisNew Year’s Gift, he bids Sir Simeon Steward—

Remember us in cups full crowned,And let our city health go round.

Is he singing of Twelfth Night? No sooner is the question of king and queen settled than their health must be drunk:—

And let not a man be seen here,Who unurged will not drink,To the base from the brink,A health to the king and queen here.Next crown the bowl fullWith gentle lamb’s wool;Add sugar, nutmeg, and ginger,With store of ale too;And thus ye must doTo make the wassail a swinger.

Of course, ‘True Hospitality’ would be impossible without the favourite ingredient:—

But as thy meat, so thy immortal wineMakes the smirk face of each to shine,And spring fresh rosebuds, while the salt, the wit,Flows from the wine, and graces it.

The pretty superstition that wassailing the trees will make them bear, is included among the Christmas Eve ceremonies in hisHesperides:—

Wassaile the trees, that they may beareYou many a plum and many a peare;For more or lesse fruits they will bring,As you do give them wassailing.

The day of this ceremony varies in different localities. In Devonshire the eve of the Epiphany is chosen; there the farmer and his men proceed to the orchard with a huge jug of cider, and forming a circle round a well-bearing tree, drink the toast,—

Here’s to thee, old apple tree,Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow!And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!Hats full! caps full!Bushel, bushel, sacks full,And my pockets full too; huzza![137]

Total sustenance (notabstinence) was part of his religion. In his exquisite little poem entitled ‘A Thanksgiving for his House’—only to beapproached (of its kind) by Bishop Wordsworth’s hymn, ‘Who givest all’—he thanks God, amongst other mercies, for thewassail bowl:—

Lord, I confess too, when I dine,The pulse is Thine,And all those other bits that beThere placed by Thee.The worts, the purslain, and the messOf water-cress,Which of Thy kindness Thou hast sent:And my contentMakes those, and my beloved beet,To be more sweet.‘Tis Thou that crown’st my glittering hearthWith guiltless mirth;And giv’st me wassail bowls to drink,Spiced to the brink.

With Herrick must be coupled in this connection the name of Cowley, of whom Dr. Johnson said, that ‘if he was formed by nature for one kind of writing more than for another, his power seems to have been greatest in the familiar and the festive.’[138]He was perfectly at home with Anacreontics. That on ‘Drinking’ will be remembered:—

Nothing in nature’s sober found,But an eternal health goes round.Fill up the bowl then, fill it high.Fill all the glasses there, for whyShould every creature drink but I?Why, men of morals, tell me why?

As will also ‘The Epicure’—the ‘bibamus, moriendum est’ of Seneca:—

Fill the bowl with spicy wine,Around our temples roses twine,And let us cheerfully awhileLike the wine and roses smile.* * * *To-day is ours; what do we fear?To-day is ours, we have it here.Let’s banish business, banish sorrow;To the gods belong to-morrow.

Cowley’s death was accelerated by intemperance if we can rely upon the authority of Pope. The event occurred while Dean Sprat was his guest. They had visited in company a neighbour of Cowley’s, who too amply refreshed them. ‘They did not set out for their walk home till it was too late, and had drunk so deep that they lay out in the fields all night. This gave Cowley the fever that carried him off.’

To the same convivial school belongs Sir Richard Fanshawe, to whom the distress of the monarch provided occasion for a toast:—

Come, pass about the bowl to me;A health to our distressed king!Though we’re in hold, let cups go free,Birds in a cage do freely sing.[139]

And Alexander Brome, whoseMad Loverexemplifies the tyranny of excessive drinking:—

I have been in love and in debt and in drinkThis many and many a year;And those three are plagues enough, one would think,For one poor mortal to bear.‘Twas drink made me fall into love,And love made me run into debt;And though I have struggled and struggled and strove,I cannot get out of them yet.There’s nothing but money can cure meAnd rid me of all my pain.‘Twill pay all my debtsAnd remove all my lets,And my mistress that cannot endure meWill love me, and love me again;Then I’ll fall to loving and drinking amain.

