FOOTNOTES:

We might have a reasonable good wine growing in many places of this realme; as undoubtedly wee had immediately after the Conquest; tyll partly by slouthfulnesse, not liking anything longthat is painefull, partly by civil discord long-continuying, it was left, and so with tyme lost, as appeareth by a number of places in this realme that keepe still the name of vineyardes; and uppon many cliffes and hilles are yet to be seene the rootes and olde remaynes of vines. There is besides Nottingham an auncient house, called Chilwell, in which house remayneth yet, as an auncient monument, in a great wyndowe of glasse, the whole order of planting, pruyning, stamping, and pressing of vines. Beside there is yet also growing an old vine, that yields a grape sufficient to make a right good wine, as was lately proved. There hath, moreover, good experience of late yeears been made, by two noble and honorable barons of this realme, the lorde Cobham and the lorde Willyams of Tame, who had both growyng about their houses as good wines as are in many parts of Fraunce.

FOOTNOTES:[87]Cf. the Act of 1536 which speaks of ‘sakkes and other sweete wines.’[88]‘Now, many kinds ofsacksare known and used.’ Howell.Londinopolis, p. 103. The palm-sack, which Ben Jonson speaks of, is from Palma Island, one of the Canary group.[89]Bancroft,Two Bookes of Epigrammes and Epitaphs, 1639.[90]Another variety of this second version is ‘Turkeys, carps, hops, piccarel, and beer.’ Anderson.Hist. of Commerce, vol. i., p. 354.[91]SeeLosely Manuscripts, and other Rare Documents minutely illustrating English History, Biography, and Manners from Henry VIII. to James I., preserved in the Muniment Room at Losely House, edited with Notes by A. J. Kempe.[92]Camden Society reprint of theRutland Papers.[93]Tusser Redivivus(1744), p. 81.[94]Christen State of Matrimony(1543).[95]The Anatomie of Abuses(1583).[96]This song is given in Washington’s Irving’sSketch Book, in its original orthography.[97]Midsummer Night’s Dream, act 2, scene i. Cf. Knight,Pict. Hist., vol. ii.Gent. Magazine, May 1784.[98]Herrick:Poems.[99]Scott,Lay of the Last Minstrel. Cf. alsoChristmas with the Poets; and the ‘Old and Young Courtier’ in thePercy Reliques.[100]In the time of Henry IV. there was a club called ‘La Court de bone Compagnie,’ of which Occleve was a member, and perhaps Chaucer. The wordclubis connected withcleave, which has the twofold meaning ofsplit and adhere; reminding one of the equivalent wordspartnerandassocie, the former pointing to thedivisionof profits, the latter to thecommunityof interests. Cf. Timbs,Club Life.[101]Camden’s assertion will be found criticised towards the end of this book.[102]By Richard Carew, 1602.[103]Anatomie of Abuses, 1583.[104]Naogeorgus,The Popish Kingdome, Englyshed by Barnabe Googe. London, 1570.[105]Gascoigne:The Steele Glas: A Satyre, 1576.[106]Since writing the present sketch, the attitude of Shakespeare to temperance has been carefully considered and dealt with in a work entitledShakespeare on Temperance, by Frederick Sherlock.[107]All that can possibly be verified has been investigated by the indefatigable energy and industry, extending over nearly half a century, of J. O. Halliwell Phillipps Esq., F.R.S., of Hollingbury Copse, Brighton.[108]Cf. Knight,Old England, vol. ii.; and C. F. Green,Shakespeare’s Crab Tree.[109]Diary of the Rev. John Ward (arranged by Charles Severn, 1839).[110]George Daniel,Merrie England in the Olden Time.[111]Foure Bookes of Husbandry, 1578.

[87]Cf. the Act of 1536 which speaks of ‘sakkes and other sweete wines.’

[88]‘Now, many kinds ofsacksare known and used.’ Howell.Londinopolis, p. 103. The palm-sack, which Ben Jonson speaks of, is from Palma Island, one of the Canary group.

[89]Bancroft,Two Bookes of Epigrammes and Epitaphs, 1639.

[90]Another variety of this second version is ‘Turkeys, carps, hops, piccarel, and beer.’ Anderson.Hist. of Commerce, vol. i., p. 354.

[91]SeeLosely Manuscripts, and other Rare Documents minutely illustrating English History, Biography, and Manners from Henry VIII. to James I., preserved in the Muniment Room at Losely House, edited with Notes by A. J. Kempe.

