BREWING—ALE, BEER, CIDER
Malt liquors have been from time immemorial the national drink of
England, but the ale of medieval times was quite different from the
liquor which now passes indifferently under the names ale or beer. It
was more of a sweet wort, of about the consistency of barley water.
Andrew Borde,[652] writing in the first half of the sixteenth century,
says: 'Ale is made of malte and water; and they the which do put any
other thynge to ale than is rehersed, except yest, barme or godesgood,
doth sofysticat theyr ale. Ale for an Englysshe man is a naturall
drynke. Ale must have these propertyes: it muste be fresshe and cleare,
it muste not be ropy nor smoky, nor must it have no weft nor tayle. Ale
should not be dronke under v dayes olde. Newe ale is unholsome for all
men. And sowre ale, and dead ale the which doth stand a tylt, is good
for no man. Barly malte maketh better ale then oten malte or any other
corne doth: it doth ingendre grose humoures; but yette it maketh a man
stronge.'
The supremacy of English ale was already established by the middle of
the twelfth century, that of Canterbury being particularly famous,[653]
and casks of ale were amongst the presents taken by Becket to the
French court on the occasion of his embassy in 1157.[654] At this time
it really deserved the title of 'the people's food in liquid form';
the consumption per head of population must have been enormous, the
ordinary monastic corrody, or allowance of food, stipulating for a
gallon of good ale a day, with very often a second gallon of weak ale.
It must be borne in mind that it was drunk at all times, taking the
place not only of such modern inventions as tea and coffee, but also
of water, insomuch that a thirteenth-century writer describing the
extreme poverty of the Franciscans when they first settled in London
(A.D. 1224) exclaims, 'I have seen the brothers drink ale so sour that
some would have preferred to drink water.'[655] Such was the importance
attached to ale that it was coupled with bread for purposes of legal
supervision, and the right to hold the 'assize of bread and ale' was
one of the earliest justicial privileges asserted by municipal and
other local courts. The Assize of Ale as recorded on the Statute Rolls
in the time of Henry III. fixed the maximum price of ale throughout
the kingdom on the basis of the price of malt, or rather of the corn
from which malt was made.[656] When wheat stood at 3s. or 3s. 4d. the
quarter, barley at 20d. to 2s., and oats at 16d., then brewers in towns
were to sell two gallons of ale for a penny, and outside towns three
or four gallons. And when three gallons were sold for a penny in a
town then four gallons should be sold for a penny in the country. If
corn rose a shilling the quarter, the price of ale might be raised a
farthing the gallon.[657] A later ordinance, issued in 1283, set the
price of the better quality of ale at 1½d.; and that of the weaker at
1d., and the commonalty of Bristol, fearing that they might be punished
if the brewers of the town broke this regulation, issued stringent
orders for its observance, infringement entailing the forfeiture of the
offender's brewery.[658]
A very casual examination of court rolls and other local records
is sufficient to convince the student that brewing was universal,
every village supplying its own wants, and that infringements of the
regulations by which the trade was supposed to be controlled were
almost equally universal. The same names are found, where any series of
rolls exists, presented at court after court for breaking the assize
in one way or another, and it is clear that a strict observance of the
laws was difficult, it being more profitable to break them and pay the
small fines extorted practically as licensing dues. At Shoreham in the
thirteenth century, the brewers, whose trade was particularly active
because of the numbers of foreigners who visited the port, paid 2½
marks yearly to escape the vexations of the manorial court,[659] and in
the same way the hundred of Shoyswell (in Sussex) paid a yearly fine
in order that the ale-wives (trade was largely in the hands of women)
might be excused attendance at the law-days.[660] In neither case,
however, can we suppose that the manorial control over the brewing
trade was appreciably relaxed, but rather that personal attendance
at the court, with its interruption of business, was dispensed with.