(4) A fourth cause of the intemperance of the time was the profusion oftaverns. Decker writes that ‘a whole street is in some places but a continuous ale-house, not a shop to be seen between red lattice and red lattice.’[140]

The Lord-keeper Coventry thus speaks of them:—‘I account ale-houses and tippling-houses the greatest pests in the kingdom. I give it you in charge to take a course that none be permitted unless they be licensed; and for the licensed ale-houses, let them be but few and in fit places; if they be in private corners and ill places, they become the den of thieves—they are the public stages of drunkenness and disorder. Let care be taken in the choice of ale-house keepers, that it be not appointed to be the livelihood of a large family. In many places they swarm by default of the justices of the peace.’[141]It may be remarked that by this time inns had become representative; that is, for the most part each inn attracted a particular species of customer. This did not escape the notice of that keen observer Heywood:—

The gentry to the King’s Head,The nobles to the Crown,The knights unto the Golden Fleece,And to the Plough the clown;The Churchman to the Mitre,The shepherd to the Star,The gardener hies him to the Rose,To the Drum the man of war;To the Feathers, ladies, you; the GlobeThe seamen do not scorn;The usurer to the Devil, andThe Townsman to the Horn;The Huntsman to the White Hart,To the Ship the merchants go,But you that do the Muses loveThe sign called River Po;The bankrupt to the World’s End,The fool to the Fortune hie,Unto the Mouth the oyster-wife,The fiddler to the Pie;The drunkard to the Vine,The beggar to the Bush, then meetAnd with Sir Humphrey dine.

Bishop Earle, whoseMicrocosmographyis accounted a faithful delineation of characters as they existed in the seventeenth century, has bequeathed the following account of a tavern of his date:—‘A tavern is a degree, or (if you will) a pair of stairs above an ale-house, where men are drunk with more credit and apology. If the vintner’s nose be at the door, it is a sign sufficient, but the absence of this is supplied by the ivy-bush. It is a broacher of more news than hogsheads, and more jests than news, which are sucked up here by some spongy brain, and from thence squeezed into a comedy. Men come here to make merry, but indeed make a noise, and this music above is answered with a clinking below. The drawers are the civillest people in it, men of good bringing up, and howsoever we esteem them, none can boast more justly of their high calling. ‘Tis the best theatre of natures, where they are truly acted, not played, and the business as in the rest of the world, up and down; to wit, from the bottom of the cellar to the great chamber. A melancholy man would find here matter to work upon, to see heads, as brittle as glasses, and often broken. Men come hither to quarrel, and come here to be made friends. It is the common consumption of the afternoon, and the murderer or the maker away of a rainyday. It is the torrid zone that scorches the face, and tobacco the gunpowder that blows it up. Much harm would be done if the charitable vintner had not water ready for the flames. A house of sin you may call it, but not a house of darkness, for the candles are never out; and it is like those countries far in the north, where it is as clear at midnight as at midday. After a long sitting it becomes like a street in a dashing shower, where the spouts are flushing above, and the conduits running below. To give you the total reckoning of it, it is the busy man’s recreation, the idle man’s business, the melancholy man’s sanctuary, the stranger’s welcome, the inns-of-court man’s entertainment, the scholar’s kindness, and the citizen’s courtesy. It is the study of sparkling wits, and a cup of comedy their book, whence we leave them.’

(5) A fifth cause was the perpetuation of Wakes. Complaints were made in all directions of their evil tendency. The author of theLife of John Bruen(1641) laments that ‘Popery and Profannes, two sisters in evil, had consented and conspired in this parish, as in many other places, together to advance their idols against the arke of God, and to celebrate their solemne feastes of their Popish saints by their wakes and vigils, ... in all riot and excesse of eating and drinking.’

The outcry, it is evident, arose rather from the Puritan than the Temperance party, and became so irrepressible that at the Exeter assizes (1627), Chief Baron Walter and Baron Denham made an order for suppression of all wakes. Judge Richardson made a like order for the county of Somerset, 1631. But on Laud’s demurrer the King commanded this orderto be reversed; which the judge declining to do, a report was required by the bishop of the diocese how the feast days, church-ales, wakes, and revels were observed within his jurisdiction. On receipt of these instructions the bishop advised with seventy-two of the most able of his clergy, who certified that on these feast days the service of God was more solemnly performed than on any other days, that the people desired their continuance, as did also the ministers, for that they preserved the memorial of the dedication of their several churches, civilised the people, composed differences, tended to the increase of love and unity, and to the relief of the poor. On the delivery of this certificate Judge Richardson was cited, and peremptorily commanded to reverse his former order. After this, King Charles I. gave new force to his father’s declaration:—