[92]Camden Society reprint of theRutland Papers.

[93]Tusser Redivivus(1744), p. 81.

[94]Christen State of Matrimony(1543).

[95]The Anatomie of Abuses(1583).

[96]This song is given in Washington’s Irving’sSketch Book, in its original orthography.

[97]Midsummer Night’s Dream, act 2, scene i. Cf. Knight,Pict. Hist., vol. ii.Gent. Magazine, May 1784.

[98]Herrick:Poems.

[99]Scott,Lay of the Last Minstrel. Cf. alsoChristmas with the Poets; and the ‘Old and Young Courtier’ in thePercy Reliques.

[100]In the time of Henry IV. there was a club called ‘La Court de bone Compagnie,’ of which Occleve was a member, and perhaps Chaucer. The wordclubis connected withcleave, which has the twofold meaning ofsplit and adhere; reminding one of the equivalent wordspartnerandassocie, the former pointing to thedivisionof profits, the latter to thecommunityof interests. Cf. Timbs,Club Life.

[101]Camden’s assertion will be found criticised towards the end of this book.

[102]By Richard Carew, 1602.

[103]Anatomie of Abuses, 1583.

[104]Naogeorgus,The Popish Kingdome, Englyshed by Barnabe Googe. London, 1570.

[105]Gascoigne:The Steele Glas: A Satyre, 1576.

[106]Since writing the present sketch, the attitude of Shakespeare to temperance has been carefully considered and dealt with in a work entitledShakespeare on Temperance, by Frederick Sherlock.

[107]All that can possibly be verified has been investigated by the indefatigable energy and industry, extending over nearly half a century, of J. O. Halliwell Phillipps Esq., F.R.S., of Hollingbury Copse, Brighton.

[108]Cf. Knight,Old England, vol. ii.; and C. F. Green,Shakespeare’s Crab Tree.

[109]Diary of the Rev. John Ward (arranged by Charles Severn, 1839).

[110]George Daniel,Merrie England in the Olden Time.

[111]Foure Bookes of Husbandry, 1578.

STUART PERIOD.

In entering upon this period it will be necessary to consider, in the first place, what were the drinks chiefly in use. A pamphlet, bearing the date 1612, enumerates a number of the wines then popular:—

Some drinking the neat wine of Orleance, some the Gasgony, some the Bordeaux. There wanted neither sherry sack, nor Charneco, Malyfo, nor amber-coloured Candy, nor liquorish Ipocras, brown beloved Bastard, fat Aligant, nor any quick-spirited liquor.[112]

That Spanish wines of the Sacke species were now especial favourites, is evident from an ordinance of James I.:—

Whereas, in times past, Spanish wines, called sacke, were little or no whit used in our court, and that in late years, though not of ordinary allowance, it was thought convenient that such noblemen and women and others of account, as had diet in the court, upon their necessities by sicknesse or otherwise, might have a bowle or glasse of sacke, and so no great quantity spent; we understanding that within these late years it is used as common to all order, using it rather for wantonnesse and surfeiting than for necessity, to a great and wasteful expense.... Our pleasure is that there be allowed to the serjeant of our seller 12 gallons of sacke a day, and no more.

The fashion of Malmsey had passed away, and the Hungarian red wine (Ofener) had taken its place. It came by Breslau to Hamburg, whence it was shipped to England. Very little Hungarian wine used to be made with a view to exportation. Now many sorts find their way to this country, notably the Carlowitz. The wine-jurors of the 1862 Exhibition reported:—‘Great expectations have been formed of the capability of Hungary asa wine supplying country. The produce is large, amounting to nearly 250,000,000 gallons yearly. Many of the wines are good, but more careful treatment is generally required.’ At one time only imperial Tokay was known in England as the produce of that country.[113]

Hock was also in high repute:

What wine is it? Hock,By the mass, brave wine.[114]

Besides wine, beer and spirits were both adopted. Spirits used to be calledstrong waters, andcomfortable waters; thus, when Sir George Summers of Lyme, in 1609, was driven before a hurricane, which led to his discovery of the Bermudas, there appeared no hope of saving the ship, so waterlogged was she. In this extremity, those who had ‘comfortable waters’ drank to one another as taking their last leaves.