Besides these monetary payments, there were often payments in kind
due to the lord of the manor or borough. At Marlborough every public
brewery had to pay to the constable of the castle from each brew a
measure, known as 'tolsester,' prior to 1232, when this render of ale
was granted to the canons of St. Margaret's.[661] 'Tolsester' was also
paid to the castle of Chester,[662] and in Newark and Fiskerton.[663]
The 'sester' (_sextarius_) or 'cestron' was, in Coventry at any rate,
13 or 14 gallons.[664] Ale was always supposed to be sold, whether in
gross or retail, in measures of which the capacity had been certified
by the seal or stamp of the official appointed for the purpose.[665]
The list of standard measures kept at Beverley in 1423 shows a
potell, quart, pint, and gill of pewter, panyers, hopir, modius,
firthindal, piece, and half-piece of wood and a gallon, potell, third
and quart, also of wood.[666] Court Rolls, however, show that the use
of unstamped measures and the retailing of ale in pitchers and jugs
(_per ciphos et discos_) was of constant occurrence,[667] mainly, no
doubt, for the convenience of customers who brought their own jugs,
but also occasionally with intent to deceive, as in the case of Alice
Causton,[668] who in 1364 filled up the bottom of a quart measure with
pitch and cunningly sprinkled it with sprigs of rosemary,[669] for
which she had to 'play bo pepe thorowe a pillery.' It is interesting to
notice that at Torksey in 1345, if a woman was accused of selling ale
'against the assize,' she might clear herself by the oaths of two other
women, preferably her next-door neighbours.[670]
When a public brewer had made a fresh brew he had to send for the
official 'ale-conner' or 'taster,' or to signify that his services
were required by putting out in front of his house an 'ale stake,'
a pole with a branch or bush at the end: this was also used as the
universal sign of a tavern; and some of the London taverners, possibly
recognising that their liquor was not sufficiently good to 'need no
bush,' made their ale-stakes so long as to be dangerous to persons
riding in the street.[671] No ale might be sold until it had been
approved by the ale-conner. If the latter found the ale fit for
consumption but not of full quality, he might fix the price at which
it might be sold.[672] In Worcester the instructions to the ale-conner
were, 'You shall resort to every brewer's house within this city on
their tunning day and there to taste their ale, whether it be good
and wholesome for man's body, and whether they make it from time to
time according to the prices fixed. So help you God.'[673] There
seems reason for the pious ejaculation when we find that in Coventry
in 1520 there were in a total population of 6600 men, women, and
children, 60 public brewers.[674] When the ale was good the task must
have had its compensations, but when it was bad the taster must often
have wished to make the punishment fit the crime, as was done in the
case of a Londoner who sold bad wine, the offender being compelled
to drink a draught of the wine, the rest of which was then poured
over his head.[675] Our sympathy may in particular be extended to the
ale-tasters of Cornwall, where 'ale is starke nought, lokinge whyte
and thycke, as pygges had wrasteled in it.'[676] Oddly enough we find
mention in Domesday Book of forty-three _cervisiarii_ at Helstone in
Cornwall; they are usually supposed to be tenants who paid dues of ale,
but the term is clearly used in the description of Bury St. Edmunds
for brewers. In the sixteenth century, however, Borde[677] in an
unflattering dialect poem makes the Cornishman say:—
'Iche cam a Cornyshe man, ale che can brew;
It wyll make one to kacke, also to spew;
It is dycke and smoky, and also it is dyn;
It is lyke wash as pygges had wrestled dryn.'
To ensure the purity of the ale not only was the finished product
examined, but some care was taken to prevent the use of impure water,
regulations to prevent the contamination of water used by brewers,
or the use by them of water so contaminated, being common.[678] On
the other hand, owing to the large quantities of water required for
their business, they were forbidden in London,[679] Bristol,[680] and
Coventry[681] to use the public conduits. For the actual brewing, rules
were also laid down. In Oxford in 1449, in which year nine brewers
were said to brew weak and unwholesome ale, not properly prepared,
and not worth its price, but of little or no value, the brewers were
made to swear that they would brew in wholesome manner so that they
would continue to heat the water over the fire so long as it emitted
froth, and would skim the froth off, and that after skimming the new
ale should stand long enough for the dregs to settle before they sent
it out, Richard Benet in particular undertaking that his ale should
stand for at least twelve hours before he sent it to any hall or
college.[682] In London also casks when filled in the brewery were to
stand for a day and a night to work, so that when taken away the ale
should be clear and good.[683] This explains the regulation at Coventry
in 1421 that ale 'new under the here syve [hair sieve]' was to sell for