We do ratify and publish this our blessed father’s decree, the rather because of late, in some counties of our kingdom, we find that under pretence of taking away abuses there hath been a general forbidding, not only of ordinary meetings, but of the feasts of the dedications of the churches, commonly calledWakes. Now his Majesty’s express will and pleasure is that these feasts, with others, shall be observed; and that his justices of the peace shall look to it, both that all disorders there may be prevented or punished, and that all neighbourhood and freedom, with manlike and lawful exercises, be used.

It should here be stated that malice even has not dared to impeach the private morals of Charles I. Chaste and temperate are epithets constantly applied to him. The most convincing testimony to the latter virtue is the statement of A. Wood, that the vintners illuminated at his death, made bonfires, and drank lusty carouses. He had evidently not favoured their trade; but the justice of his cause and the injustice of his treatment were engraven on many a publican’s sign, to which the ‘Mourning Crown and Mitre’ bore witness.The Mourning Bushwas the sign set up by John Taylor, the ‘Water-Poet,’ over his tavern in Long Acre, to express his grief at the beheading of the King. But he was compelled to away with it; when, in its place, he put up thePoet’s Head, his own portrait, with this inscription:—

There is many a head hangs for a sign,Then, gentle reader, why not mine?

The following is the testimony of Clarendon:—

As he (the king) excelled in all other virtues, so in temperance he was so strict, that he abhorred all debauchery to that degree, that at a great festival solemnity, where he once was, being told by one who withdrew from thence, what vast draughts of wine they drank, and that there was one earl who had drunk most of the rest down, and was not himself moved or altered, the king said that he deserved to be hanged; and that earl coming shortly after into the room where his Majesty was, in some gaiety, to show how unhurt he was from that battle, the king sent one to bid him withdraw from his Majesty’s presence; nor did he in some days after appear before him.

The following lines occur on the signboard of the inn near Hardwicke House, close to Caversham, where Charles I. was kept a prisoner:—

Stop! traveller, stop! In yonder peaceful gladeHis favourite game the Royal Martyr played:Here, stripped of honours—children—freedom—rank,—Drank from the bowl, and bowled for what he drank;Sought in a cheerful glass his cares to drown,And changed his guinea, ere he lost his crown.

But, along with so many incentives to excess, were there no counteractive agencies at work? The reply is that there were. Precept and law were neither silent nor inoperative. It was not for nothing that men like Jeremy Taylor and Usher, Milton and Crashaw, lived and wrote.

Of the first-named writer (chaplain to the king) two quotations must suffice.

Jeremy Taylor on Temperance.—Temperance hath an effect on the understanding, and makes the reason sober, and the will orderly, and the affections regular, and does things beside and beyond their natural and proper efficacy: for all the parts of our duty are watered with the showers of blessing, and bring forth fruit according to the influence of heaven, and beyond the capacities of nature.[142]Jeremy Taylor on our Shortening our own Days.—In all the process of our health we are running to our grave: we open our own sluices by viciousness and unworthy actions; we pour in drink and let out life; we increase diseases and know not how to bear them; we strangle ourselves with our own intemperance; we suffer the fevers and the inflammations of lust, and we quench our souls with drunkenness: we bury our understandings in loads of meat and surfeits, and then we lie down on our beds, and roar with pain and disquietness of our souls.[143]

Jeremy Taylor on our Shortening our own Days.—In all the process of our health we are running to our grave: we open our own sluices by viciousness and unworthy actions; we pour in drink and let out life; we increase diseases and know not how to bear them; we strangle ourselves with our own intemperance; we suffer the fevers and the inflammations of lust, and we quench our souls with drunkenness: we bury our understandings in loads of meat and surfeits, and then we lie down on our beds, and roar with pain and disquietness of our souls.[143]

Archbishop Usher, treating of the seventh commandment, asks,—

How is this commandment broken in the abuse of meat and drink? Either in regard of thequalityorquantitythereof. How in regard of thequantity? By excess, and intemperance in diet: when we ... give ourselves to surfeiting and drunkenness. What be the contrary duties here commanded? 1. Temperance, in using a sober and moderate diet, according to our ability.... 2. Convenient abstinence (1 Cor. ix. 27).[144]

Of Milton, Johnson says that—

His domestic habits, so far as they are known, were those of asevere student. He drank little strong drink of any kind, and fed without excess in quantity, and in his earlier years without delicacy of choice.