Ale and beer were both in common use. But a new kind arose in competition. Dr. Butler, physician to James I., and, according to Fuller, the Æsculapius of that age, invented a kind of medicated ale, calledDr. Butler’s Ale, which used to be sold at houses that had the ‘Butler’s Head’ for a sign.[115]

But to pass from thequidto thequatenus, as Bishop Andrewes would say. Were these liquors drunk to excess? We should suspect that such would be the case, knowing the example of the Court, and remembering that not a little of the literature of the time abetted free living, whilst, at the same time, legislative restriction and ecclesiastical monition were rife, and in certain quarters, both clerical and lay, these excesses were vehemently anathematised.

Yes, the legislative, we shall find, was active, far more active than the executive, as appears from the renewal of an important statute in the same reign, just as though it had utterly ceased to be in force. The king showed great desire to enforce several statutes, but the difficulty lay in the fact that he was the first to infringe them. In fact, as Green does not hesitate to aver, the king was known to be an habitual drunkard; ladies of rank copied the royal manners, and rolled intoxicated in open court at the king’s feet.[116]His tutor, Buchanan, was a great drinker; and his nurse is said to have been a drunkard,[117]which latter circumstance gave him a predisposition to drink; the relation of cause and effect in such cases being established. Dr. Mitchell, one of the Lunacy Commissioners, stated in evidence before the Select Committee on Habitual Drunkards in 1872: ‘It is quite certain that the children of habitual drunkards are in a larger proportion idiotic than other children, and in a larger proportion themselves habitual drunkards.’[118]The king’s hereditary tendency was not improved by his connection with Denmark. In the carouses with which that Court celebrated the royal nuptials, James increased that proclivity for heavy drinking to which most of his follies may be traced. He dates his letters ‘From the castle of Cronenburg, quhaire, we are drinking and drivingourin the auld manner.’ The same influence followed him to his own dominions. A tavern sign, ‘The King of Denmark,’ perpetuates to this day a royal visit which was celebrated with unparalleled orgies. It willbe remembered that James I. married a sister of Christian IV., king of Denmark.[119]In 1606 the Danish king, Christian, paid a visit to this country. He and his brother-in-law, James, were invited to a festival at Theobalds, the seat of the Prime Minister Cecil, Earl of Salisbury. The revellings there were disgraced by scenes of intemperance which have acquired historical notoriety. The queen was by necessity absent at the time when the kings were abandoning themselves to unrestrained excess. Mr. Samuelson, in hisHistory of Drink, has fallen into the error of certain writers of the last century who have accused Queen Anne of the derelictions from propriety committed on this occasion by a certainqueen, who, having taken too much, reeled against the steps of King Christian’s throne. But, as is pointed out by Strickland, thisqueenwas only the Queen of Sheba, personated by a female servant of the Earl of Salisbury, and not the Queen of Great Britain, as any one may ascertain who reads Sir John Harrington’s letter, the sole document on which is founded the mistaken accusation of intemperance against the queen of James I. The story has been often told in whole or part, but it may be well to produce the original.[120]

Those whom I never could get to taste good liquor now ... wallow in beastly delights. The ladies abandon sobriety, and are seen to roll about in intoxication. After dinner, the representation of Solomon, his temple, and the coming of the Queen of Sheba was made.... The lady who did play the queen’s part did carry most precious gifts to both their majesties, but forgetting the steppes arising to the canopy, overset her caskets in his Danish Majesty’s lap, and fell at his feet, though I rather think it was on his face. Much was the hurry and confusion—cloths and napkins were at hand to make all clean. His Majesty then got up, and would dance with the Queen of Sheba, but he fell down and humbled himself before her and was carried to his inner chamber. The entertainment and show went forward, and most of the presenters went backward or fell down, wine did so occupy their upper chambers.

Much more is told, but one sentence is pregnant: ‘The gunpowder fright is out of all our heads, and we are going on hereabouts, as if the devil were contriving every man should blow up himself by wild riot, excess, and devastation of wine and intemperance.’

The queen was not present; indeed, she was not even a guest of the earl at this time, but was confined to her chamber sick and sad at Greenwich Palace. At a banquet on the Thames, however, given soon after by her royal brother, the queen was present. They pledged each other to continued friendship. To each pledge, drum, trumpet, and cannon were responsive. Shakespeare describes a similar scene:

No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day,But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell.

Such pledges of friendship seem almost typical of the happy event of 1863, to which Jean Ingelow so exquisitely alludes in her ‘Wedding song.’