1¼d. the gallon, and that 'good and stale' for 1½d.[684] At Seaford
there was a third state, 'in the hoffe,' or 'huff,' which sold for
2d.[685]
So far were the brewers regarded as the servants of the people that
not only was their brewing strictly regulated, but they were compelled
to brew even when they considered that new ordinances[686] or a rise
in the price of malt would make their trade unprofitable;[687] and in
1434 the brewers of Oxford were summoned to St. Mary's Church and there
ordered to provide malt, and to see to it that two or three brewers
brewed twice or thrice every week, and sent out their ale.[688] At
Gloucester,[689] in the sixteenth century, the brewers were expected to
give some kind of weak wort, possibly the scum or dregs of their brew,
to the poor to make up into a kind of very small beer, which must have
been something like the 'second washing of the tuns,' which formed the
perquisite of the under brewers at Rochester Priory.[690] At Norwich
barm or yeast was a similar subject of charity, and in 1468 it was set
forth that 'wheras berme otherwise clepid goddisgood, without tyme of
mynde hath frely be yoven or delyvered for brede whete malte egges or
othir honest rewarde to the value only of a farthyng at the uttermost
and noon warned [_i.e._ denied], because it cometh of the grete grace
of God; certeyn ... comon brewers ... for ther singler lucre and avayle
have nowe newely begonne to take monye for their seid goddisgood,'
charging a halfpenny or a penny for the least amount, therefore the
brewers were to swear that 'for the time ye or your wife exercise comon
brewing ye shall graunte and delyver to any person axyng berme called
goddisgood takyng for as moche goddisgood as shall be sufficient for
the brewe of a quarter malte a ferthyng at the moost,' provided that
they have enough for their own use, and that this do not apply to any
'old custom' between the brewers and bakers.[691]
About the end of the fourteenth century a new variety of malt liquor,
beer, was introduced from Flanders. It seems to have been imported
into Winchelsea as early as 1400,[692] but for the best part of a
century its use was mainly, and its manufacture entirely, confined
to foreigners. Andrew Borde,[693] who disapproved of it, says, 'Bere
is made of malte, of hoppes and water: it is a naturall drynke for a
Dutche man. And nowe of late dayes it is moche used in Englande to the
detryment of many Englysshe men; specyally it kylleth them the which be
troubled with the colycke and the stone and the strangulion; for the
drynke is a colde drynke; yet it doth make a man fat, and doth inflate
the bely, as it dothe appeare by the Dutche mens faces and belyes. If
the bere be well served and be fyned and not new it doth qualify the
heat of the lyver.' That, thanks to the large foreign settlement in
London, beer brewing soon attained considerable dimensions in the
city is evident from the fact that in 1418, when provisions were sent
to Henry V. at the siege of Rouen, 300 tuns of 'ber' were sent from
London, and only 200 tuns of ale, but the beer was valued at only
13s. 4d. the tun, while the ale was 20s.[694] About the middle of the
fifteenth century large quantities of hops were being imported at
Rye and Winchelsea, and in the church of the neighbouring village of
Playden may still be seen the grave of Cornelius Zoetmann, ornamented
with two beer barrels and a crossed mash-stick and fork.[695] A little
later we find beer being exported from the Sussex ports and also from
Poole,[696] which had long done a large trade in ale to the Channel
Islands.
Such beer brewers as occur during the fifteenth century almost all
bear foreign names. For instance, in 1473, Thomas Seyntleger and John
Goryng of Southwark recovered heavy damages for theft against John Doys
of St. Botolph's-outside-Aldgate and Gerard Sconeburgh of Southwark,
'berebruers,' whose sureties were Godfrey Speryng and Edward Dewysse,
also 'berebruers.'[697] Probably in this case the theft was an illegal
seizure or distraint of goods for a debt for beer supplied, as although
most of the goods said to be stolen were armour and objects of value,
such as a book of Gower's poems and an illuminated _Sege of Troye_,
there were also ten barrels of 'sengilbere,' thirty-five barrels of
'dowblebere,' ten lastys of barrels and kilderkins, and two great sacks
for 'hoppys.' There was still a prejudice against beer, and in 1471,
at Norwich, the use of hops and 'gawle' in brewing was forbidden,[698]
while in 1519 the authorities at Shrewsbury prohibited the employment
of the 'wicked and pernicious weed, hops.'[699] In the same way, in
1531, the royal brewer was forbidden to use hops or brimstone, but
an Act of Parliament passed in the same year bore testimony to the
establishment of the industry by exempting alien brewers from the
penal statutes against foreigners practising their trades in England,
and also by allowing beer brewers to employ two coopers while ale
brewers might only employ one.[700] At the same time the barrel of
beer was fixed at thirty-six gallons, and that of ale at thirty-two,
the kilderkin and firkin being respectively half and quarter of those
amounts.