But we should certainly infer,pacethe good Doctor, that in his earlier years at least he was fond of wine, from his sonnet to Mr. Lawrence, which seems redolent of Horace in his Bacchanalian moods. The sonnet is intensely classical:—

To Mr. Lawrence.

Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,Now that the fields are dank and ways are mire,Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fireHelp waste a sullen day, what may be wonFrom the hard season gaining? Time will runOn smoother, till Favonius re-inspireThe frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attireThe lily and rose, that neither sow’d nor spun.What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,Of Attic taste,with wine, whence we may riseTo hear the lute well touched, or artful voiceWarble immortal notes and Tuscan air?He who of those delights can judge, and spareTo interpose them oft, is not unwise.

Also inL’Allegrowe are rather disposed to think our poet shows that he was not altogether superior ‘to the spicy nut-brown ale.’ On the other hand, his—also Horatian—sonnet to Cyriac Skinner seems to suggest a somewhat similar idea to Cowper’s ‘cups that cheer but not inebriate,’ though they may refer to moderate drinking:—

To Cyriac Skinner.

Cyriac, whose grandsire, on the royal benchOf British Themis, with no mean applausePronounced and in his volumes taught our laws,Which others at their bar so often wrench;To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drenchIn mirth that after no repenting draws.

On the other hand, he could be no friend to excess who inParadise Lost, book i., thus speaks of Belial:—

In courts and palaces he also reigns,And in luxurious cities, where the noiseOf riot ascends above their loftiest towers,And injury and outrage; and when nightDarkens the streets, then wander forth the sonsOf Belial, flown with insolence and wine.

And again:—

Intemperance on the earth shall bringDiseases dire, of which a monstrous crewBefore thee shall appear!

What an advocate ofprohibitionwas he who could write,—

What more foul common sin among us than drunkenness? Who can be ignorant that if the importation of wine were forbid, it would both clean rid the possibility of committing that odious vice, and men might afterwards live happily and healthfully without the use of intoxicating liquors!

Richard Crashaw, of whom it was writ,—

Poet and saint! to thee alone are givenThe two most sacred names of earth and heaven,

reckons amongst his many efforts of genius,Temperance, or the Cheap Physician, where, after ridiculing the doctors’ mystic compositions, he asks,—

And what at last shall gain by these?Only a costlier disease.That which makes us have no needOf physic, that’s physic indeed.

It may be remembered that this poet was the author of the epigram whose last line runs,—

Lympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit.The modest water saw its God, and blushed.

This epigram was composed by Crashaw when Dryden was an infant, so should not be attributed to the latter.

Some noble lines of the poet James Nicholson are well worthy of record:—

Our homes are invaded with dark desolation,There’s danger wherever the wine-cup doth flow;Then pledge your fair hands to resist the temptation,Nor stain your red lips with those waters of woe.Lift up your bright glances, put on all your beauty—Your holy affections—your God-given dower;Such weapons are mighty—awake to your duty,The trophies you gather will add to your power.

And, once more,—

I’ll pledge thee not in wassail bowl,With rosy madness filled;But let us quaff the nobler wine,By Nature’s hand distilled.Where to the skies the mountains riseIn grandeur to the view,Where sparkling rills leap down the hills,Our Scotia’s mountain dew.

Thomas Weaver, 1649, writes,—

The harms and mischiefs which th’abuseOf wine doth every day produce,Make good the doctrine of the Turks,That in each grape a devil lurks.

Divines like Hugh Peters declaimed from the pulpit against intemperance. Archbishop Harsnet, founder of Chigwell School, left the regulation respecting the head master, that he be ‘no tippler, no haunter of ale-houses, no puffer of tobacco.’

In addition to abundance of precept, some legislative action is noticeable.