Come up the broad river, the Thames, my Dane,My Dane, with the beautiful eyes.* * * *And they said, ‘He is young, the lad we love,The heir of the Isles is young;How we deem of his mother, and one gone above,Can neither be said nor sung.He brings us a pledge—he will do his partWith the best of his race and name;’And I will, for I look to live, sweetheart,As may suit with Thy mother’s fame.

But, taking leave of the court, let us proceed to discover the manners of the people, from contemporary authors and dramatists. Much is to be gleaned from the voluminous writings of Thomas Decker, whose pamphlets and plays, theQuarterly Reviewonce said, would furnish a more complete view of the habits and customs of his contemporaries in vulgar and middle life than could easily be collected from all the grave annals of the times. HisSeven Deadly Sins of London, published in 1606, is a mighty invective against the iniquity of the day. It has been well remarked in the introduction to Arber’s reprint of the work, how much the mind of the writer was imbued with the style of the old Hebrew prophets, and how sure he was that that style would find a response in the hearts of his readers. For instance, how like the ‘burden of the Word of the Lord’ is his apostrophe to London—‘O London, thou art great in glory, and envied for thy greatness. Thou art the goodliest of thy neighbours, but the proudest, the wealthiest, the most wanton.... Thou sit’st in thy gates heated with wines.’ In his account of the third deadly sin, he speaks of wines, Spanish and French, meeting in the cellar, conspiring together to lay theEnglishmanunder the board. Perhaps his finest effort of prosopopæia is his impersonation of sloth, whom he represents as giving licences to all the vintners to ‘keepe open house, and to emptye their hogsheades to all commers, who did so, dyeing their grates into a drunkard’s blush (to make them knowe from gates of a prison) lest customers shouldreele away from them, and hanging out new bushes, that if men at their going out could not see the signe, yet they might not lose themselves in the bush.... And asdrunkennessewhen it least can stand, does best hold up ale-houses, soslothis a founder of the alms-houses, ... and is a good benefactor to these last.’ To call attention to this author’s notices of suchrules of drunkennessas Vpsy-Freeze, Crambo, Parmizant, &c., would be beside the present object; but the book will amply repay study, and serve as a commentary on Defoe’sPlague of London. Several other of his works bear upon the present theme,e.g.The Batchelor’s Banquet,Lanthorne and Candle Light, andEnglish Villanies prest to Death.

A writer quite as voluminous, and equally with Decker a scourge of iniquity, was George Wyther (persistently called by so many—Hazlitt and Brand among the number—Wythers). In 1613 he brought out his satirical essays,Abuses Stript and Whipt, the truth and beauty of which, to his honour be it said, touched the heart of Charles Lamb, who observes:[121]

The game run down is coarse general vice, or folly as it appears in classes. A liar, a drunkard, a coxcomb, isstript and whipt.... To a well-natured mind, there is a charm of moral sensibility running through them. Wither seems everywhere bursting with a love of goodness, and a hatred of all low and base actions. At this day it is hard to discover what parts in the poemAbuses Striptcould have occasioned the imprisonment of the author. Was vice in high places more suspicious than now?

Reference has already been made to the allusion inthis work of Wither to the custom ofHock-tide. He ridicules the notion of such an observance and that ofalessubserving the devotion of youth, and indignantly asks,—

What will they do, I say, that think to pleaseTheir mighty God with such fond things as these?Sure, very ill.

In this same work occurs an allusion to the then common practice of insertingtoastinto ale with nutmeg and sugar:—

Will he will drinke, yet but a draught at most,That must be spiced with anut-browne tost.

The origin of the wordtoastis much disputed, as is elsewhere observed, and no better account of it is forthcoming than that the word was taken from the toast which was put into the tankard, and which still floats in the loving cup. Hence the person named was the toast or savour of the wine, that which gives the draught piquancy.

Many other of the drinking customs of the day are criticised, but not all with censure. The ode to Christmas, for instance, contrasts strongly with his later puritanical sentiments. Neither sectarian gloom nor civil struggles had yet enveloped the author when he wrote,—

Drown sorrow in a cup of wine,And let us all be merry.Hark how the roofs with laughter sound!Anon they’ll think the house goes round,For they the cellars’ depth have found,And there they will be merry,

which introduces a stanza uponwassailing. A change must have come over hisdream before he wrote his second ode on the same subject, which alone would entitle him to the encomiums of Hazlitt or any other critic.[122]