From this time the brewing of beer steadily prospered, the Leakes
of Southwark[701] and other alien brewers amassing great riches,
English brewers following in their footsteps, and the taste for beer
spreading through the country so rapidly that in 1577 Harrison in his
_Description of England_ could speak contemptuously of the old ale as
thick and fulsome and no longer popular except with a few.
William Harrison, writing about 1577, says: 'In some places of England
there is a kind of drinke made of apples, which they call cider or
pomage, but that of peares is named pirrie, and both are ground and
pressed in presses made for the nonce. Certes, these two are verie
common in Sussex, Kent, Worcester, and other steads where these sorts
of fruits do abound, howbeit they are not their onelie drinke at
all times, but referred unto the delicate sorts of drinke.'[702] A
generation earlier Andrew Borde, whom we have already quoted for ale
and beer, wrote: 'Cyder is made of the juce of peeres, or of the juce
of apples; and other whyle cyder is made of both; but the best cyder
is made of cleane peeres, the which be dulcet; but the beste is not
praysed in physycke, for cyder is colde of operacyon, and is full of
ventosyte, wherfore it doth ingendre evyll humours and doth swage to
moche the naturall heate of man and doth let dygestyon and doth hurte
the stomacke; but they the whych be used to it, yf it be dronken in
harvyst it doth lytell harme.'
Andrew Borde makes no distinction between cider and perry. We find
mention of the latter in 1505, when a foreign ship entered Poole with
a cargo of apples, pears, etc., and '3 poncheons de pery,' valued at
10s.,[703] but references to perry are not numerous. Cider, on the
other hand, we find in constant demand from the middle of the twelfth
century onwards. It figures on the Pipe Rolls of Henry II.,[704] and
the contemporary historian and journalist, Gerald de Barri, alleged its
use by the monks of Canterbury instead of Kentish ale as an instance of
their luxury.[705] A little later, in 1212, the sale of cider is one of
the numerous sources of the income of the Abbey of Battle;[706] part of
this cider may have come from its estates at Wye, which produced a good
deal of cider during the fourteenth century.[707]
Possibly the industry was introduced from Normandy, from which
district large quantities of cider were imported into Winchelsea
about 1270,[708] and this might account for the hold which it took
upon Sussex. In the western part of the county, at Pagham, we find
mention of an apple mill and press having been wrongfully seized by
the escheator's officer in 1275,[709] and at the same place in 1313
the farmer of the archbishop's estates accounted for 12s. spent on
buying four casks in which to put cider, on repairing a ciderpress, and
on the wages of men hired to make cider.[710] It is, however, in the
Nonae Rolls of 1341 that the extent of the cider industry in Sussex
is most noticeable.[711] In no fewer than eighty parishes, of which
seventy-four were in West Sussex, the tithes of cider are mentioned as
part of the endowment of the church, and in another twenty-eight cases
the tithes of apples are entered. Moreover the value of these tithes
was very considerable, reaching 100s. in Easebourne, and as much as 10
marks (£6, 13s. 4d.) at Wisborough. In the last-named parish in 1385,
William Threle granted to John Pakenham and his wife certain gardens
and orchards, reserving to himself half the trees bearing fruit either
for eating or for cider (_mangable et ciserable_), in return for which
they were to render yearly a pipe of cider and a quarter of store
apples (_hordapplen_); he also retained the right of access to the
'wringehouse,' or building containing the press, and the right to use
their ciderpress for his fruit.[712]
Beyond an abundance of casual references to cider presses and to the
purchases and sale of cider, there is little to record of the industry
in medieval times; nor need we devote much attention to the manufacture
of wine in England. Domesday Book shows us that the great Norman lords
in many cases planted vines near their chief seats, and not many
years later William of Malmesbury spoke of the Vale of Gloucester as
planted more thickly with vineyards than any other part of England, and
producing the best grapes, from which a wine little inferior to those
of France was made. Vines continued to be grown by the great lords and
monasteries, but the wine was used entirely for their own consumption,
and in decreasing quantities. About 1500 an Italian visitor speaks
of having eaten English grapes, and adds 'wine might be made in the
southern parts, but it would be harsh,'[713] from which we may judge
that such wine making as had existed was at an end by the sixteenth
century.