In 1627 (3 Charles I.) a fine of twenty shillings, or whipping, is imposed for keeping an ale-house without licence.

In 1687 the vintners were called upon to submit to a tax of a penny a quart upon all the wine they retailed. As they repudiated the demand, a decree was passed in the Star Chamber forbidding them to sell or dress victuals in their houses. Two years after, they were questioned for the breach of this decree, and to avoid punishment they consented to lend the king six thousand pounds, subsequently entering into a composition to pay half the duty which was at first demanded of them.

An Act of 1688 prohibits the retailing of wine in bottles—an Act which must have fostered adulteration. Light wines will not keep long in the cask, and if not bottled at the proper time become useless. The dealer, to avert loss, adopts preventive measures. The door is at once open to fraud and adulteration. Complaints of the latter became now common.

Wines had risen greatly in price.An order in Council of 1633directs that Canary, Muskadells, and Alligant should be sold in gross at 17l.a pipe, and at 12d.the quart by retail; Sacks and Malaga at 10d.the quart; the best Gascoigne and French wines at 6d.the quart.

In 1643 was established the excise, which was introduced, on the model of the Dutch prototype, by the Parliament after its rupture with the Crown. Originally established in 1643, its progress was gradual, being at first laid upon those persons and commodities where it was supposed that the shoe would least pinch—viz. the makers and venders of ale, beer, cider, and perry. The Royalists at Oxford followed the example set them at Westminster, and imposed a similar duty; both sides protesting that it should be continued no longer thanto the end of the war, and then be abolished. But the Parliament soon after extended its application to many other commodities, and in course of time these champions of liberty declared the impost of excise to be the most easy and indifferent levy that could be laid upon the people, and so continued it during their usurpation. It was afterwards made hereditary to the Crown. Mr. Pymme is considered to have been the father of this impost.

Doubtless there was great occasion for the committee of 1641, which inquired into the general state of the clergy. That there was intemperance in many quarters cannot be denied; but something must be put down to the spirit of the time. Drink was an accessory of everything, and self-restraint was not a constant factor; there could be only one result. The tree was bad, the fruit was bad. That the following extract is now regarded as a curiosity, is itself a proof of very altered manners. The items are taken from the Darlington parochial registers:—

1639. For Mr. Thompson that preached the forenoon and afternoon, for a quart of sack, 14d.1650. For six quarts of sack to the minister that preached when we had not a minister, 9s.1666. For one quart of sack bestowed on Mr. Gillet, when he preached, 2s.4d.1691. For a pint of brandy, when Mr. George Bell preached here, 1s.4d.; when the Dean of Durham preached here, spent in a treat with him, 3s.6d.For a stranger that preached, a dozen of ale, 12d.

We here pause for a moment to listen to some very thoughtful remarks of Howell, contained in a long epistle to Lord Cliffe, upon the subject of comparative drinkdom.He writes:—

It is without controversy that in the nonage of the world, men and beasts had but one buttery, which was the fountain and river, nor do we read of any vines or wines till two hundred years after the flood; but now I do not know or hear of any nation that hath water only for their drink, except the Japanese, and they drink it hot too; but we may say that whatever beverage soever we make, either by brewing, by distillation, decoction, percolation, or pressing, it is but water at first; nay, wine itself is but water sublimed, being nothing else but that moisture and sap which is caused either by rain or other kind of irrigations about the roots of the vine, and drawn up to the branches and berries by the virtual attractive heat of the sun, the bowels of the earth serving as an alembic to that end, which made the Italian vineyard-man (after a long drought, and an extreme hot summer which had parched up all his grapes) to complain, ‘For want of water I am forced to drink water; if I had water I would drink wine:’ it may also be applied to the miller, when he has no water to drive his mills. The vine doth so abhor cold, that it cannot grow beyond the 49th degree to any purpose; therefore God and nature hath furnished the north-west nations with other inventions of beverage. In this island the old drink was ale, noble ale, than which, as I heard a great foreign doctor affirm, there is no liquor that more increaseth the radical moisture, and preserves the natural heat, which are the two pillars that support the life of man. But since beer hathhoppedin amongst us, ale is thought to be much adulterated, and nothing so good as Sir John Oldcastle and Smugg the smith was used to drink. Besides ale and beer, the natural drink of part of this isle may be said to be metheglin, braggot, and mead, which differ in strength according to the three degrees of comparison. The first of the three, which is strong in the superlative if taken immoderately, doth stupefy more than any other liquor, and keeps a humming in the brain, which made one say, that he loved not metheglin because he was used to speak too much of the house he came from, meaning the hive. Cider and perry are also the natural drinks of parts of this isle.