Far more unqualified denunciation of seventeenth century excess is to be found in a volume by Thomas Young (1617), entitledEngland’s Bane, or the Description of Drunkennesse. He says,—

There are in London drinking schooles: so that drunkennesse is professed with us as a liberall arte and science.... I have seene a company amongst the very woods and forests drinking for amuggle. Sixe determined to trie their strengths who could drinke most glasses for the muggle. The first drinkes a glasse of a pint, the second two, the next three, and so every one multiplieth till the last taketh sixe. Then the first beginneth againe and taketh seven, and in this manner they drinke thrice a peece round, every man taking a glasse more than his fellow, so that he that dranke least, which was the first, drank one and twenty pints, and the sixth man thirty-six.[123]

Scarcely less absurd than these laws of drunkenness, are the laws of health-drinking as described by Barnaby Rich in his work published 1619, the title of which is an excellent preface to the subject-matter, ‘The Irish Hubbub, or the English Hue and Crie; briefly pursuing the base conditions and most notorious offences of this vile, vaine, and wicked age. No less smarting than tickling,’ &c. The following is his description of toasting laws:—

He that beginneth the health hath his prescribed orders; first uncovering his head, hee takes a full cup in his hand, and settling his countenance with a grave aspect, hee craves for audience; silence being once obtained, hee begins to breath out the name peradventure of some honourable personage that is worthy of a better regard than to have his name polluted amongst a company of drunkards; but his healthe is drunke to, and hee that pledgethmust likewise off with his cap, kisse his fingers, and bowing himselfe in signe of a reverent acceptance. When the leader sees his follower thus prepared, he soups up his broath, turnes the bottom of the cup upward, and in ostentation of his dexteritie, gives the cup a phillip, to make it crytwango. And thus the first scene is acted. The cup being newly replenished, to the breadthe of an haire, he that is the pledger must now beginne his part, and thus it goes round throughout the whole company, provided alwaies by a cannon set downe by the founder, there must be three at the least still uncovered, till the health hath had the full passage, which is no sooner ended, but another begins againe, and he drinks a health, &c.

It appears from another author, that this method was accounted a procedurein order, for he adds, ‘It is drunkewithout orderwhen the course or method of order is not observed, and that the cup passeth on to whomsoever we shall appoint.’ Drink is the burden of the songs of this hilarious writer, who is usually, known by the sobriquet of Drunken Barnaby (or Barnabea) from the titles he himself employed. It is curiously illustrative of the hold that convivial phrases had upon the popular mind that we find a pious divine solemnly quoting the words of a suffering Christian, one Lawrence Saunders, to this effect,—‘My Saviour began to mee in a bitter cup, and shall not IpledgeHim?’ [i.e.drink the same cup of sorrow]. The divine just alluded to, Dr. Samuel Ward, of Ipswich, in his sermon (1685) entitled ‘Woe to Drunkards,’ anathematisestoasting: ‘Abandon that foolish and vicious custome, as Ambrose and Basil call it, of drinking healths, and making that a sacrifice to God for the health of others, which is rather a sacrifice to the devil, and a bane of their owne.’

But this kind of appeal was by no means confined to the pulpit. Robert Burton, the famous author of theAnatomy of Melancholy(1621), who cannot be accused of being strait-laced (at any rate, Anthony Wood speaks of his company as very merry, facete, and juvenile), in his pungent chapter on Dyet as a cause of melancholy, exclaims,—

What immoderate drinking in every place! How they flock to the tavern! as if they were born to no other end but to eat and drink, as so many casks to hold wine; yea, worse than a cask, that marrs wine, and itself is not marred by it.... ‘Tis now come to that pass, that he is no gentleman, a very milk-sop, that will not drink, fit for no company.... No disparagement now to stagger in the streets, reel, rave, &c., but much to his renown.... ‘Tis thesummum bonumof our tradesmen, their felicity, life, and soul, to be merry together in an ale-house or tavern, as our modern Muscovites do in their mede-inns, and Turks in their coffee-houses. They will labour hard all day long, to be drunk at night, and spendtotius anni laboresin a tippling feast.... How they love a man that will be drunk, crown him, and honour him for it, hate him that will not pledge him, stab him, kill him: a most intolerable offence, and not to be forgiven.

Again, in his chapter on ‘Mirth and Merry Company,’ he warns,—

But see the mischief; many men, knowing that merry company is the only medicine against melancholy, will therefore neglect their business, and spend all their days among good fellows in a tavern, and know not otherwise how to bestow their time but in drinking; malt-worms, men-fishes, or water-snakes, like so many frogs in a puddle.... Flourishing wits and men of good parts, good fashion, and good worth, basely prostitute themselves to every rogue’s company to take tobacco and drink.... They drown their wits, seeth their brains in ale, consume their fortunes, lose their time, weaken their temperatures, contract filthy diseases, rheumes, dropsies, calentures, tremor, get swoln juglars, pimpled red faces, sore eyes, &c.; heat their livers, alter their complexions, spoil their stomachs, overthrow their bodies (for drink drowns more than the sea and all the rivers that fall into it), mere funges and casks—confound their souls, suppress reason, go from Scylla to Charybdis.

If such were the avowed expressions of Burton, we shall not wonder to find such men as George Herbert and Bishop Hall vehement in denunciation of the same bane.

Because luxury is a very visible sin, the parson is very careful to avoid all the kinds thereof,but especially that of drinking, because it is the most popular vice; into which if he come, he prostitutes himself both to shame, and sin, and by having fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, he disableth himself of authority to reprove them: for sins make all equal whom they find together; and then they are worst, who ought to be best. Neither is it for the servant of Christ to haunt inns, or taverns, or ale-houses, to the dishonour of his person and office.[124]

This passage is quoted to call attention to the words italicised (not by Herbert),‘because it is the most popular vice;’ an independent confirmation of the excessive drinking in the reign of James I.

Again, inThe Parson in Journey, chapter xvii.,—

When he comes to any house, where his kindred or other relations give him any authority over the family, if he be to stay for a time, he considers diligently the state thereof to God-ward, and that in two points: First, what disorders there are either in apparel, or diet,or too open a buttery, &c.

The meaning of the words italicised is mistaken by the occasional annotator to Bohn’s edition, who explains it, ‘A repository or store-room for certain provisions.’ But in Elizabethan and Jacobean times,butteryalways meant the place where the beer (or wine) was kept. Evidence is forthcoming from our dramatists of those periods. Thus:—

(1) Maria, inTwelfth Night(act i., scene 3), says to the unfortunate butt Sir Andrew Ague-cheek, ‘I pray you bring your hand to the buttery bar and let it drink.’

(2) Middleton, inA Trick to Catch the Old One(Ed. Dyce, vol. ii.), has a clear proof, in the words, ‘Go, and wash your lungs i’ th’ buttery.’

From Herbert’sJacula Prudentummay be extracted—

A drunkard’s purse is a bottle.Choose not a house near an inn.Take heed of the vinegar of sweet wine.The wine in the bottle doth not quench thirst.A morning sun, and a wine-bred child, and aLatin-bred woman, seldom end well.

Once more, from theChurch Porch,—

Drink not the third glasse, which thou canst not tameWhen once it is within thee; but beforeMayst rule it, as thou list: and poure the shame,Which it would poure on thee, upon the floore.It is most just to throw that on the groundWhich would throw me there, if I keep the round.He that is drunken may his mother killBigge with his sister: he hath lost the reins,Is outlaw’d by himselfe; all kinde of illDid with his liquor slide into his veins.The drunkard forfets Man, and doth divestAll worldly right, save what he hath by beast.Shall I, to please another’s wine-sprung minde,Lose all mine own? God hath giv’n me a measureShort of his canne, and bodie.* * * *Be not a beast in courtesie, but stay,Stay at the third cup, or forego the place.Wine above all things doth God’s stamp efface.

Bishop Hall was unsparing in his lashes of the vices of his time, and amongst these of intemperance. We hear him in verse and prose, in critique and sermon. Thus, in hisSatire on the Stage,[125]—

Soon as the sun sends out his piercing beamsExhale out filthy smoke and stinking streams,So doth the base and the fore-barren brain,Soon as the raging wine begins to reign.

In hisContemplationon Lot he remarks, ‘Drunkenness is the way to all bestial affections and acts. Wine knows no difference either of persons or sins.’ In his sermon preached at Paul’s Cross, on Good Friday, 1609, we find ‘Every of our sins is a thorn, and nail, and spear to Him; while thou pourest down thy drunken carouses, thou givest thy Saviour a portion of gall.’ Why are not the preachers of to-day equally outspoken? One of his apophthegms can scarcely be forgotten:[126]‘When drinke is in, wit is out; but if wit were not out, drinke would not be in;’ and, lastly,—

Wine is a mocker. When it goes plausibly in, no man can know how it will rage and tyrannise. He that receives that traitor within his gates shall too late complain of surprisal. It insinuates sweetly, but in the end it bites like a serpent and hurts like a cockatrice. Even good Uriah is made drunk. The holiest may be overtaken.