The condition of things underwent no material change during the Commonwealth and Protectorate, notwithstanding the special pleading of political partisanship.The state of morals in England and its capital is accurately described in a letter to a French nobleman during the Protectorate:—

There is within this city [London] and in all the towns of England which I have passed through, so prodigious a number of houses where they sell a certain drink called ale, that I think a good half of the inhabitants may be denominated ale-house keepers. These are a meaner sort ofcabarets. But what is more deplorable, there the gentlemen sit and spend much of their time, drinking of a muddy kind of beverage, and tobacco, which has universally besotted the nation, and at which I hear they have consumed many noble estates. As for other taverns London is composed of them, where they drink Spanish wines, and other sophisticated liquors, to that fury and intemperance, as has often amazed me to consider it. But thus some mean fellow, the drawer, arrives to an estate, some of them having built fair houses, and purchased those gentlemen out of their possessions, who have ruined themselves by that base and dishonourable vice of ebriety. And that nothing may be wanting to the height of luxury and impiety of this abomination, they have translated the organs out of their churches to set them up in taverns; chanting their dithyrambics and bestial bacchanalias to the tune of those instruments which were wont to assist them in the celebration of God’s praises, and regulate the voices of the worst singers in the world, which are the English in their churches at present.... A great error undoubtedly in those who sit at the helm, to permit this scandal; to suffer so many of these taverns and occasions of intemperance, such leeches and vipers, to gratify so sordid and base a sort of people with the spoils of honest and well-natured men. Your lordship will not believe me, that the ladies of greatest quality suffer themselves to be treated in one of these taverns, where a courtezan in other cities would scarcely vouchsafe to be entertained. But you will be more astonished when I shall assure you that they drink their crowned cups roundly, strain healths through their smocks, dance after the fiddle, &c. Drinking is the afternoon’s diversion; whether for want of a better, to employ the time, or affection to the drink, I know not. But I have found some persons of quality whom one could not safely visit after dinner, without resolving to undergo this drink-ordeal. It is esteemed a piece of wit to make a man drunk, for which some swilling insipid client or congiary is a frequent andconstant adjutant.

And later on, in order to contrast the two countries, the writer adds:—

I don’t remember, my lord, ever to have known (or very rarely) a health drank in France, no, not the King’s; and if we say,à votre santé, Monsieur, it neither expects pledge or ceremony. ‘Tis here so the custom to drink to every one at the table, that by the time a gentleman has done his duty to the whole company, he is ready to fall asleep, whereas with us, we salute the whole table with a single glass only.[145]

Other writers of the time notice the participation of the women in the general drinking. M. Jorevin, another French author, writes of a Worcester hotel:—

According to the custom of the country, the landladies sup with the strangers and passengers, and if they have daughters they are also of the company, to entertain the guests at table with pleasant conceits, where they drink as much as the men; but what is to me the most disgusting in all this is, that when one drinks the health of any person in company, the custom of the country does not permit you to drink more than half the cup, which is filled up and presented to him or her whose health you have drunk.[146]

John Evelyn tells of the execrable habit of making servants drunk. He remarks, under date July 19, 1654:—

Went back to Cadenham, and on the 19th to Sir Ed. Baynton’s at Spie Park, a place capable of being made a noble seate; but the humorous old knight has built a long single house of 2 low stories on the precipice of an incomparable prospect, and looking on abowling greene in the park. The house is like a long barne, and has not a window on the prospect side. After dinner they went to bowles, and in the meanetime our coachmen were made so exceedingly drunk, that in returning home we escap’d greate dangers. This it seems was by order of the knight, that all gentlemen’s servants be so treated; butthe custome is a barbarous one, and much unbecoming a knight, still lesse a Christian.

The same sort of thing happened to Evelyn again, March 18, 1669:—

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