But it is time to pass from precept tolaw.

In 1603 the power of licensing inns and ale-houses was granted by letters patent to certain persons, in which it was enacted that no victualler could sell less than one full quart of the best ale for one penny, and two quarts of the smaller sort for the same. The preamble of the statute of 1604 is most valuable for the information it affords as to what the ancient Parliaments considered to be the legitimate use of a tavern.

Whereas the ancient, true, and principal use of wine, ale-houses, and victualling-houses was for the receipt, relief, and lodging of wayfaring people travelling from place to place, and for the supply of the wants of such people as are not able by greater quantities tomake their provision of victuals; and not meant for entertainment and harbouring of lewd and idle people to spend and consume their money and time in lewd and drunken manner: it is enacted that only travellers, and travellers’ friends, and labourers for one hour at dinner-time or lodgers can receive entertainment under penalty.

The statute of 4th James imposespunishment for drunkenness:—

Whereas the loathsome and odious sin of drunkenness is of late grown into common use, being the root and foundation of many other enormous sins, as bloodshed, stabbing, murder, swearing, fornication, adultery, and such like, to the great dishonour of God and of our nation, the overthrow of many good arts and manual trades, the disabling of divers workmen, and the general impoverishing of many good subjects, abusively wasting the good creatures of God.

Therefore a fine of five shillings was imposed for intoxication, or confinement in the stocks for six hours, and for the first offence of remaining drinking in a person’s own neighbourhood, a fine of three shillings and fourpence, or the stocks, the penalty being increased for further offence. The fine, it must be remembered, was worth several times the same amount imposed now for intoxication, and the high road to it, tippling, is now passed over. The time prescribed in the stocks was fixed at six hours, because by that time the statute presumed the offender would have regained his senses, and not be liable to do mischief to his neighbours.[127]

Little success can as yet have attended legislation, for in 1609, the statute, admitting that ‘notwithstanding all former laws and provisions already made, the inordinate and extreme vice of excessive drinking and drunkenness doth more and more abound,’ enacts that offenders convicted against the two last Acts shall be deprived of their licence. Again has this statute to berenewed in 1623, as though the executive had slept. Among the grievances that the Parliament of 1621 examined was one that patents had been granted to Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Michel, for licensing inns and ale-houses; that great sums of money had been exacted under pretext of these licences; and that such innkeepers as presumed to continue their business without satisfying the rapacity of the patentees, had been severely punished by fine, imprisonment, and vexatious prosecutions. The patentees were denounced as criminals. They fled for refuge. Sentence was passed upon them, which, in the case of Mompesson, was commuted. Many useful hints might be learnt from purely local legislation from time to time. Indeed, a most useful code might be formed from a digest of borough enactments. Let one illustration suffice. We find a local law at Lyme, about this time, to the effect that no retailer of beer was to sell to any craftsman or servant of the town, unless he was in company with a stranger. In 1612 it was there ordered that no one should tipple any one day above one hour in any house. It merely remains to be noticed that in Cott. MSS. Titus B. III. Codex chartaceus, in folio, Constans fol. 281, may be found—

1. A letter of James I. to the magistrates of Southampton; with orders for the regulation of ale-houses and victualling-houses, Westm., March 3, 1607.2. An order of the Queen’s Council for an exact account of all the inns, ale-houses, and taverns in the kingdom, towards levying a tax upon them for the repairs of Dover harbour. Richmd, July 20, 1577.3. An order for the regulation of ale-houses, 1608.4. An order of Privy Council for a return concerning the ale-houses in different countries, Feb. 19, 1608.5. Three letters of the Privy Council, and a paper of directions concerning ale-houses. Greenwich, June 30, 1608.[128]

1. A letter of James I. to the magistrates of Southampton; with orders for the regulation of ale-houses and victualling-houses, Westm., March 3, 1607.

2. An order of the Queen’s Council for an exact account of all the inns, ale-houses, and taverns in the kingdom, towards levying a tax upon them for the repairs of Dover harbour. Richmd, July 20, 1577.

3. An order for the regulation of ale-houses, 1608.

4. An order of Privy Council for a return concerning the ale-houses in different countries, Feb. 19, 1608.

5. Three letters of the Privy Council, and a paper of directions concerning ale-houses. Greenwich, June 30, 1608.[128]

The reign of Charles I. very nearly covers the second quarter of the seventeenth century. If we had to select a single author as our guide to the social habits of the time, we should probably at once fix upon Thomas Heywood, the busiest of dramatic writers, ‘a sort of prose Shakespeare,’ as Charles Lamb makes bold to say. Of his numerous works, one is a direct exposure of the then drinking customs.[129]The immense variety of drinking-cups, as well as the intrinsic value of many of them, speaks volumes. He describes them as ‘some of elme, some of box, some of maple, some of holly, &c., mazers, broad-mouth’d dishes, moggins, whiskins, piggins, cruizes, ale-bowles, wassell-bowles, court-dishes, tankards, kannes, from a bottle to a pint, from a pint to a gill. Other bottles we have of leather, but they are most used amongst the shepheards and harvest-people of the countrey; small jacks wee have in many ale-houses, of the citie and suburbs, tip’t with silver, besides the great black jacks and bombards at the court, which when the Frenchmen first saw, they reported at their returne into their countrey, that the Englishmen used to drinke out of their bootes: we have besides, cups made of horns of beasts, of cocker-nuts, of goords, of the eggs of estriches, others made of the shells of divers fishes brought from the Indies and other places, and shining like mother of pearl. Come to plate, every taverne can afford you flat bowls, prounet cups, beare bowles, beakers; and private householders in the citie, when they make a feast to entertain their friends, can furnish their cupboards with flagons, tankards, beere-cups, wine-bowls, some white, some percell gilt, some gilt all over,some with covers, some without, of sundry shapes and qualities.’

In the same books occurs the following curious satire:—‘There is now profest an eighth liberal art or science, calledArs Bibendi,i.e.the Art of Drinking. The students or professors thereof call a greene garland, or painted hoope hang’d out, acolledge, a sign where there is lodging, man’s-meate, and horse-meate, aninne of court, anhallor anhostle, where nothing is sold but ale and tobacco, agrammar schoole; a red or a blue lattice, that they termea free schoolefor all comers.... The bookes which they studdy, and whose leaves they so often turne over are for the most part three of the old translation and three of the new. Those of the old translation—1, The Tankard; 2, The Black Jacke; 3, The Quart-Pot, Rib’d, or Thorondell. Those of the new be these: 1, The Jugge; 2, The Beaker; 3, The Double or Single Can, or Black Pot.’ The same author gives a list of slang phrases then in use, signifying the being intoxicated. ‘He is foxt, hee is flawed, he is flustered, hee is suttle, cupshot, he hath seene the French king, he hath swallowed an havie or a taverne-token, hee hath whipt the cat, he hath been at the scriveners, and learn’d to make indentures, hee hath bit his grannam, or is bit by a barne-weesell,’ &c. In another of his productions,Shipwreck by Drink, he describes a drunken scene which took place in a house that he was passing in which a feast was being held:—

In the height of their carousing, all their brainsWarmed with the heat of wine.

And a marvellous piece of description it is. The guests imagine themselves to be rocked in a vessel during storm, climb bedposts as though they were masts, turn out the furniture as if casting ship-lading overboard; another bestrides his fellow to escape, Arion-like, on the dolphin’s back. The staff of the constable who enters is considered to be Neptune’s trident, and so forth.

But enough of this author. The habits of his time had evidently impressed him, and he constantly revives his impression. But it was no self-formed phantom. Abundance of corroboration is forthcoming. A political economist of the same date (1627) remarks, ‘This most monstrous vice is thus defined:—“Drunkenness is the privation of orderly motion and understanding.” ... But I need not stand much about the definition of drunkenness, for, with grief I speak it, the taverns, ale-houses, and the very streets are so full of drunkards in all parts of this kingdom, that by the sight of them it is better known what this detestable and odious vice is than by any definition whatsoever.’[130]

Regarding it then as established, that the intemperance of the times of Elizabeth and James I. was still perpetuated, it is natural to inquire to what it is to be attributed.

(1)The attractiveness of the drinks themselves, a constant factor in all periods.

Of wines, Canary and sack were in most demand, though these were constantly terms indifferently used; thus,—

Some sack, boy.Good sherry-sack, sir?I meant Canary, sir; what, hast no brains?[131]

The following is the explanation of the confusion in terms:—

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